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Breaking: This year's Oscars might not bore the world into incontinence: The Academy has signed up Chris Rock to host. [Note to Emmy organizers: Shandling's looking like an even bigger joke right now.] The trades are so excited about the press release from AMPAS that Variety even somehow approved this unfortunate lede, "The Oscars are about to get, in Chris Rock's own words, 'bigger and black.'" Firstly, we believe it's "Bigger and Blacker." Secondly, the audience at the Kodak Theatre still will be the whitest place on earth, narrowly beating out a conference of albinos in an Alaskan snowdrift scheduled for the same night.

But...Chris Rock! How can we not be excited? While we're getting what we want, can we extract a guarantee that there will no dance numbers, and a ban on Jack Nicholson reaction shots? OK, we're getting a little crazy now. Never mind.

UPDATE: In our rush to get out the news, we neglected to mention that the Oscars are on—get ready—ABC. How many chickens are they sacrificing to the gods of good buzz over there?