They got Oscars and Emmys and Tonys and Grammys and Pulitzers, none of which either Murph or I is ever going to win, so we figured we could give out some of our own awards. Each award winner receives, apart from a swift kick in the ass, a signed copy of José María Mendiluce's latest novel about a volunteer in a Palestinian refugee camp becoming conscious of the need for Third World solidarity, and five euros off admission to Barcelona's Forum of Cultures 2004, to be held in February 2005.

We're gonna call these awards "Oscars", too, after my cat Oscar. I figure we have as much right to use the name as the Academy. The name fits our award winners because Oscar is sneaky, sly, unstable, not especially smart, doesn't bathe often, and has never been known to utter a single epigram. Trophies consisting of dried Oscar vomit scraped from this very floor, tastefully mounted upon a genuine wood-grain fiberboard plaque, can be found for sale in the lobby.

So without further ado, let's move on to the nominations.

IBERIAN NOTES OFFICIAL "OSCAR" ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS:

CURRENT EVENTS

Arnaldo Otegi Award for Questionable Sanity
 Xavier Arzallus, Basque nationalist leader and wannabe Pol Pot
 Remei Margarit, alleged psychologist and user-up of space in la Vangua
 Javier Nart, TV debate opponent of mouthpiece of Iberian Notes conspiracy

Jimmy Carter Irrelevance Trophy
 Jacques Chirac, a lame duck in a frog pond
 Bono, Ireland’s next president
 Barbra Streisand, California’s next governor

Jesús Gil y Gil Award for Being On the Make
 George Galloway, rebellious against Tony but surprisingly supine regarding Saddam
 Hillary Clinton, who is not running in 2004. Just wait till 2008.
 Carlos Menem. They can’t really, can they? It’s Argentina. They can.

Bin Laden Award for Most Mysterious Disappearance
 Saddam Hussein, either roadkill under rubble or honored guest in Bielorussia
 “Stakeknife”, former IRA informant, soon to be formerly alive
 Al Gore. He won’t really, will he? It’s Al Gore. He will.

ARTS

Operación Triunfo Award for Biggest Flop in Pop
 Madonna, morally flabby slag
 Rosa from OT. Where have you gone, Rosa Lopez? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
 The Dixie Chicks. Don’t dis the president if you’re country singers, girls. Rule Number One.

Adolfo Aristain Award for Most Boring Socialist-Realist Angst-Flick
 Los Lunes Al Sol, a Bardempotheosis of boredom. The Full Monty, but not funny.
 Kamchatka. Where the hell is that?
 Los Soldados de Salamina, a Commie take on a Fascist novel. Result: tedium.

Baltasar Porcel Cup for Poet Most Out of His or Her Depth
 BP himself, see daily column of drivel, drool, dreck, and dogma
 Harold Pinter . Poetic enough, as you can’t understand the dialogue.
 The late Ezra Pound. Anybody that nutty deserves some kind of posthumous recognition.

Robert Fisk Hysteria In History Lifetime Achievement Award
 Noam Chomsky, still crazy after all these years
 Tomás Alcoverro from La Vanguardia, dean of the Beirut press corps. And likely the single most corrupt journalist in the whole Middle East.
 Maruja Torres. If they could bottle “shrill”, this is what it would taste like.

SPORTS

Van Gaal Award for Least Popular Sports Personality
 Lovely Louis himeslf, hired and fired by the same club twice in three years.
 His boss Joan Gaspart, who managed to spend fifty million euros on Marc Overmars and Emmanuel Petit
 And Enric Reyna, his successor, for being dumb enough to volunteer to inherit the Gaspartosaurus

Maradona Trophy for Most Money (More than €15 million) Wasted on a Signing
 Geovanni. He sucks.
 Rochemback. He sucks.
 Overmars. He sucks.

Splintered Shin Award for Worst Hackers in Spanish Football
 The entire defence of Atlético de Madrid, savage but smiling
 The entire defence of Sevilla, cheered on by ten thousand squatters waving red flags
 Carles Puyol, hoist on his own petard when he got his own face smashed this season

Anti-.Synergy Worse-Than-Its-Parts Team Award
 Barça. Never before have so few wasted so much money on so little.
 ETA. The fat lady is singing, you scum
 Axis of Weasels. Three lightweights take on the champs, and Rocky was just a movie.