Ladies and gents, it's America's most important and most revered awards show for the most important and revered arts! Tonight, literally all of America will stop and join—what's that you say? It's the Heat-Mavericks game six? Oh. Well then... tonight, some of the gays and theater ladies will come together to hide from basketball and indulge in the not-at-all rigged awards system that heaps praise upon select, very expensive productions at a very small number of designated New York City theaters; awards are nominated by literally a couple dozen people and then chosen by all of 750 professional voters. This system serves to make almost everyone feel bad, except a very few rich people! (And yes, also some fine young actors and creators who have exciting new plays.) But also: Neil Patrick Harris is hosting! Who is still only 37. So let's come together in the comments and celebrate this hot mess, right here with our own theatrically inclined hostess Jaime Green!

There is a certain cognitive dissonance when it comes to awards. We know that, in all but the most obvious cases where prizes are given based on predetermined metrical standards, they are entirely subjective, often political and occasionally bestowed upon their recipients for past efforts rather than any kind of current worthiness. And yet we can't help but take sides; there is something about our brains that is hardwired to rank, to root, to want our favorite to be the winner. We even enjoy the bad calls—I know people who still bemoan the injustice of Martin Scorsese losing the Academy Award for Best Director to Kevin Costner, even though it happened 700 years ago. It is the same reason we focus on the horse race aspect of politics rather than making it about the substantial issues at stake; we prefer embracing the thrill of the contest to doing the hard work of focusing on where the merit truly lies. One could even argue that awards expose the hollowness of our society, displaying a heartless atavism which contends that winning is the only thing that matters. I object to this philosophy: Works of art, or literature or any other creative effort upon which baubles are bestowed should not be compared to one another as if they were so many different kinds of cola in some commercial taste test; they are individual feats of humanity that express something noble and profound about who we are and how we attempt to understand our world. That said, if Pippa Middleton's ass does not win the 2011 Rear of the Year Award—Britain's most coveted prize—I am gonna be pissed.

Had I bothered to put “walk through Moscow in a tuxedo” on my list of things to do in this life, I could now safely check it off. The sidestreet in front of the theater was a static maze of Benzes and Bentleys, with no place to pull up. Arriving as I was in a regular taxi, the jam gave me a face-saving chance to get off around the corner and hoof it to the red carpet from there. READ MORE

The crowds have swelled on Sixth Street. This city is full. I am barely alive. Being slightly buzzed on caffeine and beer have become routine. The so-called utopia has caught up with me. READ MORE

While everyone is "upset" about Christopher Nolan not being nominated for best director for Inception, there's way more fascinating news in today's Oscars nominations announcement. READ MORE

The nominees are in. And at first glance, the overwhelming, almost prohibitive favorite here in the "Best New Age Album" category has to be considered Zamora's "Instrumental Oasis Vol. 4," which is astonishing considering where we've been with him. After "Instrumental Oasis Vol. 3," there were many, myself included, who felt that with that bone crunch of an album, the Magical Places genre had nowhere else to go. I mean, not to get fanboyish, but six years later, every time I play the "Midnight Mystery" track (for the thousandth or two-thousandth time), I still find new things in it. That an artist working in Magical could at once repel and delight, horrify, enrage, captivate and caress was something no one saw coming. After that, I think it's safe to say, the music world, public and critics alike, just threw up their hands and said, that is it. Like, the end. READ MORE