Given the Oscars™, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Tonys, the Golden Globes, the SAG awards, the American Music Awards, the MTV Movie Awards, the MTV Video Awards, the VH-1 Fashion Awards, the People's Choice Awards, the American Comedy Awards, and the Cable Ace Awards, one might think that celebrity blowjobs are already plentiful enough. That's where the Rasco P. Soultrain Awards come in. The Rascos exist in order both to honour and to vilify celebrities on no basis other than their celebrity.

Please enjoy the fashions, the fun, the lavish production numbers -- really, the pageantry -- of the First Annual Rasco P. Soultrain Awards.

Famous Person of the Year

Looking back over the landscape of the past year, the terrain is littered with the fame-hungry, the fame-bloated and the fame-drunk. There's Ricky Martin, who, on the strength of two -- or was it three? -- hit singles, a pearly smile and a pair of leather pants lassoed the kind of panting, round-the-clock media attention heretofore reserved for dead princesses or returning messiahs. There's -- yes -- The Backstreet Boys, who, in interviews, still slough off the obvious, unavoidable, and completely appropriate New Kids on the Block comparison, choosing rather to liken their career to that of the Eagles (a group that BSB is stunningly similar to, except for the whole "don't write songs or play instruments" thing. Perhaps a more suitable parallel would be to the other boy bands that have enjoyed long, respected, and productive careers, such as none of them).

In reality, however, when it comes to Famous Person of the Year, there are many candidates, but only one contender. And the Rasco goes to: Jennifer Lopez.

Think about it. Here is a woman who embarked on a singing career even though (a) she's not interested in writing music, and (b) can't really sing. So it's not like there's this little artistic gremlin on her shoulder, pushing her to pursue her true calling, like the one that told Tony Bennett to pick up a paintbrush. Rather, she launched her singing career as a way, basically, to keep her mug on magazine covers between movies. She launched it because, as an actress, she just wasn't famous enough.

There are people out there who want to be actors, who are good at acting, and who, as an (often not entirely welcome) by-product of pursuing and being really good at acting, also end up famous. These people are named William H. Macy. The same is true of singers. These people are named Elvis Costello. Then there are people who want to be famous. They will try acting. They will try singing. Some will try both, like surf 'n' turf. They are named Jennifer Lopez, and their appetites for fame cannot be sated.

Jennifer Lopez breathes fame like fish breathe water. She has fame gills. And so we award her this Rasco. We half expect she will arc-weld it to her forehead, in an effort to become even more famous, as an actor/singer/woman-with-a-Rasco award arc welded to her forehead.

We've got a blowtorch, so...whenever you're ready.

Most Undeservedly Famous Person of the Year

Of course, the odious nominees in this category come from the same place all the most repugnant trends originate: TV. We did have a hard time choosing, given the embarrassment of...well, embarrassments available to us. Would it be Regis Philbin, to whom the phenomenal success of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire has somehow been attributed, despite the fact that a chimp could host the show and it would still draw a forty share? Would it be Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell, the "winners" of FOX's chattel pageant Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? No, the Rasco in this category must be awarded to Carson Daly.

As a VJ, Carson plies a trade with a proud tradition. For one thing, "video jockey" is a job that requires no real talent other than the ability to speak and to have one's image adhere to videotape. For another, MTV has always been a factory producing briefly famous personalities who never amount to anything beyond being talking heads in infomercials and beer ads. Somehow, each succeeding generation of VJs never remembers the missteps of its forebears. Carson has upped the ante by dating (and subsequently being dumped by) Jennifer Love Hewitt, landing a column in the new Us Weekly, and hosting the Miss Teen USA beauty contest. Seventeen-year-old Christina Aguilera has been quoted in several articles as saying that she's got a crush on him.

Carson Daly is not attractive. He's clearly not very intelligent. He appears on a network most adults don't watch, and hosts a show (TRL) that no adults watch. Far more people know his name than really should. For all these reasons, Carson Daly is the Most Undeservedly Famous Person of the Year.

Newgoer of the Year

("Newgoer" -- it's the opposite of "newcomer." Get it? Do you see what we've done there? Cogent analysis. Dextrous word play. Only at Fametracker.)

Of course, this year there's no end to the candidates for most likely to be here today, gone not a minute too soon. Is there anyone who thinks that the name Eminem won't imminently join the likes of Tone Loc and Skee-Lo, eventually invoking not so much a "Where are they now?" but a "Why were they then?" Or that Kid Rock won't someday be recalled with a wistful smile and a knowing shake of the head, as a kind of latter-day Gerrardo for a more redneck-acceptant era?

There are, of course, movie stars whose expiry dates are looming as well, who are soon to join Janine Turner and Dean Cain in exile, spinning off the radar screen with their noses pressed up against the Phantom Zone of fame. You know, your Jenna Elfmans, your Joaquin Phoenixes, your David Duchovnys. (He's Robert Culp 2000. Trust us.) But there's something about pop stars that just feels so...exquisitely temporary. Which is why we award the Rasco for Newgoer of the Year to...Britney Spears.

When PhD students of tomorrow are deconstructing the cultural malaise that characterized the boom years at the dawn of the 21st century, they will be deconstructing Britney Spears. Who among us can forget where they were when they first saw the video for "Baby, Hit Me One More Time," and thought, "Boy, it's kind of crass to dress a grown woman like an underdressed, oversexed teenager," only to realize that, wait a second, that's an actual underdressed, oversexed teenager dressed as an underdressed, oversexed teenager! And everything that's followed -- the boobie rumours, the inferior singles, WarbleGate at the Grammys, and then getting bounced for the trophy by Christina Aguilera -- all point to one inescapable fact: Say goodbye. Britney has exactly no more albums in her. None.

Best-case scenario: Pops up in ten years on Broadway. Worst-case scenario: Pops up in a year on Hard Copy, legally divorcing her mother. We're sorry. We're sure you're nice in your heart. But to put it in terms you can understand: M-I-C, K-E-Y, I-T-S O-V-E-R.

The William H. Macy Memorial HITG! Graduation

This year has seen the breakthrough of many a Hey! It's That Guy! into legitimate celebrity status. Hey, there's Jane Kaczmarek -- mother of Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon in Pleasantville, girlfriend of Martin Crane on Frasier, biological mother of Amy Jo Johnson on Felicity, woman who had an affair with that wicked creepy judge played by Rhoda's husband Joe with whom Claire Kincaid had formerly also had an affair on Law & Order -- breaking through on the phenomenally successful sitcom Malcolm in the Middle! There's Catherine Keener -- Amelia in Walking and Talking, George Clooney's ex-wife in Out of Sight, that woman who plagiarized Neil Simon and painted Kramer on Seinfeld -- getting nominated for a damn Oscar™. There's Lindsay Crouse -- of cult hit House of Games, formerly of her marriage to David Mamet -- turning up as an unethical monsterologist on Buffy.

And although all of these breakthroughs have been remarkable and have brought us at Fametracker great joy, and pride on behalf of these superlative and deserving performers. But none of their achievements has come close to matching the Hey! It's That Guy! graduation of the Rasco recipient.

When we launched Fametracker, we did so with profiles of three HITG! -- Dan Hedaya, Michael Rooker, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Since then, Hoffman has distinguished himself with vastly different performances in vastly different films: The Talented Mr. Ripley (in which he played a spoiled '50s socialite), Magnolia (in which he played a kind nurse who was among the film's few genuinely moral touchstones), and Flawless (in which he played a drag performer, and for which he was acknowledged with a SAG Award nomination). In the case of Ripley, he was -- along with Cate Blanchett -- embarrassingly better than the material he was given to work with. And to eke out an award-worthy performance in a Joel Schumacher movie surely requires superhuman thespianic talents (though we wouldn't know for sure because we didn't see it.) In Magnolia, his gentle and empathetic nurse helped reunite an estranged father and son and generally holds the entire Partridge family (heh) together.

The point is, we couldn't possibly call Philip Seymour Hoffman a HITG! anymore. And we don't plan to. Philip Seymour Hoffman has graduated, William H. Macy-style, to the realm of celebrity. Phil, don't go blowing it on a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

Most Likely to Become a Personality Before the Rascos are Awarded Again

No two Celebrities devolve into Personalities in exactly the same way each time. Perhaps a movie star caps off a string of flops with a splashy sex scandal. Perhaps a musician jumps straight from a drug charge to a 1-800 COLLECT ad. Perhaps a legitimate author runs out of talent and becomes a talking head on the pundit circuit.

And then there's Candice Bergen.

Kids today may be surprised to learn that, back in the '70s, Candice Bergen was an actual movie star. She appeared opposite Jack Nicholson in Carnal Knowledge and Burt Reynolds in Starting Over -- both much-talked-about roles that befit her status as Hollywood royalty (being the daughter of famed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen). In the '80s, she acquitted herself well in Gandhi and Mayflower Madam. Apparently realizing, after Madam, that her silver-screen days were rapidly receding and TV where she rightfully belonged, she signed on as the title character of the briefly amusing and occasionally controversial sitcom Murphy Brown.

Cannily capitalizing on her Brown-related notoriety, she started endorsing Sprint in a long-running TV campaign, which, naturally, ended at the same time Brown bit the dust. Or so Americans would think. In fact, Bergen has continued to endorse Sprint Canada right up to the present. And she hasn't really done much other than that until now: Bergen has re-surfaced on the fledgling Oxygen cable network hosting the daytime talk show Exhale. As Fametracker readers know, hosting a talk show on her career's downward trajectory is a Celebrity's best bet to becoming a Personality. The fact that Bergen is doing so on an untested cable network adds about four points to her Personality score.

Bergen is still Hollywood royalty, and as long as she is on a TV show -- no matter what kind -- she's still a viable celebrity. However, Fametracker predicts that, between now and then, Exhale will get cancelled, and thus will Bergen's transformation complete itself.

Lifetime Achievement Award

The Rasco Lifetime Achievement is presented to the person who best exemplifies the idea of pure fame -- that is, fame not associated with any particular accomplishment or exceptional contribution to humanity, but, rather, fame that is its own justification. Fame that feeds on itself. Perpetual-motion fame. In short, this award recognizes those people who are famous for being famous.

There are several notable persons who have, over their lifetimes, come to symbolize fame that's wildly disproportionate to actual achievement: Liz Taylor comes to mind, as do Tony Randall, and those irascible Gabors. But the first-ever lifetime award goes to soemone who perhaps best defined the idea of fame, as it exists in our modern age: Not as a result, nor as a reward, but rather as a state of being.

And the Rasco goes to...John Kennedy, Jr.

John Kennedy, Jr. was the well-known son of a former President. He was very good-looking. He was the founder and editor of a not particularly good but not terrible magazine the main contribution of which was the idea to treat politics like show business. He was a guy who was killed during a tragic (if ill-advised) plane trip, along with his also very good-looking wife and her sister. All of this, in of itself, is sad. Is it more sad than, say, 10,000 Venezualans killed in mudslides? Well, had you been an alien deposited on earth last July, you would have thought that, yes, it was more sad. Way more sad. Say, one hundred million times more sad. Or at least one hundred million times more important.

In reality, we'd like to make up thousands of tiny little Rasco trophies -- one for every CNN achorperson who intoned with their best put-on gravitas about this moment of national mourning; one for every correspondent who helicoptered into Martha's Vineyard; one for every news producer who got on the phone at 2 AM to get the music guy to whip up a quick "Disaster at Sea" theme song, to be played during those long, pointless shots of the ocean; and one special one for the tabloid editor who came up with the recent headline, "JFK Jr. Legacy Lives On" for a story about how his sister, Caroline, is pregnant. (Assuming his involvement in the pregnancy was not direct, we can only assume this was an immaculate conception -- further proof of John Kennedy Jr.'s suitability for sainthood.) Then we'd like to take our thousand, tiny trophies and pelt the recipients with them, from a great height.

Until then, we present our one trophy, and hope it will serve as the final step towards canonization: John Kennedy Jr., Patron Saint of Fame.