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"FacebookPinterest\n\n1. The persecution of Seth McFarlane. I'm not a Seth MacFarlane fanboy. I've always been staunchly pro-\"Simpsons\" and anti-\"Family Guy\". I never watch any of MacFarlane's other shows, either. And I'd take a bullet to the dome before watching five minutes of \"Ted\". So I'm not in the tank here when I say that MacFarlane, all things considered, did a perfectly adequate job hosting the Oscars on Sunday night. He took a thankless task and the worst audience in show business and managed to, at the very least, slip in a few subversive wisecracks AND keep his energy level high for four straight, interminable hours. At this point, I don't really know what else you want from an Oscar host. If people aren't bitching about Billy Crystal being too mild, they're bitching about MacFarlane being too harsh on a group of people that DESERVE harshness.\n\n This week, MacFarlane's jokes were subjected to the kind of microscopic analysis reserved for quantum particles. From Gawker to Slate to The Atlantic, there was string of PhD-length discourses about the underlying sexism, racism, homophobia, and whatever-elsephobia of MacFarlane's humor. The scrutiny was enough to obliterate comedy as we know it. Of course MacFarlane made tasteless jokes at the Oscars. That's what he does, and I think it's pretty clear that MacFarlane has no real malice when telling these kinds of jokes. But Jesus Christ, the way people reacted to his \"We Saw Your Boobs\" song, you would have thought he personally assaulted every actress in Hollywood. Give me a fucking break. We're never gonna shame tasteless comedians out of work, and we shouldn't! Tasteless humor is FUN, and it shouldn't be legislated by people who think certain people have the right to tell a certain joke and certain people don't. Piss off. Seth was fine. If you thought he was unfunny, fine. I get it. But you don't have to exhaust the dictionary explaining why. Quit ruining comedy for everyone.\n\n 2. Coat checks. The worst part of any party or small-venue concert is when the thing is over and you suddenly realize that you have to go stand in line at the coat check for ninety minutes. GAHHHHHHHHH! You thought you were just gonna head home, eh? Not so fast. And the person in front of you will ALWAYS get the wrong coat and the attendant will need an extra four hours to find the right one. There needs to be a better way to do coat checks, because standing there all night holding a wool coat isn't a suitable alternative. That sucks.\n\n 3. The idea that the best-directed movie should always be considered the best overall movie. Any time the Director and Picture categories split at the Oscars, as they did this year, people bitch and say that the awards should go hand-in-hand. I've even heard film critics\u2014who oughta know better\u2014say this. This is insane. The best directed movie isn't always the absolute best one. Direction is not the totality of a movie. Sure, there are people like Paul Thomas Anderson who ert full creative control of the movies they \"make.\" But more often than not, a director is often a hired gun whose sole job is to make the movie look expensive and get the actors to not suck. That's it. We've canonized the job of director to a ridiculous degree. A film can be well directed but horribly written (Hi, Avatar!). Or it can be blandly directed but so well written and produced that it hardly matters (all the Harry Potter movies). Direction isn't everything.\n\n 4. The sequester. Just fire us all and get it over with already.\n\n 5. March. It has one more shitty, awful storm waiting for us. I know it. I can feel it in my bones. Every time I think winter is through with me, March comes and kicks me in the nuts. It's the coat check line of months."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/make-it-stop-the-worst-of-the-week-of-030113>