One of the great joys of having attended so many collegiate productions over the past several years has been in watching promising freshman performers grow into confident and inspired senior performers.

At one point during my recent (and rather terse) phone interview with comedienne Grandma Lee, the performer explains her interest in stand-up by saying, "You gotta do somethin' you love. I'm 74 years old, but I'm not ready for the rocking chair."

It would be understandable if you responded to those statements with, "Aw-w-w, how cute!" But with her voice pitched just a tad higher than Bea Arthur's, and with her Web-site introduction providing a memorable image of the comic with a beer and a don't-piss-me-off deadpan, this 74-year-old is hardly your everyday, adorable, cookie-baking granny. (On Lee's MySpace profile, "Drink/Smoke" is followed by "Yes/Yes.")

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC

Since I'm not their target demographic, I guess it shouldn't bother me that so many perky, theoretically harmless chick flicks these days are so breathtakingly shrill and stupid. But why doesn't it bother their target demographic? January gave us the offensively unfunny Bride Wars, and now, hot on that film's stiletto heels, comes Confessions of a Shopaholic, which trashes its promising setup and excellent performers in a candy-colored morass of clichés, contrivances, and incessant brainlessness. The film is like a rom-com take on Speed Racer - it even has John Goodman as a loveably ineffectual dad - and it doesn't feature one moment of recognizable human behavior. And audience members still applauded at the end.

If you're looking to win your workplace's annual Oscar pool, you'll likely do pretty well this year just by going with Slumdog Millionaire for nearly everything, by picking The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for the tech awards Slumdog isn't nominated for, and by not making wild-card predictions in the gimme categories. Heath Ledger is winning Best Supporting Actor and WALL?E is winning Animated Feature. Just accept it. Don't try to be a hero.