Unless you’re particularly invested in the Daytime Emmys (besides the fascinating best talk show host between Kelly Clarkson and Drew Barrymore). You can exhale now, nerds. It’s summer vacation until the Emmys. You may have thought the season ended with the Tonys culminating in Michael R. Jackson’s triumphant victory for A strange loop and EGOT by Jennifer Hudson. They were both wonderful and rewarding, but the Tonys were just the penultimate event, the guild’s obscure precursor prizes for what this year’s awards circuit has built: Bodybuilders Cultural Awards. On Saturday, June 18, an audience of 2,500 culture admirers gathered at Lincoln Center to honor the best and brightest in film, television, music, housewives, comedy, travel, trends, gays, food, friendship and the animal kingdom (both literal animals and the Disney theme park). In short: the whole culture.
The show was conceived and hosted by Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang to honor six years of their podcast, Bodybuilders, a period that saw comedians go from favorites of the Brooklyn comedy scene commenting on pop culture to honest pop culture luminaries. Rogers stood out in one of the best comedies of the year, Showtime’s I like it for you, while Yang has had his fair share of experience in smaller, but still notable awards shows, presenting at the Tonys and Emmys and winning two nominations at the latter (one for writing, one for acting) for Saturday Night Live. And 2022 has been a landmark year for the Bodybuilders hosts. Last month, they celebrated the podcast’s 300th episode with a “Great Global Songbook” countdown, and earlier in June, Yang and Rogers co-starred on Hulu’s fire island alongside pod friend and screenwriter Joel Kim Booster. The Culture Awards concept has been in the works since April last year, and the final production was a spectacular payoff for long-time listeners. Assembling a veritable gallery of queer comedy names from a thug, the show was both a highly influential and valid awards show in its own right and a kind of beautiful utopian vision of the heights that other awards shows could achieve if they stopped getting in their own way. For those who couldn’t attend, Vulture presents the first “Highs, Lows, and wows of the Bodybuilders Culture Prize.
Photo: Sachyn Mittal
HIGH: “Cool for summer”
As with any awards show worth its salt, the Culture Awards began with a musical number, with Rogers and Yang giving a peppy performance of their No. 1 hit “Global Songbook,” “Cool for the Summer” by Demi Lovato, backed by a live band on stage. Not only was this the first of many live musical performances, but it set up a recurring theme of the hosts descending into the audience to sing and dance, as in Cats or these puppets in The Lion King.
LOW: Sell short
In the opening monologue, Rogers said he hoped to “set this up as an awards show taken at least as seriously as the Golden Globes.” We live in a post-Nanette world! No need for self-effacement.
LOW: The statuettes are too heavy for Miss Culturista, Patti Harrison
Just as the Golden Globes appoint a “Miss Golden Globes” to present their material to the winners, Rogers and Yang also named Patti Harrison their Miss Culturista; she opened the show complaining that the awards were “heavier than anyone told me they would ever be”. Halfway through the show, Harrison revealed that she hadn’t had much muscle mass since the “accident” (we never found out what that was), and by the end of the night, she was dragging the award to the stage on a tarp. Prop comedy lives!
HIGH: Cole Escola accepts Cinema’s Most Amazing Impact award on behalf of category winner, actors
The actors beat fellow nominees Steven Spielberg and Music & Score in Film. Dressed as Morton Salt’s daughter, Escola accepted on behalf of “every actor in the world, including the moon!””
Photo: Sachyn Mittal
WHOA: Jan comes on this female dog crazy as hell
Rogers and Yang presented the Xtina Aguilera Award for her entry into This Crazy-as-Hell Bitch to Erin Brockovich when she was fired by Ed Masry. That would simply not stand up to fellow candidate Jan de RuPaul’s Drag Race, so she stormed the stage and lip-synced to “Beautiful,” ending, of course, with Xtina’s “Moves Like Jagger” verse. The animators have issued a correction and canceled Jan. More price discounts should do it!
Photo: Sachyn Mittal
HIGH: Julio Torres presents the Macarena
Why? I am not sure. But Torres gave a speech “to honor the dance phenomenon of the 1990s,” then Rogers and Yang shook their tushies and led the crowd in a mass macarena. It was cult.
LOW: Lemon Spindrift Wins Best Seltzer Flavor Award
I heard boos.
LOW: Katy Perry couldn’t accept her award in person
Hannah Einbinder announced the winner of the Joy Behar Award for Stand-Up Comedy and rolled the losers’ pre-recorded acceptance speeches. Joel Kim Booster pointed to the sky and thanked Behar, saying, “I miss you, and can’t wait to die so I can -” (the rest was drowned out by audience laughter). Pat Regan followed with a reference to not being thrown into Fire Island. At least they’re tied for the funniest gay man award.
HIGH: C#5
Jo Firestone presented the next award of the evening, Best Rating Ever Sung. The three nominees were performed by Bonnie Milligan and Natalie Walker, accompanied by the band, including the high-pitched note known as C5. The deserving winner was “Look” from “Look to the Western Sky” from “Defying Gravity”. They gave a great performance.
LOW: The alto part on “All I Want for Christmas Is You”
Nothing says summer better for the city of Lincoln Center than a Christmas carol. Walker did her alto viral part, and she and Milligan closed the song with a kiss.
Photo: Sachyn Mittal
HIGH: Aaron Jackson’s Historic Victory
Jackson took home the award for best “I don’t think so, honey” of all time and celebrated with a public recital of the text: “Going to Church on Sunday and Wednesday?”
BOTTOM: Snubbed Whales
fire island Hotties Conrad Ricamora, James Scully, and Zane Phillips presented the award for Best Sea Animal, a category that required Ricamora’s seriousness. The men were disappointed because their favorite creature of the deep is the whale, but the whale was not nominated. The winner was Fish, Comma, All, accepted by Tomás Matos holding a bubble gun.
Photo: Sachyn Mittal
LOW: In memory
A reel of “moments that killed from 2021”, set to a remix by Wendy Williams saying “Death to all!” reminded us of bitter losses, beginning with Meghan McCain’s departure from View.
WHOA: Four-Part Harmonies
Rogers and Yang began a “driver’s license” duet, which was already gorgeous but went overboard when Josh Sharp and Jackson emerged after the opening chorus wearing capes and turned the whole thing into an Il Divo moment.
HIGH: Lisa Kudrow accepts best friend award
Mom sent a video!
Whoa: Taylor Swift filmed her acceptance speeches!
Audiences were ready for a Katy Perry–JKB style switcheroo when Swift won Best Taylor Swift for Cookie Baking and were thrilled with a video of Swift addressing the hosts while taking the cookies out of the oven . Then Swift sent another one video to accept the Best Tayla Swiff award for her performance of “Wildest Dreams” in “Enchanted” Mash-up.
HIGH: presenter joke
This is how all awards should be! They should all have delicious jokes and quirky bits! They should all be imagined by Vulture-approved gay comedians! They should all have SNL Writer Celeste Yim individually hands Aidy Bryant one-word note cards and leaves Bryant to be totally amazed at what’s on them.
WHOA: The public knew the melody of “Drive Back”, by Candiace de ORP
The final prize of the evening, Record of the Year, went to Candiace from The Real Housewives of the Potomac for “Drive Back”, leading to the closing vocals of an evening full of them. (Album of the Year went to 2017 Reputation.)
HIGH: Disney’s Animal Kingdom Sweep
The winner of the evening was unexpected. It was not comedy (even if it was also that). It wasn’t Wendy Williams (despite her numerous nominations and winning the Tina Turner Legend Award). It was Orlando, Florida that won a category sweep with eight wins, including three for Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
– Biggest flop: Seaworld
– Most iconic building or structure: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Disney’s Hollywood Studios
-Most relaxing destination: Disney’s Animal Kingdom
-Best Disney World Tour: Expedition Everest
-Best Universal Studios Orlando Tour: Revenge of the Mummy
-Six Flags Award for Worst Ride in Orlando: It’s a Show, but the Hall of Presidents
-The National Park Award for Nature: The Tree of Life, Disney’s Animal Kingdom
-Best neighborhood, Los Angeles: Universal CityWalk [Note: I know this isn’t Orlando, but it is Orlando in spirit, its sister city being Universal CityWalk Orlando. Best Neighborhood, New York, went to Fort Greene, by the way.]
HIGH: No one has been played by the group
The respect!
HIGH: Foolishness
Best Farm Animal went to Chickens of the Coop, Best Video Game Moment went to When Bowser Arrives, and Best Flavor of All went to Tasty. More things should be silly this way.
Photo: Sachyn Mittal
HIGH: The assembly of talents!
The micro-generation of queer comedians who have come together for this show are truly shaping the culture for the better, the more awkward, and the more goopier, and it brings tears to my eyes. It was like a grand opening ceremony for the people you first saw at the Bell House five years ago. And for one night, Lincoln Center was elevated into something even bigger: the place of the clowns.
