I want to punch the Oscars in the face
It’s a lovely day at Ruskin Park while I write this, the sun is shining, I’m enjoying my book. I thought I’d take a moment to write about the funny stuff that happened last night in Hollywood, a million miles away. Hope you’re having a great day reading this.
This morning as I awoke from my slumber, ready to face a new day of exciting experiences and challenges, I checked my phone to see what time God had seen fit to introduce me into this day and saw, to my surprise, that my group chats had been popping off for the last hour with their reactions to some breaking news. My phone had been ringing off the hook with local press and industry contacts asking me to opine on the situation. In our Great British night-time, the biggest “attention harvesting ritual” of the year had taken place, to quote an old friend. Now when I first saw the footage of what went down, my first question was: What year was this video from? Because it’s exactly the kind of thing that could have happened in previous years and completely passed me by, not to mention the fact that I had no previous idea that the Oscars were on overnight, the unfortunate trends of the movie industry are, more by accident than design, at least having some positive effects, like making no one care about an auto-fellating fashion show. Additionally I really had no idea Will Smith had been making any movies in the past couple years, I thought he had kind of climaxed around the time of Focus and Concussion. Quite frankly, the quality of the footage I was seeing had already been passed along so many times through Facebook’s make-videos-look-like-shit messaging service that the pictures looked more like they were from a few years ago before the world got sick of him. Honestly I should have been clued into the fact that this took place recently because if it happened when Will Smith was still a relevant movie star the footage would most likely have been in black and white.
From what I can understand, based on reading the first reply to every tweet and then immediately moving on to the next post hoping it would be about a different topic, is that Will Smith’s wife has alopecia and Chris Rock made a G.I. Jane joke, that I don’t really get, which was apparently somewhat rude. This could not be stood for by Will Smith’s wife’s husband, who laughed for a bit (weird) and then promptly stood up, marched on to the stage and hit another grown man in front of the whole world. He then went back and swore at Chris Rock a bit, the night carried on, Will Smith won an award and then was next seen dancing to his own song at the after party with all onlookers making sure to keep a safe distance from this man who was clearly violent and unhinged. In fairness to the scared NPCs, looking on at Will Smith getting jiggy at the end of the night, appearing right on the verge of calling the police and getting the Fresh Prince a one-star Wanted level, it did look like a hell of a hit that he landed on the comedian. Unfortunately for all of us, the only video footage of the assault is from a behind-angle, which does lend a bit of credit to those claiming it was faked. It’s hard to get a good sense of how clean a connection he made from that angle, that is, if indeed he did make a connection at all. I’ve also seen some cool action shot professional photographs released of it. They present nicely; like a cartoon comic strip with Chris Rock leaning towards his assailant before having a comedic “Oof” kind of expression in the next panel. But alas, the photos also don’t show any actual contact between Smith’s hand and Rock’s beautiful face. Chris Rock then awkwardly fumbled into the next bit of his act in a very uncomfortable fashion. Unsure whether this is due to just having had his brain slapped into the side of his skull or if it’s just his manner on stage. Must make a note to watch other Chris Rock sets before I judge him for this, maybe he has a social disorder.
I’m very quickly running out of steam in caring about this so for one last thought I would just like to say: It’s been a hard pandemic for everyone, even the stars. Will Smith probably hasn’t seen Chris Rock since their last escapade together on the paedophile island, emotions were running high and, with no children around to vent his frustrations on, Will Smith settled for the next best thing. And if he hasn’t already posted an earnest-seeming apology on social media by the time I publish this later today, I will be shocked. Shit like this, real or fake, follows a playbook so tight that it’s not even worth my time to check that they are indeed going through the motions.
To sum up, it could be staged, or not, it doesn’t really matter, same end result and all the characters in this desperate play come off equally badly anyway. It’s a party of rich people who haven’t spoken to a non-celebrity in decades, their brains are so addled with drugs that they don’t know the difference between what is real and what is fake, let them do their thing with their blissful ignorance of how weird their behaviour is and how small it makes their dicks seem. Who cares. Have a great day, now go for a walk and appreciate the beauty in your local area.
Here’s a picture I took on the way back from the park:
Thanks for reading. I appreciate your interest in my writing, though I have lost some respect for you for clicking on an article about the “attention harvesting ritual”.
As always, talk to me @CallumRG21 on twitter, callumrg21@gmail.com on email, and there’s probably a way you can reply on Medium too. I sincerely want to hear your thoughts on anything, that’s how we grow.
