Prefrontal Globe*

*This pun title makes absolutely no sense. I was in a hurry!

The Golden Globe nominations were announced today! After last year’s writer’s strike which forced the ceremony to be cancelled (we had to listen to that mental deficient Billy Bush announce the winners on Access Hollywood), I’ve been going through awards withdrawal and am counting down the days until the season starts again. Here are my thoughts and predictions for the TV categories:

Best Drama
Dexter
House
In Treatment
Mad Men
True Blood

I’ve only seen two of these (True Blood and In Treatment have yet to hit DVD and I am, sadly, HBO-less) but Mad Men most definitely should and will win since they won last year and they won the Best Drama Emmy in September. They’re the new Sopranos, dominating every award show!

Best Comedy
30 Rock
Californication
Entourage
The Office
Weeds

So difficult to choose! 30 Rock will most likely nab this and it would be well-deserved, but Weeds had such an amazing fourth season this past summer—one that completely changed the series around but actually made it better.

Best Actor in a Drama
Gabriel Byrne, In Treatment
Michael C. Hall, Dexter
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Hugh Laurie, House
Jonathan Rhys Meyers, The Tudors

Don Draper come on down! He deserves this award for the second year in a row because no one else is able to make us love and fear his character like he does (and when you’re going up against a serial killer and Henry VIII, that’s really saying something!)

Best Actress in a Drama
Sally Field, Brothers and Sisters
Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: SVU
January Jones, Mad Men
Anna Paquin, True Blood
Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer

OK, is Mariska Hargitay really that good or is it just that people like saying her name? As anyone who follows this blog knows (all none of you!), January Jones has been a topic of much discussion between Sonia and I, so I take this nomination (and her expected win) to be a personal victory.

Best Actor in a Comdy
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Steve Carell, The Office
Kevin Connolly, Entourage
David Duchovny, Californication
Tony Shalhoub, Monk

When David Duchovny won this award last year, it was one of the biggest WTF moments since the infamous Herbie Hancock Grammy debacle this past February, but him winning might be worth it this year to see if he talks about his stint in rehab for sex addiction. Kudos to the HFPA for finally recognizing someone besides Jeremy Piven on Entourage (he still got a supporting nod, though) but it comes too late as that show has really lost its luster. It’s a battle between Alec and Steve, and Alec should prove victorious. And who knew Monk was still on?!

Best Actress in a Comedy
Christina Applegate, Samantha Who?
America Ferrera, Ugly Betty
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Debra Messing, The Starter Wife
Mary Louise-Parker, Weeds

Again, the 30 Rock vs. Weeds war wages on. They’re the two best comedies on TV right now with the two best leading ladies on TV right now. Even I can’t decide! I’m hoping for Mary-Louise just because Tina won over her last year, but Tina will be doubly hard to beat now that 2008 was The Year of the Fey.

(I ignored the mini-series and made-for-TV-movie categories because no one watches those and I use those for snack/bathroom breaks during the awards show broadcast.)

--Ray

"Barbara Walters is easily fascinated." --Seth Meyers

This week, Barbara Walters counted down her list of the ten most fascinating people of 2008 in a special confusingly titled Barbara Walters Counts Down the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2008.

10. Will Smith. “If I wanted to be the president, yes, I could.” Don’t you have to at least go to college to be the president? Damn you, George W., for helping to create the assumption that anyone can be president!

9. Michael Phelps. Who knew the Phelpster had ADHD? Answer: Anyone who witnessed his cue-card reading skills when he hosted SNL.

8. Miley Cyrus. Baba called Miley’s Vanity Fair spread “R-rated.” This coming from the woman who just wrote an autobiography about how many dudes she banged back in the ‘40s.

7. Tina Fey. Yeah, we don’t say negative things about her.

6. Rush Limbaugh. “What the rehab process taught me was that I’m not afraid of who I am.” Well, the orderlies who had to hold you down during the OxyContin withdrawal beg to differ.

5. The Pregnant Man. “I used my female reproductive organs to become a father.” Seriously, Barbara? Did the original choice for the #5 spot back out at the last minute? And how pissed do you think Rush is that he got beat by him/her?

4. Frank Langella. Barbara told us that to prepare to play the role of Nixon, Frank “started by reviewing tapes of Richard Nixon—including MY OWN 1968 interview.” Leave it to her to take up poor Frank’s segment by capitalizing on the opportunity to show a clip of herself 30 years younger.

3. Sarah Palin. Because she was the only person on the list who didn’t grant Baba an interview (could it have been the daily tough-lashing she gave Sarah on The View?), all we got was a g-less (goin’, doin’, seein’, maverickin’) montage of Palin’s highs and lows (but especially lows) during the brief two months she was famous.

2. Tom Cruise. Wasn’t 2008 the year we kept trying to forget Tom Cruise’s 2005-2007 Tour o’ Lunacy rather than be fascinated by him? You do have to give Tom credit though, he’s the only person who can become more fascinating by simply appearing less in public and keeping his mouth shut.

1. Barack Obama. Thank God he showed up for his interview or the Pregnant Man might’ve been given this spot.

--Ray

"Circus" Act

Last night, MTV’s “Night O’ Britney” kicked off with an awkward, hour-long, faux-live pre-show before the premiere of her documentary Britney: For the Record. Host Damien Fahey vamped his way through slow interstitials in which he and Brit, an alarming and freshly-minted milquetoast, reviewed her best moments on MTV from the past decade—at one point we actually watched present-day Britney looking back at a clip of 2001 Britney looking back at a clip of 14-year-old Britney. What is this, a David Lynch film?! Then, Damien would ask her a pointed question like, “What is it like looking back through all these moments?” But then, he’d always insert a yes-or-no question immediately, like, “Does it feel good to see what you’ve accomplished?” This allowed her to evade having to formulate any real response and to provide purely monosyllabic answers. Seriously, through the entire hour, Britney must’ve uttered no more than 25 words, 20 of which were “Yeah.”

As for the actual documentary, we have to keep in mind that For the Record was produced by her manager meaning it could be a real documentary or it could be a 90-minute commercial devised by her handlers to assure us that she’s OK and that we should all pick up her new album Circus. MTV doesn’t exactly have a history of journalistic integrity so we’ll never really know if Britney’s words are her own or if this is just a glossy, contrived farce through which a still-nutso Britney was coached. But either way, I’m not going to even try to pretend like I wasn’t completely under the Britney spell by the brilliantly-edited ending in which clips of her reaffirming her new-found strength were cut against a shot of her in front of a giant wall of raining sparks while Phillip Glass-esque orchestral music swelled to an epic climax. But even without all the bells and whistles, there is still something to be said about how incredibly compelling this woman is to watch—so much more so than any of the morons that have poisoned our television airwaves over this past decade with their stupid reality shows. Why is it that while I can’t take 3 seconds of Living Lohan or Keeping Up with the Kardashians, I will sit and watch Britney play a game on her cell phone with an unending supply of rapture and intrigue? I got the feeling that this is the first time she has ever been completely honest with us, but I still can’t decide whether this change is borne out of her decision or because her people knew the jig is finally up. (Once CNN has aired a live helicopter feed of a parade of ambulances carrying you to the dreaded Cedars-Sinai hospital, any façade of normalcy has been eradicated.)

During the “post-show” (which actually turned out to be yet another sneak peak at The City which is a spin-off of The Hills which is a spin-off of Laguna Beach which was a rip-off of The O.C.), after we’d just watched 90 straight minutes of Britney pour her heart out, Damien asked her how she felt now that she had supposedly set the record straight. Her response? “Good.” Is this our new Britney? One so attacked and shamed by the media that all the endearing, down-home things she used to say while chomping a piece of her trademark bubble gum are gone forever? In one of the songs on her new CD that comes out tomorrow (sorry, I just can’t bring myself to say drops), she says, “My face like a mannequin.” We’ve seen young, naïve Britney and crazy, bald Britney. Welcome to Britney 3.0.

--Ray