THE CLAMMIES!!!
THE CLAMMIES!!!
Give it up for THE CLAMMIES!!!
(Tepid, tentative applause pitter-pats here and there in the nearly empty ampitheatre. The bandleader barely stifles a gaping yawn.)
Every post between to-morrow and the Monday after the Nite of the Red Carpet Mile will be devoted to subverting and renovating the Oscars and adding bay windows, brickface and other niceties to the very conceptual structure of the award ceremony. Every post will reference the Oscars and/or the Clammies at some point or another. Awards and their ceremonies may pop up when you least expect them, or they may be the very trilling locus of my tales, trend analyses and tirades.
George C. (The Great Actor) Scott thought it wuz degrading and humiliating for thespians to compete against each other, so he very publicly no-show-Jonesed his Best Actor Oscar for portraying George S. Patton. Patton, who was not only a Marlene Dietrich-fucker (or so she bragged) but the Vince Lombardi of tank brigadiers, found it degrading and humiliating to compete with Field Marshal Montgomery and General Zhukov for the prize of Adolf Hitler's mustache presented with upper lip still attached, so there was a certain historical parallel attached to Scott's afterparty-pooping. GCS, a notoriously prickly sorta boozer when he wasn't imitating dive bombers with flailing arms and attempting pratfalls in the War Room, failed to see the jocular absurdity of the process or consider the possibility of turning what he called the "God-damn meat parade" into a postmodern performance piece w/ (or w/o) heavy sociocultural overtones. Marlon Brando and Sacheen Littlefeather would accomplish that a coupla years later; after Brando had re-invented acting for the second and third time in the space of one year, he scored a triad by recombobulating the art of accepting trophies.
My question, as usual, is: wtf is wrong with meat parades? Darnitall to heck itself, wtf is objectionable about degradation and humiliation, as long as it's consensual, GCS? Gitcher big ol' beak out of the martini shaker, wipe Colleen Dewhurst's drunkdrool off 'n the bib o'yr turtleneck sweater (ew, snotty, save that for the maid) and embrace the unthinkable...
Which is, that performance art, so transcendentally silly and sensually serious, is inherently larger than life. It's garish, non-utilitarian and so far over the top it lands upside down, where it plants and grows roots out the mouth, nose and ears. Cattle calls can be liberating. Flesh traders don't own you if you won't let them (Mary Ann hadda learn that the hard way in "Prime Cut"). The life of an actor, cracked or otherwise, is a luxury liner's voyage in sewage, and that's a major oodle of why it's true and beautiful and beneficial. No artist in any medium is more distinctly, naturalistically human than a thespian who spends far too much time gazing like Narcissus at the vaguely grey bubbles in backyard septic tanks, Brigadier.
I won an award, once. O Man O God O Man O God I wish I had a roomful. The physical nature of my solitary award mocked my very love of the concept. Two English teachers picked me as McCluer High School's Poetry Award Winner. I received a miniscule pin that said "MERIT" on it, you could read that if you squinted. The pin was tinier than a flaccid clit. Poetry don't sell beans and it never shapes mountain ranges anymore, but couldn't they have given me something half the size of a broken bowling trophy?
I can only dream of trodding red carpets in my middle age. Meanwhilst, I'll disseminate Clammies with more fervor and approbation, esp, if they honor the worst among us. Judas is necessary and beyond sacrilege.
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