I had a choice last night.

I was doing my stand up and hosting the early show at Goodnight’s Comedy Club in Raleigh with Crank Yanker Jim Florentine as the headliner. The green room had a television, which was tuned in to the Oscars.

I managed to catch Hugh Jackman barely surviving the torturous best movie number and hoped there was a place in heaven for all actors who put every bit of their heart and soul performing pieces of shit — in this case, a very large fudgepack of it.

No one can say he phoned it in as many actors do when they doubt the material they’re paid good money to present. He surely couldn’t have thought this was a wonderful piece. But who knows!?

I’ve seen phone-ins on stage, in summer stock on tv. Jackman didn’t. And he deserved better than that turgid, ill-conceived, uberkitchy number he put us and himself through. He needed all his Wolverine strength to sell us that crap and he did.

From the green room I got a sense of the Oscar’s presentation approach. Each nominee for various categories would be given their moment of adoration before the ax came down on four of them.

For the actors and actresses, five, count ‘em, five winners of that previous award emerged to each say something wonderful about one of the nominees.

“Dear Dora, in “Wind Of Fortune,” you showed us as little Nellie a character rich in spunky spirit but with a generosity of soul that embraced the whole of humanity, travelling that emotional distance with so sure a grasp of your craft and a willingness to distance yourself from your own personal truth to give us Nellie, as if out of body, to observe and enrich her reality, her feminism, her lack of racism and yes, even her crippled spine that developed from the ill fitting shoes her abusive father made her wear, all this with an honesty that transcended art and travelled the journey to found truth.”

Arrrrrgggghhhh!

And so, when I got home, I clicked on the TV, which happened to have been set to the History Channel, which was doing an episode on the history of the Los Angeles based Hispanic 18th Street gang.

They were setting up their birth, growth and chain of command and were talking about their expansion across the country. Commercial came and Click.

To the Oscars. I watched a bit and clicked back to The 18th Street Gang.

As I clicked back and forth I realized that for different reasons, each show was appalling.

We know the Hollywood crew are capable of good taste, intelligence, wit, talent and the art of presentation. None of that was in evidence during the Oscars. And here come:
Tilda Swinton, Eva Marie Saint, Anjelica Huston, Whoopi Goldberg and Goldie Hawn. Whoopie gets her mojo going with Viola Davis and I’m about to gag. So I switch. Click.

On the other hand, the 18th Street Gang are capable of battery,extortion, murder, terror, dope dealing, using kids as mules, rape and mutilation. And they didn’t disappoint. One leader tells us in his disguised voice about how they got rid of Termite, who was trying to muscle in on their territory.

What to watch!? Click. The bloated self-reverential drivel of this adulatory circle jerking event, or, Click, the horror of The 18th Street Gang, who at least had a clear and honest sense of themselves?

I could only take a few minutes of the gang’s infestation before, Click:

Sophia Loren, Shirley MacLaine, Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry and Marion Cotillard, emerging as goddesses to adoring applause only possible in the gated community of mutual fame.

Celebrity Stepfordness. Click.

At The 18th Street Gang, I saw a Hoover Loco, Pico Loco, Diablo, Tiny Wino and a Red Shield Boyz. They didn’t applaud each other. Just a few words of respect and understanding for what they do in their community of brotherhood and despair. Click.

Back to the Oscars and a montage of previous winners accepting and crying. Click.

Back to The 18th Street Gang. Where I learned that failure to obey a leader’s command results in an eighteen second beating. How appropriate. And it made me wonder whether more commands would be obeyed if they were the 169th Street gang.

Eighteen seconds is a helluva lot shorter than the beating I was getting from the Oscars. So I clicked again.

To another channel completely and there, in all its glory was The Dresser, with Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Edward Fox.

STOP! yells Finney to a London train, about to depart.

Yes! Stop!

A perfect film to replace an imperfect evening of television.

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