Out of consideration for another boring-ass, unkillable civic ritual, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will push back its 2008 Oscar nomination announcement to Jan. 22, 2009 — two days after the presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. The quadrennial event apparently has a century-and-a-half of media seniority over the Oscars, thus giving the Academy little choice but to bump its usual Tuesday press conference to Thursday. But wait — it gets worse.

As we read over the list of Oscar presenters released this morning, one sparkly name took all our attention away from the otherwise predictable lot — Miss Miley Cyrus. Just last week, producers of the Grammy Awards dissed the Tween Queen by not asking the biggest star in the recording industry to either perform or present during their flatlining ceremony. However, now Miley is riding high after being scooped up by the typically snobby Oscars. So what gives? Looks to us like quirky duck Gil Cates has his eye squarely trained on the Nielsen numbers.

Though still plagued by (an ever-diminishing) uncertainty about whether they'll be executing their full Hollywood's Biggest Night™ vision or putting on their picket-line-crippled Reading Some Names N' Watching Montages Writers Strike Contingency Spectacular in two Sundays, the Academy has no choice but to make all the customary stops on this year's pothole-riddled Road to Oscar. Having just whet the awards-obsessed public's appetite by revealing the closely guarded kobe-slider secrets of Wolfgang Puck's Governors Ball menu, it was time yesterday to give the media a sneak peak at this year's exceedingly ambitious, Roy Christopher-designed $400 million Kodak Theatre set.

Anyone who endured as much as two minutes of NBC's Access Hollywood-branded Repetition Of The Winners' Names Recited Moments Ago At The First Annual Crippled Golden Globes Press Conference Spectacular probably didn't find it hard to envision a similar nightmare scenario unfolding at a strike-hampered Academy Awards, wherein planned host Jon Stewart is replaced by a dream celebrity-newsmagazine-mannequin team of Mark McGrath and Maria Menounos, whose only function will be to smile and point to headshots of Oscar victors projected onto the 100-foot screen looming behind them on the Kodak Theatre stage. (And to respond with glee to reaction shots of a cardboard cut-out of Jack Nicholson, complete with omnipresent sunglasses and shit-eating grin, propped up in the actor's customary front-row seat.)

Oscar telecast producer Gil Cates apparently isn't convinced that his threats about acceptance speech length were heeded at the nominees' luncheon two weeks ago, prompting him to enlist beloved actor's actor Tom Hanks in his jihad against overly thankful winners. Hanks stars in the Academy's "An Insider's Guide: What Nominees Need to Know," a DVD offering tips for avoiding the time-wasting sins that might incur Cates' wrath: