What’s the most exciting event of the year? The Super Bowl. But for those of us who can’t tell a quarterback from a Nickelback, the Oscars are the next best thing. Considering that the 91st Academy Awards are hostless for the first time since 1989, us Red Carpet aficionados are left aimless. Without an Ellen Degeneres monologue to awkwardly laugh at or an NPH number to dance along to, who can we possibly trust to steer us through this starry night?
Let us here from The Bull & Bear be your hosts tonight. Let’s take you away from your Chem of Food midterm and focus on what really matters: the one wrinkle Jennifer Aniston has after fifty years on this planet. Make some popcorn, sink into your Craigslist couch (or the Gardner common room floor), and tell Marc-Antoine from Tinder that you can’t chat right now. No, the only man that matters in your life tonight is six inches tall, made of tin, and will probably be going home with Bradley Cooper.
So, let’s make this Oscars a night to remember. Here are some tips on how to make your viewing party truly dazzle.
The Snacks
A great snack is chocolate-covered pretzels, because they have a good balance of sweet—like pointing out how pleased you are to see Roma nominated so many times tonight—and salty—like constantly bringing up how If Beale Street Could Talk is cinematic gold and is being totally ignored.
There’s fancy—and then there’s crazy fancy. Make steak, like Bradley Cooper did in A Star is Born. How do you know if you’ve cooked enough meat to feed all your guests? Gaga’s Law: if you can make a dress out of it, it’s enough meat.
Of-course, for a simple last minute snack, you can always make pigs in a blanket. All you will need is a bunch of sausages and some puff pastry, and considering the sad state of the gender balance in this year’s Best Director nominees, you’ll already have all of the sausages covered.
The Booze
What is a McGill (Oscar) party without copious amounts of booze? Sad. Fortunately, we have some cocktail recipes to add some extra pizzazz to your night.
- The Kevin Hart-Tail: Craft the fruitiest, most colourful Piña Colada you can…and then threaten to smash that Piña Colada with a hammer on Twitter. If people get mad at you for threatening to smash the Piña Colada with a hammer, just go on Ellen and promise you’ve changed—you love Piña Coladas now!—and insist that you’re such an excellent bartender at heart.
- The Gaga Sunrise: 99 parts orange juice, one part vodka. It doesn’t matter if 99% of the cocktail doesn’t believe you can get drunk off it. There just needs to be one part that does, and that part makes all the difference.
- A Bloody Mercury: Just a regular Caesar, except you drink it while wearing a giant pair of fake teeth to seem more authentic, when in reality you just look ridiculous and spill the cocktail all over the floor while trying to take a sip.
The Red Carpet Predictions
If you’re expecting Jennifer Aniston to look any older than she did last year then you just don’t know Jenn like we do. Like, does she even do movies anymore? Or does she just show up to the show year after year to show us that she is Benjamin Button-ing her way through her fifties?
While we all love to absolutely roast Gaga (pun intended) for wearing filet mignon on the carpet, her chic and composed Grammys outfit left us wanting more, to say the least. Cardi, a new mother no less, was legitimately dressed as an Oyster at the Grammys, leaving us hip hop fans happy as clams. If we follows this pattern of crazy dresses correctly, does that mean Glenn Close is going to arrive tonight dressed up as a raw chicken breast?
Remember, celebrities are not people. They are aliens from distant planets with perfect hair, and as such they are incapable of error. So, when a star so much as stumbles on the Red Carpet, this is an excuse to blow things out of proportion on social media. Expect to wake up Monday morning with #EmmaStoneClawsHerFaceOff trending on Twitter because she scratched her nose while walking out of a limo.
The Pro Tips
Listen, we get it; school’s tough. You didn’t have time to trek to Cinema du Parc and sit through the entirety of Green Book. You can barely make it to your classes without spraining your ankle. There’s only so much one person can take. So, here are some tips on how to make it at least seem like you know what’s going on.
If you don’t know when to cheer, these are always some key moments: Watch out for anyone who utters “Screw Trump!”, mentions #metoo, or cuts off an acceptance speech off with the line, “thank u, next.”
How about knowing when to boo? Well, considering the cast of Ocean’s 8 will likely be making an appearance tonight, let us remind you: where there’s a will, there’s an Anne Hatha-way! (Kidding. She’s perfect. Too perfect.)
When someone makes a joke about an actor’s Twitter feud, just make sure to nod and laugh. You are a media consumer in the 21st century, and thus it is imperative that you stay 110% up-to-date on all the latest memes. When in doubt, remember that “yeet,” “weird flex,” and, “Wow, I totally forgot Black Panther came out this year,” are all things that young people say.
As actresses walk onto the stage, make sure to periodically shout out, “I love that dress.” This is probably the most non-offensive thing you can say during an awards season. Your friends, sitting in sweatpants stained from samosa dipping sauce, will all politely murmur in agreement, even if said dress looks like a toddler hot-glue-gunned sequins onto a morphsuit.
Closing Thoughts
We hope this article entertained you and got you excited for tonight’s hot mess of an evening; hopefully you didn’t skip through it like the Academy skipping over the Best Editing category. And who knows? Maybe next year, Siri and Amazon Alexa will host the Oscars. By then, they may very well be the only non-controversial pair left in Hollywood. See you guys at the Tony’s!
