Let’s face it: The only way to make it through the untold hours of the Oscar® telecast, coming this Sun., Feb. 26, to a TV set near you (pre-show coverage starts at 7 p.m. on ABC, while E! Entertainment Television will be droning on for hours beforehand, starting at 1:30 p.m.), is to drink heavily. And by heavily, we mean heavily. Keep drinking until you confuse Julia Roberts with Tom Hanks, then drink some more. Sure, your liver might fail, but that’s still better than sitting through the whole show stone cold sober.
The CL staff recommends this official CL Oscar® Drinking Game, which should be combined with a close follow of our online Oscar® telecast coverage kicking off shortly before 8 p.m. at the Daily Loaf® blog.
Without further ado, take a drink every time:
• Ryan Seacrest interviews a celebrity shorter than he is.
• You glimpse a starlet (preferably young, though probably Helen Mirren) wearing a dress cut to reveal more of her breasts than it hides.
• A foreign person gives an adorable but incoherent speech. (Keep 911 keyed into your phone just in case it’s a big night for The Artist.)
• White Anglo celebs give pretentious pronunciations to foreign words in order to play up their multiculturalism. (Is Gwyneth presenting?)
• Someone drops the F-bomb.
• Someone other than Meryl Streep drops the S-bomb.
• Billy Crystal makes a joke that elicits a nasty stare from an audience member.
• Billy Crystal references Jack Palance.
• An acceptance speech is cut off by the band … but the winner keeps talking.
• A freshly minted Oscar® winner takes time to thank a grade school teacher.
• For every “thank you” over 10 in a single acceptance speech.
• There’s an animal on stage. (Cue Uggie! Take a drink right now if you know what movie Uggie's in. And another one if you know Cosmo.)
• The winner tries to leave the stage by walking the wrong way and has to be corralled by a pretty, silent lady in a fancy dress put there by the producer specifically to trap wayward celebrities.
• Someone says the phrase “3D.”
• Someone drops his Oscar®.
• George Clooney!
This article appears in Feb 23-29, 2012.