The Slap Heard Round The World, Best Smacktor, and Slapgate. Those are three of the catchphrases that have been used to describe Will Smith’s onstage slap of Chris Rock at the 94th annual Academy Awards on March 27, 2022.
Of course, I don’t watch award shows anymore, due to how the producers of such shows milk the timing (2003 Emmys) of them with as much filler bullshit as possible. And honestly, I only watched that award show just so that I could see the tribute that they had for John Ritter, as I became a fan of his when 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter premiered in mid-September 2002. And sure enough, the tribute for him was very well done, but I didn’t stick around to watch that show in its entirety, due to the fact that I wanted to watch re-runs of Malcolm In The Middle: Season One on DVD that night (third Sunday of September 2003), to which I did.
You see, I don’t watch any award show in its entirety anymore, due to the fact that I just so happen to schedule something on the nights that such bore fests air, whether that something is a movie that I want to evaluate for the Two ThouCentennial Project or a TV show that I’m going to eventually review. And of course, there have been plenty of those happenstance nights, as the last time that I watched an award show in its entirety was the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards, which by the way featured a joke that Chris Rock made about The Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. Alright, now back to the topic of this entry.
Of course, I’ve seen bits and pieces of award shows since that 1999 MTV Video Music Awards show, with the most recent Academy Awards of course being the most recent example of that. And while I did stick around to see Wesley Snipes appear on stage with Woody Harrelson and Rosie Perez for their reflection of White Men Can’t Jump being 30 years old now, I decided that I didn’t want to wait any longer in gathering additional details for three Saved By The Bell episodes (Zack’s War, Save The Max, Driver’s Education) for my jot down chapters of those episodes, so I left to go do as such. Oh yeah, I got interrupted during the additional detail gathering session of the latter of those three episodes via one of my roommates calling out to me to watch the recognition of the 50-year anniversary of The Godfather. And while I was a good sport about that, no one is ever allowed to interrupt me during Saved By The Bell time. Alright, now back to the topic of this entry, again.
Okay, so other than briefly watching two movies both getting anniversary recognition, I totally forgot about the Academy Awards the day (fourth Monday of March 2022) after, due to A) How my site update day was going to be, B) The two pre-writes that I wanted to get in on time (I eventually did) for yesterday and C) The fact that I had seven scheduled detail gathering sessions for Saved By The Bell that night. And of course, with Point B being said, I decided to multi-task via surfing the web, as both pre-writes were very monotonous that day. And sure enough, multi-tasking led to me finding out the event that led to those three catchphrases that I cited all the way back in the first paragraph. And as to what my reaction was when I found out, well given that celebrity vs. celebrity confrontations are pretty much condemned in Hollywood, I was shocked.
Tune in next Friday to Part 2 of the most talked about event of the 94th annual Academy Awards.