Just Sit in a Circle and Enjoy Yourself, Dammit.

Now I want to tell you all a tale of ULTIMATE TERROR. This is the story of the serial killer known as THE HOOK, whose severed hand was replaced by an INSANE SURGEON with a DEADLY HOOK...and then, after a prolonged lawsuit, a fairly useful plastic hand. But he remained a MADMAN bent on MADMANNISH deeds. When Stan picked Judy up and drove her to the local lover’s lane, THE HOOK followed in his orange 1978 Plymouth Duster. But as fate would have it, THE HOOK lost them when Stan made an unexpected right turn out of his driveway. THE HOOK, deciding to call it a night and start fresh the hext day, cruised around L.A. for a while---suddenly remembering that it was Oscar night and he had to rent a tux before he picked up Angelina Jolie!

The air was frosty outside the star-studded pavilion, and SATAN watched Hollywood’s finest shuffle into the Academy Awards ceremony with ghoulish delight. You see, this would be HIS year to shine among the movie industry’s glitterati!

The Oscars began with a tasteful musical salute to the boom microphone, with Harvey Keitel’s seductive tenor voice ringing out proudly to one hundred million viewers around the globe---several of whom would die of natural causes just weeks later. Then the master of ceremonies, Steven Hawking, took center stage to present the award for Best Supporting Actor. But suddenly, EVIL descended upon the program, and there appeared in a haze of blue smoke the SUPERNATURAL BEING OF DARKEST NIGHTMARES---Mr. Roy Scheider, who handed things over to Satan.

Yes, BEELZEBUB would be deciding who would win the Oscars this year, whose butts would be kissed, who would soon grace the cover of Vanity Fair wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and a diaper. And as the crowd SCREAMED IN TERROR he kicked things off by awarding the first statuette not to Matt Damon or Daniel Day-Lewis or Morgan Freeman, but to the star of 1988’s straight-to-video release Night Breasts 3, Mr. Wings Hauser, who thanked both the National Rifle Assocation and the Bessemer Process for his success. SHRIEKS OF FRIGHT echoed around the auditorium, and Mary Steenburgen, flattered by a blue off-the-shoulder Dior, WRENCHED A FIRE EXTINGUISHER off the wall, hurling it through the closest window to escape! Next came the Best Screenplay category. The critic’s choice this year was David Mamet’s adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s classic novel Brave New World, but it wasn’t happening tonight, baby! Satan offered the prized award instead to the cogent script of the Flintstones movie! Harrison Ford was SEIZED with a MASSIVE HEART ATTACK, but had the rare poise to stay in his seat and applaud politely. Then Mephistopheles passed over Kate Winslet and Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett to give Best Actress to....are you ready for this….well, actually, I think it was Meryl Streep, whose touching performance as Bill Murray had won the hearts of the nation.

The night of a thousand horrors had JUST BEGUN! Incoherent Dutch animators listed their family members onstage, low-budget films were ignored, vacuous actors talked about social issues--events ONLY THE MAD GENIUS LUCIFER could have summoned! And once again the Best Documentary category caused heated debate when Satan gave the Oscar to an old episode of Alias.

Neither the reporters nor the lightning wits who wrote the show could keep up with the atrocities Satan staged! Best animated short: Goodfellas! Best director: Whoever re-made The Longest Yard! Lifetime Achievement Award---Dick Vitale! But then came the most mindbending terror of them all, the midnight bestowment of the Best Picture honor. And the nominees were: Tommy Boy, Cabin Boy, the opening credit sequence of Cops, Tommy Boy again, and, in a surprising nod to a public favorite, a key still frame from the sex scene in Wild Things.

No one knows which of these controversial choices would have won the award, as the pavilion was suddenly firebombed by a secret Jesuit air command. But witnesses who wandered among the rubble claimed to have seen David Spade’s hand clutching a gold-plated object which was either an Academy Award or Brad Pitt’s dentures. There would never be another Oscar night! The world’s attention from that time on was focused on cable’s Ace awards, and, ten minutes after they started, on anything else.

Some say Satan is not done with his work---that the Blockbuster Awards and even the Daytime Emmys proceed under an ominous cloud of darkness. (Still others claim the devil is more of an intellectual concept, a result of secular group consciousness rather than a spiritual being.) At any rate, it’s about time Jeff Bridges was given something, which was my whole point to begin with.

CAN YOU LOOK AT ME FREELY AND TRULY SAY THAT NONE OF THESE FIVE THINGS THAT I AM SPEAKING OF AT YOU REALLY HAPPENED?