Your Get-Out-of-Watching-the-Oscars Pass

You all need a break from hearing about my woes, so this weekend the C-word is taboo on my blog.

Instead, I want to perform a public service by releasing you all from any obligation you may feel about watching Sunday's Oscar® broadcast.

You can fulfill your Oscar® duty just by scrolling through my 13 predictions for the show.

Trust me, you'll feel better about yourself on Monday morning if you spend a few minutes on this blog and go out bowling tomorrow night instead of watching TV.

• Peter Gabriel will busk on the sidewalk outside the Kodak Theatre so he can have it his way and play his Oscar®-nominated song "Down to Earth" in its entirety.
  
  
• Gabriel's sidewalk audience will start drifting away at the one-minute, five-second point of the song anyhow.
  
  
• The visual effects wizards from "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" will demonstrate their computer skills by digitally "aging" everyone in the Kodak audience as the show progresses, making Sunday's broadcast feel even longer than it already is.
  
  
• Due to a production team error, the tear-jerking montage of luminaries who died in 2008 will accidentally include a living plumber named Lou M. Arie, making him famous for a day or two.
  
  
• Newspapers will dedicate endless column inches reporting that the size of the Oscar audience took another nose-dive this year, which kind of makes you understand why newspaper readership is shrinking just as fast.
  
  
• After watching Hugh Jackman flub a few of his lines in the opening of the show, an exasperated Bruce Vilanch will cut out the middle man and perform as host of the show himself.
  
  
• Mickey Rourke will attempt to snag $1 million for charity by plugging herbal-health remedy Airborne when he accepts his award, but he'll pull a Chief Justice John Roberts and get the script wrong.
  
  
• Kate Winslet will deliver the Airborne line flawlessly, but the price she pays will be getting bodyslammed by Mickey Rourke.
  
  
• Oscar® show producers Bill Condon and Laurence Mark will yank host Bruce Vilanch off stage and replace him with Flight 1549 Captain "Sulley" Sullenberger, who lands the broadcast safely under the five-hour mark, and earns him an invitation to host next year's show, too.
  
  
• Progressive-minded people worldwide will look the other way as the Academy perpetuates gender bias by presenting separate acting awards for men and women.
  
  
• The sole female nominee in the original screenplay category will call for a Best Original Screenplay by a Woman award.
  
  
• Robert Downey Jr., energized by being nominated for performing in black-face in "Tropic Thunder," will announce that his film "The Soloist" is being yanked from release schedules again so that it can be remade with Downey playing both lead roles: the white journalist and the homeless black musician.
  
  
• Questions about the credibility of the Academy® will be raised when former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is enlisted to present the Best Actress Oscar® and announces Angelina Jolie as the winner.