Here's a little something to help wash out the taint of Celine Dion's "tribute" to Ennio Morricone at last night's Oscars. Sure, Celine has a great set of pipes. No one will argue that. But her singing? Puke! She might as well have been singing the latest bit of background fodder from American Idol for how much you could tell that it was an Ennio Morricone tune. But that's who Celine Dion is. That's what she does. She slathers a heaping does of blandness and pop schmaltz onto everything she gets her throat on.

Instead of Celine pouting and over-emoting her way through the craptastic "I Knew I Loved You," which was awkwardly set to music from Once Upon A Time In America, we offer you this clip of Morricone himself conducting one of his famous tunes from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, "The Ecstasy of Gold." You might not know the title, but you'll know the song when you hear it. Why? BECAUSE ENNIO MORRICONE IS A GENIUS, AND THIS IS HOW HIS MUSIC WAS MEANT TO SOUND.

Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly brought the biggest laughs to a pretty ok Oscar telecast in this musical jab at how the Academy doesn't reward comedic actors as much as dramatic ones.

The singing from this trio wasn't as great as the "Dreamgirls" medley, but it was way better than Celine Dion's tune, and it filled the gaping hole left by the lovable Three 6 Mafia, who we now know are irreplaceable.

Ellen was funny, but they should have let her dance to actual dance music during the opening. Duh.

I don't know whether this is the real Silvio Berlusconi or Italian comedian and provocateur Sabina Guzzanti, but either way... this is how a world leader should act.

BONUS: Santa Monica-based Yahoo! Media Group presents: pre-Oscars video / hype; latest Oscar news/gossip, and MORE.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer looks inside the mind of Joel Surnow, co-creator and producer of "24," and at the goings on behind-the-scenes of his San Fernando Valley production shop and LApocalypse (relax... it's only TV) incubator. Whatever it takes, yo. Happy Friday!

We've always enjoyed timelapse photography, and this footage feels downright therapeutic for people who hail from Los Angeles and/or San Francisco.

A classic commercial for Illinois-based grocery store chain and wholesaler, Moo & Oink.

It's closing time all around the city. Just a few hours ago LAist wrapped up its monthly meeting and so much was accomplished, so many pitchers of Stella were drained, so many cheese fries and chicken wings, and Ye Rustic revelers satisfied.

So since we're winding down and settling back into our homes and soon our beds, here are a few videos that mention our fair city to help you drift off to your slumber.

Above you have the Decemberists, after the jump Mr. Frank Black and then LA's own Bad Religion.

You love it. You want it. You need it. In honor of Valentine's Day, we present you with a very naughty kitty who looooooooves to get spanked.

Who doesn't love Christopher Walken? Even though we've seen True Romance a gazillion times, if it's on Cinemax and it's getting near the scene where Walken and Dennis Hopper deliver their violent conversation, we'll pause our flipping because there's very little on tv better than that.

In a play that reminds us of the scene in "Being John Malkovich" where Malkovich has gone through the wormhole and there are tons of Malkoviches everywhere, be prepared to be surrounded by Walkens delivering his best lines and having fun with his grand career in "All About Walken" which takes place tonight.

In fact, All About Walken happens every Monday night at 8pm at Paul G. Gleason Theater, 6520 Hollywood Blvd. (at Wilcox) thru March 12th.

We were flipping between E!'s red carpet coverage of the Grammy arrivals and TV Guide Channel's coverage (Melissa and Joan beats Ryan Seacrest - big surprise) when we saw Debbie Matenopolous swooning all over Peter Frampton who let it be known that he had covered Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" and it was nominated for an award.

We nearly kicked over the bong running to the computer to see if YouTube could confirm.

And not only did we find this studio version above, but if you make it after the jump you can enjoy a live version.

It looks super funny.
It stars Katherine Heigl, who's pretty and funny.
It stars Seth Rogen, who's hilarious.
It co-stars Paul Rudd, who's cute.
It co-stars former Groundling (and current SNL castmember) Kirsten Wiig, who's very funny.
It has lots of Freaks & Geeks cast members in it.
Yay, Judd Apatow!

Watch as a fun party anthem is effortlessly transformed into a weirdly hostile beachfront bacchanal where Sondra Prill's command to "Make my day!" is more reminiscent of Dirty Harry than Technotronic. Oh, those sweet days when North America's beaches were dotted with neon bikinis, mirrored sunglasses and oiled musclemen.

Everyone was talking about it on tv last night, but the best that we liked was over on Fox News where Geraldo subtlety accused Howard K. Stern of being up to no good and Bobby Tendy talking about how big the bottle of pills were at Anna's house.

Rarely do we wish that people would come back from the dead, but it makes us wonder what Shakespeare could do with this bizarre tale which continues to write itself even after Anna's death.

It's all Sondra Prill all the time here at LAist. At least for a few days. Who is Sondra Prill? A Florida woman with a lot of chutzpah and very little self-awareness, who made a slew of karaoke videos for her cable access show back in the 1980s, many of which have been resurrected on YouTube.

All I can say about her take on this Bette Midler song is: God is watching us.

Before American Idol there was cable access. Before the delusional aspirants who juggle hippie sticks, dress like the Bird Lady and caterwaul their way through pop songs, there was Sondra Prill, a local celebrity in the cutthroat Tampa cable access scene of the late 80s and early 90s. Ms. Prill's performances, which were once a guilty pleasure for many Floridians, can now be guiltlessly embraced by all Americans thanks to the miracle of YouTube.

Because what could be sexier than stalking through a bar while tunelessly lip syncing to your own cover of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love"?

All he wanted to do was share his big moment with as many eyeballs as possible. He was supposed to pop the question during the Super Bowl during a commercial, but when the spot was yanked, the guy behind MySuperProposal.com settled for having the ad run tonight during the popular show "Veronica Mars", his dear one's favorite program.

"JP" explained it a little on his site yesterday before he popped the question:

At various times over the past month, I was anywhere from 99.99-100% certain this would happen. I flew out to a major advertiser’s headquarters, toured around, met a huge team of very supportive folks, filmed a commercial and was all set to go when they pulled the plug at the last minute. There were even more advertisers who wanted to make this happen, but with the late date, we had almost no chance to get another ad filmed in time. I did end up making my own homemade version, which CBS said they might air independently (simply because they knew it had generated so much buzz). As late as Sunday morning, we had word that CBS might air it during or right after the game, but in the 2nd quarter, they called to say it was a “no.”

Before we prepare for today's 4:20 Video Time, how about giving it up to Mother Nature today.

Anyone who saw the Super Bowl last night, or have relatives in the midwest where it is below freezing, and worst when you factor in the wind-chill, knows that Mother Nature is saving all her love for us.

So thank you baby, and it's to you that we dedicate this video of a commercial for Bud Lite that was not aired last night, due to it's, well, cleverness.

Related: LAist's Top 16 Best Super Bowl XLI Commercials.

10. Coke - Grand Theft Auto Parody

Major companies paid $2.6 million per each 30-second spot during yesterday's Super Bowl.

Overall, we'd have to say that the commercials were pretty damn good.

Because the Coke ad above ran for a minute, it means that that thing up there is a $5 million commercial.

Meanwhile, we kept noting that we didn't remember seeing a Pepsi commercial. But then halftime came and we saw that Prince's performance was sponsored by Pepsi and we were all, nice.

After the jump, enjoy some of the other commercials that caught our eye.

One of the best things about Van Halen reuniting is that finally the legend of Eddie Van Halen can go back to being praised.

It's not like Sammy stole any thunder from Ed, he just never added to the two guitar attack that was promised. If anything, Sammy's influence only watered-down the high-flying rock gods.

Sure "Right Now" and "Dreams" were acceptable songs to see your little sister singing along to, but they weren't going to scare your parents into thinking that you were possibly runnin with the devil. Which is the purpose of rock.

Today's clip is from the annual NAMM show in Anaheim. Eddie was in the Fender room playing around and of course all cameras were rolling when the man plugged in.

After the jump, two songs Eddie did last summer for an adult video by Michael Ninn called "Sacred Sin".

Just because I freaking love this movie!

Here I was just looking for new music to listen to and googling old high school boyfriends. A good friend of mine recently started working at a new media company whose main gig is gaming and podcasting. Basically she's surrounded all day by lovable computer nerds, guys listening to metal and most of them, well, talking about chicks. We think this song should go on their homepage. Catchy little jingle.