Blackwolf & Triumph Playing in the Snow

Your humble Dragonmaster is just now recovering from a strange and rather chilly Tuesday. Washington Square Park saw me playing in the snow with ol' Poopstar. The fresh hound and I were joined by a film crew from G4, cable's all-videogame, all-the-time network. Our mission: to film some intros and commercial bumpers for the apparent network debut of The Best of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog --- although I did wonder if freezing me Wizardly butt off was all that worth it!

Look, do you Mortals think I like the sleet and slush? No! I frequently check in with the Weather Channel on occasion, but I prefer my robes and my new cloak somewhat untouched by the forces of dirt, thank you very much. In any case, let me tell you G4 folks shame on you for losing dear Martin Sargent; were it not for the stupidity of certain G4 execs, Unscrewed would have remained on the air indefinitely. As it is, I have to put up with more annoying dreck on the air anyway; and the Olympics are beginning to bore me. I may just take tomorrow off and snooze meself silly!

Blackwolf @ the Oscars: Update

Looks like the Oscars have decided to get rid of the idea of handing out awards to those in the audience. According to Gil Cates, the idea of presenting a few of the lesser-category Oscars to people gathered in the aisles just didn't work. The idea had been to speed the show up, but it only ended up just looking tacky.

Tacky! Hmph! Well, you had to figure the experiment was doomed to failure from the get-go. I mean, let's get real here: Do you really want to speed up the air time on the show for the sole purpose of appeasing ABC brass in New York, or is your first responsiblity as telecast producer to the Academy per se? You cannot have it both ways, dear Gilly.

The point is, the Academy Awards in its present televised form will always be a 4-hour live show no matter what you do; not even the fact that there are only three Best Original Song nominees this year will change that. Still, the surprising notion is the Best Animated Feature category. Two stop-motion epics --- Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Tim Burton's Corpse Bride are gonna go up against Tokyo's toon Yoda, Hayao Miyazaki, with his Howl's Moving Castle; whereas this year's three big CGI toons, DreamWorks' Madagascar, Fox/Blue Sky's Robots and Disney's Chicken Little were totally ignored. Right now, your Dragonmaster suspects that some of you are asking yourselves: What in Merlin's name is wrong with this picture?

Well, here's how I see it, kids: Like the rest of you Mortals, Oscar is bored. No Lord of the Rings to bow down and worship, no Billy, no Whoopi, just that twit from The Daily Show, Jon Stewart hosting --- and, well, here's the full line-up of presenters, so you goodlies can know just who to yell at:

Jessica Alba
Jennifer Aniston
Sandra Bullock
Steve Carell
Clint Eastwood
Will Ferrell
Jamie Foxx
Morgan Freeman
Tom Hanks
Terrence Howard
Queen Latifah
Keanu Reeves
Will Smith
Meryl Streep
Hilary Swank
Luke Wilson
Owen Wilson

And Sid Ganis, the Academy's recently-installed President, will make a few remarks as well. (I wonder if, having previously worked for George Lucas, ol' Sid will be as entertaining and as hilarious as Arthur Hiller was when he was Academy President.) And please, dear Randy Thomas, know that this ol' Dragonmaster expects ye back in the booth as the Oscar announcer; if not, then bring back ol' Les Marshak, the current voice of Macy*s. At least, Les is still as smooth-voiced as ever!