One disaster lived, one disaster averted

Thoughts for a Monday:

Oscar blues: On the one hand, you'd think Hollywood would know better but the fact that Sylvester Stallone not only still gets to act in movies but direct them as well is final, lasting proof that there is no collective memory in the town. Years ago, the Oscars tried to go young and had Rob Lowe sing with Snow White, a bridging of one Hollywood generation with another, which turned out to be one of the most memorably terrible moments in television history. So what made producers think that turning the show over to a pair of young actors who it would be a stretch to call stars, one who smiles too much while the other shows no emotion at all, would be a good idea? The show goes over its alotted time so regularly why they haven't just decided to embrace the length of the show and make it enjoyable baffles me. People will sit through 3 1/2 hours of self-important people feeling especially important so long as it's enjoyable TV.

The Oscars just need to give up on going young because if the producers really wanted a young audience, they would bite the bullet, hire Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert or Ricky Gervais and embrace the cynicism, revel in 3 1/2 hours of jokes made at the audience's expense to emphasize rather than hide the self-congratulatory nature of the evening. But they've tried that and the audience is uncomfortable being the butt of the jokes. The irony is that Hollywood, more than any group, should understand what a young audience wants since 90 percent of the crap it spews is aimed at it. But you can't honor Transformers or anything starring Jennifer Aniston, Ashton Kutcher, Adam Sandler, Kate Hudson or Matthew McConaughey because it would further strain the event's already strained credibility. The fact is the young audience they want for the show also likes crappy movies and a show designed to honor, if not the actual best movies, then at least not-crappy movies is by its very nature going to ignore most of what Hollywood produces and, with it, the audience it attracts.

So just give up Hollywood. Hire Alec Baldwin or Steve Martin or Kevin Spacey or Ellen Degeneres and go with it. Embrace the audience that actually will watch the show, old people and people who like to complain that Inception really didn't deserve the Oscar for cinematography, that the award actually belonged to some Belgian film that played for a week in New York and wasn't even nominated. We're the people who are watching the show and James Franco annoys us when he is anywhere other than on the other side of a movie screen, and even then it's hit or miss. The good news is that if history is any lesson, Franco and/or Anne Hathaway will one day have successful television careers, possibly starring in a show about a president.

Collision course: The Colorado Rockies' first play in the field this spring training nearly turned into a disaster. A pop foul down the left-field line brought Carlos Gonzalez, Troy Tulowitzki and Ian Stewart in chase and the three nearly collided with one another. As it turned out, just Stewart and Gonzalez met in a minor collision, but it was still enough to bruise Gonzalez's shin and strain Stewart's MCL, forcing the third baseman out for about a week. Nice to see the guys playing hard, but they need to use a little common sense in spring training.