Let the season of patting oneself on the back and tear-shedding begin!

The Golden Globes were on last night, and I know what many of you are thinking: "Who gives a damn?" Some people do though, most notably the celebrities on hand to claim awards that they can proudly set in a place of prominence on their mantle to reserve that space until they finally win that Oscar.

I was busy with more important things last night (I almost have that hole in my sock darned) so I didn't actually watch the programme. I might have had I known that Hugh Laurie was going to win, as we at DOUI are big fans of his and Rowan Atkinson from their Black Adder days. Nonetheless, I've tried to do a quick bit of research, as I feel it's my duty to keep you up to snuff on the elaborate and, quite frankly, meanless and pathetically self-indulgent world of entertainment news. That and Stew is too busy careening through the temporal ether, and Juan Carlos and Zimpter are too busy doing whatever it is that keeps them from blogging these days, which I suspect involves a great deal of sleeping.

So here's the rundown. I'll keep it as brief as possible, and no that doesn't mean I'll flash a bit of undergarment during the piece.

• Brokeback Mountain won best drama, partially because some of the foreign press thought it was a remake of High Noon, which expalins the chants of "Gary Cooper! Gary Cooper!" when the award was announced. Still though, some were impressed by the film's daring challenge to the conventional, cow-ranching, heterosexual, entertaining western of days gone by. "Long overdue!" exclaimed Franz Ewefondler of the Bavarian Times. Director Ang Lee won the Best Director award, and promised a fusion sequel of this and his other most well known film. The upcoming work is tentatively titled Crouching Cowboy, Hidden Sheep.
• Walk the Line won best comedy or musical because of confusion with the Broadway show A Chorus Line. In fact, on 70% of the ballots, voters had written in "I Walk the Chorus Line" which led to several Brokeback Mountain jokes, which shall not be repeated here but which provoked gales of laughter from the cast of Capote.
• Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon swept the lead acting awards for Comedy or Musical with their performances as Johnny and June Carter Cash in Walk the Line. This continues a tradition of acting awards for people playing deceased musical stars: Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray (Best Actor), Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in The Doors (Best Ham), Adam Sandler as Keith Richards in Tootsie (Best Makeup), and Dom DeLuise as the Beatles in The Cannonball Run (Best Special Effects).
• George Clooney won a Best Supporting Actor award for his role in Syriana and picked up another acting award for Best Feigned Surprise at Winning Award. Minsk Star cinema columnist Svetlana Rollofferandplayadeadovich said that she voted for Clooney because, "I am stalking him." Strangely, Clooney used the word "pomade" in his acceptance speech no fewer than 14 times.
• Mary Louise Parker won a Best Actress in a TV Series - Musical or Comedy, and was no doubt helped by the dearth of current Musical TV series, if you don't count American Idol and The Apprentice. However, the biggest surprise about her win was that she beat out the entire cast of Desperate Housewives, who congratulated Miss Louise Parker by pulling her hair out in knots.
• Finally, because let's face facts - I'm bored with it, Anthony Hopkins won the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement, for being "the most talented actor thought by the panel to be likely to snuff it sometime soon." Hopkins responded to this death wish of an award by thanking the crews behind the camera: "that wonderful bunch of anonymous people who work harder than anyone" and proceeded to recite the names of several crew members he worked with until reporters realized that he had just memorized a few pages from the L.A. phonebook. "I thought it was a pretty big coincidence that he knew some many crew members with the last initial of Z," confided ace Kathmandu Entertainer columnist Sig Trollophandler.

Transmission ends.