Heroic lefty funnyman Jon Stewart has been announced as the host of this year’s Oscars ceremony.

Here’s hoping the March 5 ceremony will be full-blown culture riot, with Stewart dissing the government from the stage and Academy voters hucking the majority of the gold at the gayest Hollywood film of all time.

Speaking of Brokeback Mountain: I finally saw it, totally loved it, but didn’t tear up until the final credits, over which Willie Nelson sang one of my all-time favorite Bob Dylan songs, “He Was A Friend of Mine,” which turned me into a puddle.

And while I somewhat agree with the Stranger forum writer who took exception to the wispy guitar interludes of the soundtrack—it’s true, these piddling acoustic texture-washes turned the guys’ summer of hard work and isolation into a bucolic romantic wonderland—there are two reasons I don’t agree.

First, the pair’s summer of hard work and isolation was a bucolic romantic wonderland, one that haunted each of the men for the rest of their lives. And while it may have been a richer artistic choice to show the guys’ love flourish against a harsh natural background unsoftened by soundtrack elements, there have been a million and one richly artistic movies made about gay lives, but exactly zero mainstream, crowd-pleasing films that present same-sex love as romantically ravishing as other-sex love, with all the lingering mist and overdone underscoring that entails, until now.

Hurrah, now throw some Oscars at Heath Ledger, Ang Lee, Michelle Williams, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, and whoever the hell the cinematographer is. (But mostly Heath Ledger, who’s fucking amazing. Sorry, Philip Seymour Hoffman, you must remain a bridesmaid for another year…)