Boy Culture Links: Hot Dogs for Rico Starr, Oscar Highlights, A Tennis Showoff + MORE
MARCH 16, 2026
RICO STARR: The men of L.A.’s Hot Dog were showing out (and, in some cases, hanging out) while plugging Rico Starr’s shimmering shirts and undergear.
EXTRATV: I adored the Oscars telecast. There were some flubs and a couple of lame jokes, but Conan O’Brien was perfect and I’ll never get over the spectacularly well-handled In Memoriam. I really like the idea of spotlighting a few of the biggest names and avoiding a singer who sucks up all the attention. Most of the biggest names “snubbed” were inarguably primarily TV actors, and were included online. (I usually complain about exclusions, but the only ones I think were shocking were fascist Brigitte Bardot, who can file suit from hell; Robert Carradine; Bud Cort; and Henry Jaglom. Maybe Polly Holliday, since her Gremlins work is over-the-top iconic.)
I loved the performances, especially from Sinners and for the Best Original Song winner, “Golden.”
And it was exciting to have a tie, though a shocker that voters chose two shorts and one of them was not A Friend of Dorothy.
As for the biggest wins:
Best Picture — One Battle After Another: I would have picked Hamlet or Train Dreams, but among likely winners, I think Sinners was superior to OBAA.
Director — Paul Thomas Anderson: It’s hard to bitch when he’s been at it forever.
Best Actor — The right guy, Michael B. Jordan, won.
Best Actress — Jessie Buckley was in a league of her own. The others couldn’t touch her.
Best Supporting Actor — Sean Penn certainly deserved it, though would have been nice to give Delroy Lindo his first instead of Penn his third.
Best Supporting Actress — Amy Madigan earned this all the way. Next up, I would have chosen Wunmi Mosaku, who was amazing.
Click here for all the winners.
EONLINE: I love Jane Fonda and Barbra Streisand both, but I must say, I think it is super tacky of Fonda to kvetch that Streisand — and not Jane — was asked to remember Robert Redford at the Oscars. Her reasoning:
“I wanna know how come Streisand was up there doing that for Redford? She only made one movie with him I made four. I have more to say.”
Uh, that only one movie was The Way We Were, which has an outsized iconic legacy compared to The Chase (nobody cares), Barefoot in the Park (dated), The Electric Horseman (okay, but again, is anybody still watching it?) and the recent, fine, but unspectacular Our Souls at Night. Plus, the Oscars had the added bonus of 83-year-old Streisand emotionally singing a few bars of the movie’s theme. I think Jane should have been bigger than this. It’s like an episode of Old Hollywood Traitors.
OSCARS: Anna Wintour and Anne Hathaway were perfect as presenters at the Oscars. Walking out to “Vogue,” the women played off of The Devil Wears Prada in a way that really allowed Wintour’s comic timing (who knew?) to shine:
OSCARS: Favorite speech was Amy Madigan, who won for her instant-classic performance as Aunt Gladys in Weapons. I loved her cackle and her adoring exchange with husband Ed Harris:
At 75, she’s the second-oldest winner in the category, barely behind Dame Peggy Ashcroft.
ABC NEWS: It was fun seeing a tie in Best Live-Action Short, but a shocker that one of them was not A Friend of Dorothy. Still, I thought it was marred by Two People Exchanging Saliva’s Alexandre Singh zinging Timothée Chalamet over his rude ballet-and-opera comment; it just hit different after Conan had already mocked him expertly and Chalamet had taken it well:
KENNETH IN THE (212): Kenneth’s latest tennis update is soaked in skin.
