Never mind last night’s show being the gayest Oscars ever (I doubt it). And never mind it potentially being the most predictable (nuts to the Academy for not going with any of my badly foreseen surprises). Here’s my biggest criticism of the ceremony: the 81st Academy Awards had surely the worst directed telecast in history. Throughout the show I found myself commenting over and over, “show the clips, not the [stage; musicians; Queen Latifah; etc.].” There were great injustices done to the deceased, to Baz Luhrman’s choreography (even if it wasn’t a great musical number) and to the nominated actors and actresses, many of who could have used a spotlight on their performances rather than isolated praise from a random peer.

But apparently this year’s ceremony wasn’t designed for the TV viewers, possibly because the Academy didn’t expect anyone to tune in anyway (we showed them; ratings were actually up!). It was a big insular party for Hollywood — and a number of foreigners with excellent accents (and Styx tributes) — during which we were all better off reading the live-blogging and live-Twitterings found all over the interweb than watching the actual program. Often, awards live-blogging is pointless; too many bloggers merely list wins and incidents as they happen, which is redundant for people actually watching the show, while others comment without details, which is insufficient for people who missed the event. But overdone Snuggie references aside, this year’s type-it-as-they-see-it bloggers were better than usual. Chalk it up to boredom, but the commentary on the disasters and disappointments of the Oscars was witty, insightful and actually worth reading. Maybe not on all websites, but on a lot of them.

So, for my final Oscar column of the 2008 awards season, I’d like to circumvent celebrating the event (which doesn’t deserve much praise, in my opinion) and instead celebrate five of my favorite live-blogged/Twittered moments of the night. Though everyone loves to watch a train wreck in progress, sometimes it’s better to turn your head away and listen to someone else describe the tragedy for you. Here is a sampling of the best such observations of the worst such wrecks at this year’s ceremony:

1. Former Winners Kiss Nominees’ Asses

While some of the new acting award presentation idea was inspired (i.e. choosing Walken for Shannon), much of it was quite awkward (poor Richard Jenkins). Many viewers did seem to enjoy the concept, but it just brought out too much cringe-worthy television for me.

Seth at Defamer:

5:45 Five former Best Supporting Actress winners are beamed down via magic LCD screen, and each introduces one nominee. For quite some time. Are they going to do this for every category? Yup, they sure are going into detail. This kind of feels like the rehearsal dinner in Rachel Getting Married.

Filmmaker David Wain, liveblogging for MTV:

We miss the clips from the various performances, instead of this weird new thing of all the actresses gushing at each other. It’s sort of like eulogies or “American Idol” evaluations. Plus let’s be honest, these people hate each other.

Michelle Collins of Best Week Ever apparently got an exclusive from one of the Supporting Actress presenters:

“There is a moment in Benjamin Button, where both of my aged sun-spotted breasts literally fell out of my dress and onto my knees.” — Goldie Hawn

And while we’re quoting references to the individual presenters, here’s Wain again:

8:48: Supporting actress presenters: Whoopi NAILED it with her sly references to “Sister Act.” Whoopi you can be my “sister” any time! And by “sister” I mean “lover.” Goldie Hawn has very strange chest muscles.

Now, on the Supporting Actor segment, Seth from Defamer again:

7:07 The reverent speeches for Best Supporting Actor take an uncomfortable turn when Cuba Gooding Jr., currently finishing up on the straight-to-Flopz original Boat Trip 2: Wedding Belles, can’t help but mask his frustration over the more successful dude playing the dudes disguised as the other dudes that he’d rather be playing. Yes, we’re drunk.

On the other side of the room, Nikki Finke salutes Cuba:

Thank god for Cuba Gooding Jr dissing Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr for the gag of a white actor playing in blackface for Tropic Thunder. Yes, I’ve heard all the arguments for and against. And, yes, it was integral to the plot. But I still agree with Cuba, who sounded more serious than joking, that this was a loss for black actors.

2. Baz Luhrman’s Musical Number Kills Careers

I say the musical numbers might not have seemed so terrible had they been better directed for the viewers at home, but most bloggers saw it as simply an embarrassment to everyone involved. Apparently, though, both Hugh Jackman and Baz Luhrman have a lot to lose with the reactions to the past Oscar-nominated songs medley.

A.O. Scott, joining in at The Carpetbagger:

The musical is back, is it? I might have agreed until that medley, which Hugh Jackman made sure to attribute to Baz Luhrman, thus perhaps hurting Mr. Luhrman’s career even more than Australia did.

Nikki Finke:

Worse, how are the comic book geeks ever going to accept Hugh Jackman as Wolverine this summer. (I smell another Fox lawsuit as nasty as the Watchmen one, only this time against AMPAS!) Either they’ll consider this Hugh’s audition for Broadway’s Wolverine, The Musical under Julie Taymor’s direction for debut in 2028 (when she’ll finally finish Spiderman, The Musical.) Or else Hugh Jackman’s next movie role will be Castaway 2 because he’s going to have to go far, far, away to make people forget about the painfully lame stuff he had to do tonight.

3. Bill Maher is This Year’s Gilbert Gottfried

Actually, I guess Maher made his own inappropriate 9/11 joke around the same time as Gottfried’s infamous boo-bait at the Hugh Hefner roast, so he’s just simply this year’s Bill Maher. Complaining about having to come out while everyone is still teary from the Heath Ledger win and pompously noting the snub of his own documentary, Maher has given nonfiction cinema an even worse representative than Michael Moore.

Michelle Collins at Best Week Ever:

10:13: Bill Maher scores with an even more questionable Heath Ledger joke. Is Iraq around, cause this guy is bombing.

James Poniewozik at Time disagrees:

10:14 PM: Am I allowed to say that Bill Maher’s joke about following Heath Ledger’s family was funny? And that it’s a kick to see him–after getting booted off ABC post-9/11–onstage at the network’s biggest show putting down God? If there were a God, that would be divine irony.

4. Hollywood’s Deceased Are Paid Their Undue Disrespect

Glad the people in the Kodak were able to honor the departed, but how were we at home supposed to determine our winnings in our “Death Montage Pool”? Did anyone bet on such a travesty? Even those who knew about Latifah’s gig at the ceremony couldn’t have imagined it would go so wrong. Also, what happened to muffling the applause during this segment?

Mandi Bierly and Thom Geier at EW’s PopWatch:

(11:13)

Mandi: Queen Latifah looks amazing, sounds okay singing “I’ll Be Seeing You” over the farewell footage.

Thom: But you can’t read the names of the people. Sloppy execution. How great to see Paul Newman again.

Mandi: He won the applause-o-meter. Naturally.

Thom: Yes, but the rest of the In Memoriam looked like it was a security camera scanning a Circuit City.

At Jezebel:

11:13 hortense:  we shouldn’t be seeing her at all- this isn’t about her, it’s about the people who died, the direction here is really weird

Michelle Collins at Best Week Ever:

11:11: This is the happiest death reel in Oscar history. If they really wanted to hit a nerve, they should have run that Sarah McLaughlin ASPCA ad, and CGI’d the faces of the dead over the dogs… this segment is kind of focusing more of the attention on Queen La! This is an abomination. I want to focus in on those who perished in 2008… because lord knows, there were too, too many. This is literally the one time a year I actually sit back and reflect… and it’s being ROONED. Also, how long is she gonna be singing for? 11 minutes? Like 5,000 people died last year. And why is the camera swinging around so much? This is like the Bourne Ultimatum of Death Montages.”

A surprised need for an explanation from T.L. Stanley at Gold Rush:

If the attending stars at the Kodak Theatre are clapping after some of the images appear during the “In Memoriam” segment that’s happening now, it’s not possible to hear them on the live telecast.

That was the whole point of having a song accompany this bit, with first-time Oscar producers Larry Mark and Bill Condon talking in the last few weeks about how much they didn’t like those outbursts, however heartfelt. They made the “people we lost” segment into a popularity contest, the producers had said.

Insert Queen Latifah singing a lovely rendition of “I’ll Be Seeing You” and, check it out, problem solved!

Not so here at Regular Joe Central, where nobody got that memo. The hoots and hollers were nearly deafening at times, but hey, we did lose Paul Newman.

5. Everyone Wins Their Oscars Office Pool

“Whatever happened to predictability? The Milk man …” Yes, I’m quoting part of the theme song to Full House, because Sean Penn’s win was apparently one of the few less-obvious of the night (another was foreign film winner Departures). Otherwise, this year’s ceremony was so pre-determined it almost seems voters intended the overall event to be a tie-in to Slumdog Millionaire’s theme of destiny. Even as one of Spout’s few Slumdog fans, I was hoping for something else to win the top award.

A.O. Scott sums up the night (halfway through) from where he sits:

In a darkened bedroom in Brooklyn, a dog snoring at the foot of the bed, the rest of my family similarly if less noisily deep in slumber —and I have to say that it’s a pretty dull night all around. No big surprises, and also a weirdly desperate, jumpy, uncertain energy to the show. But I don’t necessarily mind this. The problem with the Oscars, as I wrote not long ago, is that they’ve taken on an aura of cultural importance that they can’t possibly live up to. This broadcast feels trivial, which is as it should be. It matters, that is, to the people in that room and their colleagues, but not necessarily to any of the rest of us.

Michelle Collins did her best live-blogging with visual aids, like such:

11:47: Stevie Spielbees! Here to intro Best Picture. Let’s face it… Slumdog has got this one. Because do you really want to see these children cry?”

And here’s one in response to the Milk man upset:

And finally, just to pat ourselves on the back, here’s truly the best one-word summation of the 81st Academy Awards from Spout’s own Karina Longworth:

Slumyawn.