Scene: The Gertrude Castellow Ford Center for the Performing Art before a packed house. Important dignitaries are seated in the first ten rows. Michael J. Fox is in attendance. The hosts have been warned against making tasteless jokes at his expense, but everyone is still a little worried. The awards ceremony is being televised live on Mississippi Public Broadcasting. Profanity has been used frequently and with acceptance from the public broadcasting people under the same policy that let's them show foot-long titties on African bush-women.
The hosts of the program are Ivory Tower and The Ghost of Jay Cutler. Would you believe Ghost is drunk? The camera pans in on a giant white screen behind Ghost and Ivory. It fades to black before showing: "Whiskey Wednesday, 2008 - 2010." The photo montage is of a handsome man posing in various exotic locales with beautiful women, good cigars, and aged scotch. None of the photos are of Whiskey, but this is the way he would want to be remembered and no one knows what he looks like. Puff Daddy's "I'll Be Missing You" envelopes the room in comforting harmony. The song and photo montage end.
Ivory: And now, a moment of silence for those no longer with us. For Whiskey, a blogger who truly had balls.
(Everyone is silent for a moment, except Ghost, who is sniffling)
Ivory: Over the last week, the Cup and our readers have participated together in these Full of Win Awards. We've recognized the best in Ole Miss-centric commentary and vulgarity.
Ghost: We've celebrated our contemporaries and colleagues.
Ivory: We've honored our community of readers.
Ghost: But most of all we've stroked our own dicks, and you all have watched us do it, you sick bastards.
Ivory: However, we wanted to end the week by recognizing an individual that has gone above and beyond the call of duty in service to the Cup.
Ghost: Over the past several months we have tirelessly not solicited figuratively thousands of fictional nominations from absolutely nobody for the Full of Win Lifetime Achievement Award, the criteria for which we might as well have made up right here on the spot.
Ivory: The Full of Win LIfetime Achievement Award is the least prestigious award we can bestow upon someone of whom we want to make fun.
Ghost: And it is, let me emphasize, not at all an honor. In fact, quite the opposite.
Ivory: Here are a few fictional nominations we did not receive from individuals who were not solicited for their input in this matter.
Ghost: First, from Handsome Sam:
"I'd like to nominate ramblinrebman, whose inability to "get it" truly defied all of our expectations. He endured, nay, asked for weeks of personal insults and, even more damaging, logic. He was so real and yet so unbelievable that I, as a reader, wondered if I was being punked by the editorial staff, yet again (Squack 'Em Hawk 'Em!). But he was real, and he is real. Both in a secular, empirical sense and in our hearts. He stuck to his guns, and he'll be damned before he lets the gubmint or us take them from him. He's truly an inspiration. Or an embarrassment."
Thank you, Sam.
Ivory: Now, from chickenhawk1848:
I'd like to anonymously nominate long-time Associate Director of Athletics Langston Rogers for the Full of Win Lifetime Achievement Award. It's a great honor, and he deserves it for having been around so long. He had to put up with those busy little journalists for decades, always wanting to "know things" and "talk to people." It was exasperating ... for him, I would assume. Then they adopted all this "new media." When I was a boy, you got the news paper in the morning. Why to be getting news in the afternoon or night (except by television broadcast) was unseemly. Now these bloggers are writing at all hours of the day. And I get tired! I wake up from my afternoon nap and BOOM there's all these tweets and voicemails and e-mails, blog posts and facebook comments. Now, an athlete writes something about the strip club on Facebook and the whole damn athletic department starts imploding on itself. One time, Bruiser Kinard told me about how he took a big ol' dump on the Confederate Monument. Can you imagine what would have happened if anybody would have found out about that? But nobody did find out, 'cuz I didn't run out and put it on the internet. Because there was no internet. And things were better that way!
That's why Langston Rogers should win the Full of Win LIfetime Achievement Award.
Ghost: Finally, we received the most compelling nomination from someone with whom the Cup became familiar over the last few months. When some Friends of the Cup suggested sarcastically that Ole Miss should adopt a movie character from a successful motion picture franchise as its mascot, we had no idea how closely linked our fanbase was to this franchise.
Ivory: That is, until we came into contact with the mastermind behind that franchise, George Lucas, who told us about the impact made on him by a member of our community. Here to read his nomination letter and present the Full of Win LIfetime Achievement Award, Mr. George Lucas.
The audience slowly rises, as if slightly stunned by their own disbelief. A slow standing ovation devolves into a mad roar when, out from behind a large, red curtain, steps Lucas. He approaches center stage, greets the two presenters, and steps to the microphone. The audience is reseated.
George Lucas: Thank you, Ghost. Thank you, Ivory. It gives me great pleasure to be with you here today. It may come as a surprise to you that my worldwide phenomenon, Star Wars, is, in fact, loosely based on the early twenty-first century dynamics of Southeastern Conference football. In 1973, I developed a time machine that allowed me to travel into the early twenty-first century. Even right now, time-traveling me is outside Little Rock at a little place called "Paper Moon Gentleman's Club" with some players from the University of ... ah, you'll find out in a few months. Anyway, it gives me great pleasure to be with you tonight because, during my travels, I became a fan of your site and, in fact, based one of my characters on a member of your community. When Ghost and Ivory did not in reality solicit me for this fictional nomination, I told them (not really) about this inspiration. Now, I'm not going to read the letter because I'll just get choked up if a I do, but I want you to know that this individual represents the finest qualities one can hope for in a fan of a team. And, while he may not be a fan of your school or your coach, we should all be a fan of him. It is not my honor to present the Full of Win Lifetime Achievement Award to ... Gonzohog.
[As the theme music from Babe plays, all in the crowd crane their necks trying to catch a glimpse of Gonzo for the first time. An announcer reads: "This is Gonzohog's first nomination for any Full of Win Award or, really, any sort of award or prize." Still in darkness, he embraces George Lucas and receives his award. He steps into the solo spotlight shining on the podium to the astonishment of everyone.]
Who were you expecting? James Earl Jones?
Gonzo: I want to thank Houston Nutt four being my muze. And nobody else. You guys are a bunch of quiers who spell good. Gonzohog out!
[Silence fills the room, but it is not an awkward silence. Everyone needs a moment to mentally digest everything that just happened. George Lucas sheds one tear.]
Ivory: You know, it actually so happens that the speech I prepared to close tonight's ceremonies is a moving and appropriate conclusion to the events you just witnessed.
George Lucas: [Grabs the manuscript from Ivory] Here let me see that.
[George Lucas defecates on the manuscript.]
Fin.