The Oscar Host You Can Make at Home Why is it so hard to find a decent Oscar host? Every year we stare down this question and get no closer to an answer. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has all the constellations of entertainers to choose from, yet there hasn't been a truly crackerjack Oscar host since that glorious four-year run of Billy Crystal more than 20 years ago. (Yes, Crystal returned later. The glory did not.) Steve Martin was pretty good. Hugh Jackman was, um, energetic. Whoopi Goldberg was Whoopi Goldberg. In fact, she was Whoopi Goldberg four times. (Four times! That is not a misprint. I can hardly believe it myself.) So this year the academy has done the only reasonable thing and redrafted Crystal, who is a.) still alive and b.) unsurprisingly available. Yet even this was a last-minute decision: He had to step in after Eddie Murphy left, after the telecast's previous producer, Brett Ratner, had to step aside after making homophobic comments. (Brett Ratner. The director of "Tower Heist." Remember when he was supposed to be the Oscars" savior? This is how bad it's become, people.) Who would be the dream host? I've thought about this. In fact, I've thought about it publicly. But then I've also watched the telecast's grinding gravitas and toxic self-regard chew through once-promising candidates like Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres and David Letterman. So would I wish that same fate on, for example, Jimmy Fallon or Neil Patrick Harris - both of whom have proved to be fresh, inventive and energetic hosts on other awards shows? I don't know that I would. Though I would definitely tune in if they hosted. And yet! In an interesting twist, the academy apparently does not consider them to have the necessary star wattage to host the Oscars. They are not timeless entertainers in the mold of, say, James Franco and Anne Hathaway or the exhumed corpse of Billy Crystal. What is an Oscar watcher to do? There's an obvious solution to this conundrum: Create your own wiki-Oscar host. For as the single, human-celebrity options have dwindled, the multivoiced, technological options have exploded. Wouldn't you rather follow the jokes on Twitter than the ones written for stars on-screen? Better yet, the jokes on Twitter about the jokes, and the stars, onscreen. Wouldn't you like to augment your viewing with commercial break updates by A. O. Scott and David Carr? This kind of parallel meta-commentary is the best thing to happen to the Oscars, and the Oscars had nothing to do with it. The academy couldn't solve its Oscar-host problem. So the Internet solved it for them.