Hey guys, I just read this article and apparently, those wonderful gift baskets handed out to nominees, presenters and members of the Academy will not be handed out this year. These posh gift baskets have become “the” perk of the Oscar Ceremony and I’m sure more than a few members of the Academy (and perhaps even some presenters) only show up to the whole affair to get their greedy little mittens on one of these things. These gift baskets are said to be worth around $100,000 dollars!
Enter the Internal Revenue Service.
The IRS is concerned these lavish gifts are being sent out but no one is reporting them on their taxes. They’ve convinced the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to send out tax forms to recipients of last year’s gift basket and apparently plans for the heavily anticipated Gift Basket 2007 have been scrapped.
Personally, I’m all for this. Yeah, Barbara Streisand’s personal assistant is probably going to miss out on that next trip to Cabo San Lucas (a good number of celebrities give their gift baskets away), but there is no reason to hand out luxury items for free for people that can afford it 5 times over (or more). Maybe I feel this way because I’m not rich and famous, but I doubt it. I think I’d just have the same perspective as Ed Norton when he told New York Magazine the baskets are:
Sick and disgusting…The gift baskets, worth amounts of money that a low-income family could live on for a year, [are given to] people who have so much already. It gets depressing. You sit there, going, ‘This is an embarrassment’.
Now the companies donating towards these gift baskets see it as a good investment. If George Clooney is spotted at California’s St Regis Monarch Beach Resort and Spa, then it must be “to die faw”. A retard once told me, “I mean short of everyone getting a pound of blow and throwing a hooker on their johnson, you couldn’t send a bigger “F-you” to the general public than gifts for people that can afford gifts and probably have 10 of each already.” Thanks, Laremy.
All in all, it was time for this idea to die. Do you guys remember that episode of The Sopranos where Chris clocked Lauren Baccall in the face so he could steal her gift basket after an award show? One of the greatest, most satisfying moments in the history of the show. It must have been a sign of things to come.
