AliG

The history of the Academy Awards telecast has been generally a pretty traditional show. You've had historic moments of bad taste like Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White, bizarre musical opening numbers from the likes of Lucie Arnaz and Liza Minnelli -- not together -- and, of course, great highs like most of the Billy Crystal musical medleys of the Best Oscar nominees.

This year if Billy were there, his medley would be about 20 minutes long to include all ten nominated movies! They'd have needed an oxygen tank in the wings to revive him after that.

But here's a wickedly wild idea that might have set the Oscars into to fierce wilderness of 'oh-my-God' TV. The Oscar producers were toying with the idea of having Sacha Baron Cohen host the show. Yep, believe it. Producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic were on NPR's 'Fresh Air' with Teri Gross, and they said when they contemplated shaking up the broadcast, they thought of 'Borat.'

With the release of Borat this Friday to movie theaters around America, HBO wants to remind you that they were the ones who gave U.S. audiences a look at the lovable Sacha Baron Cohen character that appeared regularly on Da Ali G Show. So, with that in mind, the network is going to go Borat crazy over the next two weeks.

It will begin this upcoming Saturday when HBO airs all 12 episodes of Ali G not once, but twice. The run of episodes (I get tired of saying marathon because it really isn't) will begin at noon and end at 6:00 PM. Then, the network will air eight episodes on Monday (from 9:00 pm to 1:00 am) and four on Tuesday (8:00 pm to 10:00 pm). If you miss those episodes they will be available on HBO on Demand from November until late January.

One can hope that the media blitz on this new movie as well as the word on the street makes Borat the hit of the year in the theaters. We shall see come this Friday.