When the Oscars air on Sunday, most of the hubbub will surround the various fashion faux pas committed by celebrities urged to wear the nightmarish fantasies of batshit insane designers that foist bizarre, and insanely uncomfortable-looking twisted reams of gaudy fabric upon hapless celebrities hoping to be on the cutting edge of haute couture. For celebrity bloggers (a small notch below incurable lepers on the social scale), this is their Super Bowl and they’ll have a field day with haranguing these unforgivable trespasses against humanity. The world will weep for this incredible waste of time and energy.

Allegedly they also give out awards at this event, but we all know none of that matters (CJS’s week of coverage notwithstanding), considering after we skewer the event’s fashion choices, we’ve got a host to discombobulate as well. And this year we’ve got the unusual pairing of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

Outside of recent old people bait It’s Complicated, and maybe that weirdo episode of 30 Rock where Steve Martin plays that agoraphobic billionaire – ok, and possibly that both these guys have hosted SNL a shitload – do you ever think of these two gentlemen in the same breath? Sure, they’re both funny, but they’re each funny in their own way. Steve Martin thinks entirely too hard about his comedy (read Born Standing Up and you’ll see what I mean) while Alec Baldwin seems to fall ass backwards into it. Remember The Departed when he dismisses Marky Mark with: “World needs plenty of bah-tendahs! Two weeks… with pay!” Why the hell is that line so funny? I don’t think even Alec Baldwin knows. How can he wring a laugh out of his gruff delivery of the word “Lemon” on 30 Rock? Alec Baldwin is just naturally funny.

Steve Martin, on the other hand, is obsessive about his strange brand of anti-comedy. There was one episode of SNL where Martin’s monologue was this labored set-up where he runs an awful story about buying soup in the grocery store past the entire cast (including Lorne Michaels himself) that they all laugh at only to have it bomb spectacularly at show time complete with running commentary by Martin’s internal voice.

The point? You probably laughed when you thought about Jack Donaghy saying “Lemon” in your head. And if you laughed at all thinking about Martin’s surreal monologue from SNL, it took me nearly 60 words just to describe it properly. How the hell will these two mesh properly to give us a decent show? You’ve got a showman and an intellectual. Since this isn’t Pinky & The Brain, and we’re live on television, the potential for a massive trainwreck is at near-record levels.

Yet this isn’t the first time the Academy Awards have tried this approach. In 1987 Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, and Paul Hogan hosted the program. Forget Chevy and Goldie, I love that Paul Hogan has to be mentioned in the same breath as Will Rogers, Bob Hope, and Johnny Carson when discussing Oscar hosts. That’s like when Shaun Alexander won the NFL MVP award and then did nothing for the rest of his career. Just classic.

In 1983 Liza Minnelli, Dudley Moore, Richard Pryor, and Walter Matthau hosted the movie industry’s biggest night. If you had on slips of paper every pertinent celebrity of 2010 and drew four of them at random, I can virtually guarantee that you wouldn’t get a weirder combination of people onstage. I simply adore the idea of Richard Pryor interacting onstage with a half pint British dude (a honky), a crazy bitch (a woman honky), and a crotchety old curmudgeon (an old honky). What was that interplay like? That’s like a McDonald’s All-America team of conflicting personalities. Do you suppose Matthau smiled like your grandpa and Liza Minnelli looked like a lost tourist in a Japanese train station like she always does? I’ll bet whatever happened, Richard Pryor freebased afterward.

My favorite hosting coven happened 10 years earlier when all that is man Charlton Heston joined forces with all that wants man Rock Hudson, all-around likable guy Michael Caine, and comedy genius Carol Burnett. Considering I wasn’t born yet and I have no inclination to shatter this fantasy by actually looking up how the night went, I like to think the entire telecast was spent with Heston booming out lines in that magnificent baritone of his while Rock Hudson struggled to suppress boners all night leering at Heston’s manliness. Meanwhile, Michael Caine made charming innuendo about the situation that no one understood because of his quaint British slang while Carol Burnett wondered if she could get Harvey Korman and Tim Conway to look like either of the other two for what I’m sure would have been a transcendent sketch and ultimately deciding everyone in her repertoire was too dumpy.

While the Baldwin/Martin combo has too low a ceiling to reach that level of iconic weirdness, you never know what might happen if Martin plays his ridiculous banjo or Baldwin decides to spontaneously re-enact his seminal scene from Glengarry Glen Ross for no apparent reason. We can only hope.

So whatever happens, here’s to you, Oscar hosts! We wish you the best of luck. Or the worst. Whatever yields better television.

edagger@crujonessociety.com