Just give out the awards already.

Every so often, I join some friends of mine in watching stand-up comedy around Boston. Usually we thoroughly enjoy the experience, but every so often, you watch someone sink like a ship. Case in point: Once, the emcee of an event alluded several times over an hour to a joke he was "going to tell later." As you might expect, by the time he actually delivered the joke he continually alluded to, it was dead on arrival.

This is how I feel about the current awards season. This has got to be the longest, most drawn out season we've had since moving the show up to February in 2004 (before, we had to wait until the end of March...yeah, think on that). Since the nominations were announced two weeks ago, I have seen Oscar bloggers ruminate over and over, trying to find some way for an upset to creep in.

Here's my question: How much of this rumination might reach the voters? We still have six days until ballots are due; meanwhile, studios are hard at work to remind us that Meryl Streep really hasn't won anything in the past two decades and that Inglourious Basterds was the most fun we've had in the theater in a while.

It's also worth mentioning that backlash has indeed settled in for The Hurt Locker.

As the PR machines in Hollywood are hard at work, I'm doing everything I can not to forget that the Oscars are in 11 days.