The Smarmy Carny

Oscar and his friends

This post discusses Oscars contests for the Academy Awards that took place on , 2005. For the most recent Oscars posts, be sure to check out the Oscars/Academy Awards category page. There, you should find prediction posts, present and past, and perhaps some other Oscars-related thoughts.

Update: The contest entry windows have all closed! For crying out loud, if you're waiting until now, you've procrastinated longer than I have. Congratulations. You lose.

Every year, I go ahead and look for various Academy Awards predictions contests. Every year I sort through dozens of pages to find a bunch of contests. This year, I figured I would share my findings. Sorry that I'm putting this up so late, but I'm a procrastinator, so I'm just getting it done now. Perhaps next year I'll work on getting this out sooner. In fact, many contests have already ended.

Strategically, you're best off figuring out which picks you will make before you start. Print the official Oscars ballot or EW's pretty ballot and make your picks. That will save you time.

Well, I do have some guidelines I used in picking which sites to show here. I'm not too discriminatory about this, but I do have some limits.

1. You pick the winners. No "enter your name and cross your fingers" stuff here. If you've got knowledge and skill, get them all right and have a better chance than just a regular lottery-style game.
2. English only.
3. No regional contest prizes. I don't care if I win a dinner for two in Vancouver, and you probably don't either. Some regional sites will be used if they offer a generic prize.
4. No Canada. I didn't look at sites from .ca because most of those are restricted to Canadians.
5. Not expired. If the contest expires before some time on Sunday, I noted that fact.
6. I will do my best to skim rules and regulations to confirm what I've mentioned above. No promises that I didn't miss something. It's up to you to read the rules yourself if you care.
7. Of course, I make no claims about spamming resulting from these contests. I myself have created a special e-mail just for contests to catch all the spam (and congratulatory winners' e-mails, of course).

Listings will be of the following format:

• Site name (links directly to contest page) — Description of the page, along with any pertinent restrictions.
  Grand Prize(s) offered. You can read the details for any lesser prizes.

Confirmed contests: I have entered these and confirmed that they abide by my guidelines above. Unless noted, you can enter these until at least midnight before the Oscars ceremony. Some will let you enter right up until the ceremony begins.

• Oscars.com — The official site. Need I say more?
  Ultimate Home Theater System
• CNN.com — Skewed news, nice prize
  32" LCD HDTV; $1000 cash
• HardRock.com — Entry did not work when I tried it first, but worked later.
  Two Red Carpet bleacher seats to the 78th Academy Awards Red Carpet pre-show
• The New York Times — More skewed news, decent prize
  Dream vacation for 2. Destination options: London, England (Finding Neverland); Hollywood, CA (The Aviator); or California's Central Coast wine country (Sideways)
• Movieline
  JVC TH-M505 Home Theater System; 60 Oscar-nominated DVDs
• filmguru.net — Small prizes, but probably a better chance of winning
  $25 Amazon.com gift certificate; FilmGuru.Net t-shirt
• the-numbers.com
  DVDs of your choice
• Quad-Cities Online
  Trip for 4 to Universal Orlando Resort in Florida
• N:Zone
  A Million Dollar Baby "Hit Pit" Hoodie Sweatshirt; A Troy Candle set, t-shirt, hat and envelope opener; A Phantom of the Opera music box, t-shirt, magnets and bracelet; A Ray movie poster; A Sideways golf ball set and polo/golf shirt; The Motorcycle Diaries on DVD
• Miami Herald(click "Enter the Herald's Oscars Contest") — Contest closes Friday, February 25, 2005 at 3 p.m. EST
  Panasonic DIGA DVD Recorder with TV Guide On Screen(TM)
• oregonlive.com — Contest closes Friday, February 25, 2005 at 9 p.m. PST
  20 movie tickets
• scuba.com — Contest closes Saturday, February 26, 2005 at 12 noon PST
  $100 Gift Certificate for scuba.com
• Lexington Herald-Leader — Contest closes Friday, February 25, 2005 at 12 noon PST
  $50 gift certificate to the Lexington restaurant Oscar's; plus $50 in movie tickets; the official Oscars poster
• Box Office Mojo
  one-year Premier Pass on Box Office Mojo

After the Oscars are over, I'll probably post my picks and how they stacked up with the actual winners. I usually do fairly horribly, so it should be funny. Update: I did, in fact, decide to do this. Read my picks here.

Relaxed Football

Ever watch an NFL game and think "I could do that, if only there wasn't such a focus on physical requirements, running, etc."? Me too, but then I just go ahead and finish off my Smores Blasted E.L. Fudge cookies until I drift off to sleep.

This hilarious commercial is much better than I was expecting it to be.

What if an entire football team were given muscle relaxants right before a game?

Hilarity ensues.

NHL CBA

I realize I'm late on the NHL season being cancelled, but I've been lazy. Those of you who don't already know that the 2004-2005 NHL season has officially been cancelled probably don't care anyway.

As with any professional sports organization, I scoff when the players strike. $8M??? Heck no, we want $10M a season! Yes, I understand that their "working career" is shorter than the rest of us. I know that star players bring in millions of dollars in ticket sales and other various revenues. I don't care.

I make no secret about my thoughts and feelings toward most unions. The goal of most unions seem to be to get the most money for the least amount of work. This is not why unions were formed in the first place. Unions were originally created to uphold workers' rights, not to push to make excessively high salaries even more excessively high. Working excruciating hours, dangerous working conditions, being paid in coupons instead of money — these are the issues that unions were created to stop and/or avoid. From what I could find, here are some of the various leagues' minimum salaries:

• NHL: $200,000 with a proposed increase to $300,000 (so far)
• NFL: $225,000
• MLB: $300,000
• NBA: $385,277
• WNBA: Maximum salary capped at $174,000. I just threw that in to annoy people.

I don't know about you, but the lowest figure mentioned ($174k) would be a substantial pay raise for me. As I mentioned, these players are not exactly in dire straits financially. Unions need not push for more money for the players. They have been out of work for months . . . have you seen any players begging on the street?

I really need to demand that my employer pay me higher wages. After all, I'm only working until I'm 67.5 . . .

Just in case anyone is thinking this, I want to mention that yes, I do realize that the NHL is in a lockout phase, which is more of a reverse strike. I am well aware that, technically, it is the owners/league that has prevented the players from playing this season. I hope you're not so naive as to believe that players' and unions' demands in previous years are not to blame.

Of course, if you really miss hockey, you can watch "highlights" over at hockeyfights.com. For additional clips, check out their video clips forum thread.

Burt = Celebrity

I simply have to weigh in on my favorite Super Bowl commercials from tonight. Overall, there were a few great commercials and plenty of fodder. I would have to say that this year's selection did not live up to many of the past years' ads. I can remember years where most of these top five selections wouldn't have even made it to the Honorable Mention section! Still, you take what you can get. If the ad title has a link, you can click it to watch the video. You may also view many ads at USA Today by clicking on the AdMeter tab. (The page doesn't work in Firefox, blame USA Today!) Thanks to The Irish Trojan's Blog for that extra link.

Here are the five best commercials in my opinion. I'll start with my favorite of favorites and work from there:

1. FedEx / Kinko's, 10 Keys to the Best Super Bowl Commercial (2nd link): From celebrities to animals to attractive girls, FedEx really does a great job of poking fun at the stereotypical Super Bowl advertisement.
2. Ameriquest, Don't Judge: You're Being Robbed (2nd link): These silly hands-free cellphone kits cause problems for an unsuspecting convenience store shopper.
3. Bud Light, Parachuting (2nd link): This typical comic Bud Light ad does not disappoint. Bud ads like this are great because they can easily be talked about around the water cooler the next day, and they usually are.
4. Anheuser-Busch, Thanks (2nd and 3rd links): Everyone in an airport terminal stand and applaud American soldiers arriving back in the States. Very simple, very classy, very touching.
5. Olympus, New Groove Machine (2nd link): Some interesting CGI in this commercial has people dancing in a weird fashion. Not exactly Monkey-Matrix moves, but just as cool. I haven't seen any CGI this much fun since the recent HP Photo commercials.

Five more commercials earning honorable mention (in no particular order, this time):

• McDonald's, Lincoln Fry (2nd link): This commercial pokes fun at all those people who find objects of food that look like things or people.
• Anheuser Busch, While You Were Out (2nd link): Another good Bud Light commercial. Two guys use their cameraphone to try to harass a buddy who had turned down tickets for the big game.
• Emerald of California, The Truth: A father lies to his daughter about Santa and the Easter Bunny (being fake) so he can avoid sharing his food.
• Ameriquest, Don't Judge: Cat (2nd link): Another Ameriquest "Don't Judge" commercial. This time the confusion comes from a pesky cat bothering a husband's dinner preparations.
• GoDaddy.com, FCC Panel: A buxom girl in a skimpy shirt tries to pass her commercial by the FCC decency panel. Here is a link for the slightly different banned version. In fact, here's two minutes of the full hearing coverage.

Dishonorable mention grand prize goes out to Cosentino USA's "I am Diana Pearl" spot featuring Ditka, Rodman, Perry, and McMahon. I'll never get that 30 seconds back again. As if the commercial wasn't sad and boring enough, not only did we have to hear celebrities repeating "I am Diana Pearl," but you only hear three of them repeating it over and over and over. Runners-up are all of Fox's promos for 24, The Simple Life, and whatever else. We know you have other shows. We don't care. We want you to rake in the additional money and give us more content! If nothing else, at least make the promos worthy of the Super Bowl, and not the exact same clips that we see at 2 am. Second runner-up dishonorable mention goes to Cialis. Yes, I really needed to hear about yet another erectile disfunction product. The commercial was made interesting only by the phrase "Erections lasting longer than four hours, though rare . . . "

Full-Court Shot

0.6 seconds, 87 feet, 3 points. That basically sums up the end of the Guilford vs. Randolph-Macon game one week ago tonight.

Even if you're not interested in basketball at all, you really must watch the video footage of this game-winning full-court shot.

Details: With the game tied and nearing the final buzzer, Randolph-Macon's Adam Krovic was fouled with 0.6 seconds left in the game. Krovic hit the first shot to give his team a one point lead. Standard coaching strategy dictates that in this situation, you intentionally miss your second shot so that the other team cannot throw a long pass and make a quick basket to tie or win the game. This way, even if the team gets the rebound, they only have 0.6 seconds to somehow get the ball down the court and into the basket, thus ensuring you the win. Unfortunately, this strategy does not account for Guilford College's Jordan Snipes. Snipes grabbed the rebound and immediately chucked the ball all the way down the court. I have seen NBA pros throw up airballs from half court. Snipes missed the rim, but got all net. His team won by two.

As I said before, you really must watch the video, and if you're interested, you can read the article about the game.

Update: For your convenience, here is another link to the video and a link directly to a video file, though this one is edited slightly.