"IT'S HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP"

I don't usually watch the Oscars myself, but Becky does. Only moments ago, as I was walking from the kitchen with a Dr. Pepper to my computer in our study, I noticed rapper Ludacris introducing the stage performance of the Oscar-nominated song from Hustle and Flow, "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp." I just had to check it out. And lemme tell ya, it was one of the most amusing performances I've ever seen.

The set was a ramshackle inner city home interior. Inside was a diva style singer in a Seven Year Itch style Marilyn Monroe dress singing the title line, alternating with three thuglike rappers who took the verses while they danced in an intensely masculine and hip hop way. Downstage, in front of the set, were about fifteen fly dancers, both male and female, of several races, gettin' jiggy with it, metaphorically speaking of course. The overall effect was four totally different kinds of images coming together in an awkward and funny, but somehow pretty groovy, whole. Never mind the fact that it's kind of hard to have any sympathy at all for a pimp, the sympathetic character in Hustle and Flow not withstanding: feeling sorry for sexual exploiters of women has its own gallows humor about it.

Anyway, Becky just told me that it got the Oscar.

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