I’m more than down with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin co-hosting the 82nd Academy Awards, which producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman announced a little while ago. In fact I’m almost excited. They’re both wordsmiths — the pithy, erudite, dry-witted Martin vs. the pugnacious, slightly testy, vaguely-angry-all-the-time Baldwin. So it’ll be a competition all the way. They’ll be on each other’s back and will call each other’s bluff. If Martin takes the humor or commentary in a certain direction that doesn’t quite pan out, Baldwin will immediately zap him and course-correct. And vice versa.

The elegant, 60ish, New Yorker-contributing Martin vs. the tanky, 50ish, anger-afflicted Baldwin.

So with all this snip-snipping going on there the show will be bullshit-free. I think this might turn into the best Oscar-host situation since Billy Crystal’s heyday in the mid ’90s. Or, you know, they could both blow it totally because of shitty writing and whatnot. But I’ll be very suprised if thi\s happens.