Hollywood Kids, Isn't It Past Your Bedtime?

I felt compelled to watch the SAG awards for a little bit. I don’t know why. I hate awards shows, I am not at all interested in what or who actors are wearing, and I don’t really care if my favorite shows are rewarded by their union. (I feel my loyalty should be enough for them.)  Yet, Sunday night I sat, with the remote in my hand, thumb hovering above the Channel Up button and could not look away. I ended up watching the SAGs for about 20 minutes, 17 of them through my fingers. When stars I don’t like are up there, I don’t want to see them. Some of them have very scary faces and breasts. And don’t even get me started on their hair. (I had decided I liked Johnny Depp’s greasy, shaggy unkempt-looking hairdo one year until I found out it took his stylist two weeks to come up with the look and four hours to do it. Four hours! That’s almost as long as it took him to get dressed.) When stars I do like are up there, I hold my breath just waiting for them to embarrass themselves. If they don’t out-and-out screw up, they boggle the mind with what bad actors they are. I mean, really, these people are making much dinero to act, yet they get up at an awards show and read the cue cards more stilted and wooden than a freshman playing an extra in the high school play. Shailene Woodley, I don’t know who you are, but cheer up. You’re on stage with George Clooney, for chrissakes. We’re not expecting Shakespeare, just show us why we should want to watch you in a movie. There seems to be a very narrow window in which an actor has enough experience to be able to handle an awards show, but hasn’t reached that embarrassing antique status. The Olsen twins are still painfully young. Kirk Douglas and Andy Griffith is painfully old. Only Christopher Plummer is just right. Even Mary Tyler Moore could have used a few more “Oh, Mr. Grant!s as well as some well earned wrinkles from the mouth up. I like Mary, but it wasn’t easy to watch or listen to her. And then my one potentially happy moment turned bad. I love Modern Family, particularly Manny, the overweight, Latino man-boy who is smarter and more eloquent than all the adults on the show put together. But seeing him and the other kids ham it up on stage last night was too, too much for me. I felt like I was watching Dakota Fanning on Red Bull.  I like the Manny character so much, I forgot that I don’t like child actors. None of them. Ever. Well, maybe except that girl who was in Little Miss Sunshine. And Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle. But I haven’t seen either of them do an awards show. I hope to keep it that way.