Sarah Michelle Gellar

Every year, I bestow an alternative slate of Academy Awards on unsuspecting and terminally unaware folks from across the entertainment continuum.

I do this because it’s fun, because I’m bored and because I am fulfilling a curse placed on me by a necromancer named Dewey.

Yep. Dewey, the necromancer.

And by making you read this, I am passing the curse on to you.

Like I needed to tell you that.

•Best performance by an action star whose fan base would spontaneously rupture if it knew he was simultaneously starring on Broadway as a gay icon: Hugh Jackman in “Van Helsing”

•Best deceptive typecasting: “The Grudge,” which put former “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star Sarah Michelle Gellar in the sort of supernatural situation that would have incited kickboxing in her superhuman TV character, and then insisted she play a normal human. The disconnect was more than most moviegoers could process.

•Best argument for gun control: Watching Jimmy Fallon pretend he knows his way around a firearm in “Taxi.”

•Best argument for former-Saturday-Night-Live-cast-member control: Watching Jimmy Fallon pretend he knows his way around Queen Latifah in “Taxi.”

•Best excuse for dusting off that dormant Bobby Vinton biopic: Kevin Spacey’s Bobby Darin biopic, “Beyond the Sea.”

•Best portrayal of Howard Hughes: To Justin Timberlake, who went into seclusion after he infamously ripped Janet Jackson’s bodice.

•Best cryogenically frozen Disney chief: Michael Eisner

•Best performance by one of our most exciting young actors who has yet to turn in a single good performance, especially this one: Colin Farrell in “Alexander”

•Most ambitious sequel: “Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2,” which set about achieving the nearly impossible task of being worse than its predecessor, and succeeded.

•Best excuse to stay home and watch “Lost in Translation” on DVD while taking a bath: “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”

•Best excuse to swear that you will never enter a multiplex again, and then gouge your eyes out for good measure: Watching Barbra Streisand “hit” Robert De Niro’s “driftwood” in “Meet the Fockers.”

•Best instance of “Scooby Doo” plotting: Blythe Danner magically pulling screen husband Robert De Niro’s vial of sodium pentothal out of her pocket, thus exposing his treachery. He would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for his meddling wife.

•The Euripides “Silence is true wisdom’s best reply” award: To Bill “Shut Up!” O’Reilly who, at least where his alleged sexual harassment of a Fox news producer is concerned, found a way to follow his own advice.

•The Billie Burke “Be gone, before somebody drops a house on you” award: To Joan Rivers, who has the audacity to stand on the red carpet at awards show and make fun of how people look.

•The Dorothy Gale “And you, and you, and you, and you were there. But you couldn’t have been, could you?” award: To Anna Nicole Smith, who might not dream in Technicolor but might very well have a doctor who prescribes in Technicolor.

•The Oscar Wilde “Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes” award: To Paris Hilton, who has agreed - in the interests of honesty - to change her name to Pittsburgh EconoLodge. Just kidding.

•Best moment of Luddite triumph: When Paris Hilton’s Sidekick communications device was hacked into, and its contents, including nude photos, were disseminated across cyberspace, retrograde doofuses like myself kissed their Polaroid cameras and hard-bound address books.

•Best excuse for Barry Manilow to dedicate his next album to those weimaraners that William Wegman dresses in old suit jackets and vests: Celine Dion’s lucrative collaboration with Anne Geddes, who photographs babies dressed as vegetables.

•Best estate: The estate of Johnny Cash, which OK’d the hiring of the scarily talented Joaquin Phoenix for the biopic “Walk the Line” and nixed the use of the song “Ring of Fire” in a hemorrhoid commercial.

•Worst estate: The one that gave thumbs up to the following TV commercial voiceover - “Humphrey Bogart believed that true class could not be imitated or taught. He saw it as an innate aspect of oneself - a quality a person either did or didn’t possess. That said, there was no question that Bogart himself had true class. In fact, if the word didn’t already exist, one might say it was created to describe him. With this in mind, Thomasville Furniture Industries has chosen Humphrey Bogart for a stylish new collection of home furniture and accessories.”

•Best impromptu gathering of plastic and reconstructive surgeons: That’s the only way to explain those crowds cheering Michael Jackson outside the courthouse.

I have to admit, I was a little bit wary at first when conservative groups and pundits began attacking cartoons for alleged concealed messages and arcane indoctrination.

But when I started to think back to the cartoons of my childhood and began to look more closely at the cable programs my daughter regularly watches, I saw all sorts of alarming and suspicious things.

Here are just a few of the observations I made and questions that I have.

After you read them, I think you - like me - will be grateful that someone is finally looking into this.

•If Casper is such a sweet ghost, why did his spirit get consigned to limbo for all eternity?

•Yogi Bear? Yogi Bear? Isn’t that Hindu?

•Is it my imagination or did Barney Rubble wear essentially the same outfit that Raquel Welch wore in “One Million Years B.C.”?

•When Underdog’s energy flagged, he took a pill! When Roger Ramjet’s energy flagged, he took a pill!

•If Augie Doggy really was Doggy Daddy’s son, why wasn’t his last name “daddy”?

•Why did George of the Jungle’s pet elephant Shep think he was a puppy? Where would an African elephant have interacted with a puppy?

•What is Snow White if not a single woman living with seven ornery bachelors?

•Was Jinx the Cat’s catch phrase, “I hate meeses to pieces,” a veiled sideswipe at former Attorney General Ed Meese?

•If hands are heads in the “Oobi” universe, then what’s under their heads?

•Popeye’s bulgy forearms? Was he friendly with Jose Canseco?

•In the Warner Bros. cartoon menagerie, some characters wear pants, some just wear shirts and some wear nothing at all. Who gets to decide? Is that person friendly with Edward Kennedy?

•Why are the Smurfs blue? Lack of oxygen? Is this a climate issue or a lifestyle issue?

•Why does Marvin the Martian have a floor sweeper affixed to his helmet and yet we have never once seen him stand on his head?

•Why does Boots the monkey wear boots on “Dora, the Explorer?” Doesn’t it hinder his simian climbing ability? Does he have a death wish? Low self-esteem?

•George Jetson, Judy Jetson and Jane Jetson all share same-sounding consonants at the start of their first and last names. So why is George Jetson’s only son named Elroy?

•A recent study said 9 in 10 Americans don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. So is it wicked to say that those VeggieTales characters look delicious? In the VeggieTales universe, would it be accurate to say “The wages of sin is salad”?