The 81st Academy Awards suggested how, as an annual TV event, the Oscars could become extinct — and frankly, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

And it wasn’t just that, from Hugh Jackman’s opening number, to the interminable tributes by past winners that preceded every acting award, to the shockingly bad production numbers, nothing — nothing — on this telecast worked.

The real problem was that the people who put together this year’s show ended up coming across as contemptuous of what they were doing. Parody can be the most loving of tributes. (That’s why Carol Burnett’s parodies of golden age Hollywood are considered affectionate and perceptive film criticism.) The Oscars have always kidded the nominated movies.

But it’s one thing for Billy Crystal to come out in a Dr. Lecter mask and joke his way through a parodic melody — it’s quite another to open with a number in which a movie about an assassinated gay politician is represented by a routine that looks like the campiest sort of gay bar theatrical.

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But several years after all but being completely out of the business and all but forgotten someone out there thought he was worth one more shot. Now, shaggy hair and all, this natural and supremely gifted talent has come all the way back to the top to  claim the ultimate honor in a profession he almost threw away.

Sound like Mickey Rourke?

Actually I was talking about the remarkable comeback last week of Stump, the 10-year-old Sussex spaniel who came out of a five-year retirement to become the oldest dog to win the Best In Show Silver Cup of the 133rd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Shortly after winning the sporting dog competition at Westminster in 2004, Stump contracted a mysterious illness and nearly died. But after a 19-day stay at Texas A&M Hospital, the vets saved his life and he retired to life as a house pet. That is until about a week before this year’s Westminster event, the Super Bowl of dog shows. His owner decided on a lark to enter him and the rest is now history as he has become the toast of the town, appearing as lead guest on shows that wouldn’t have even booked him a few months ago.

Is this an Oscar sign for notorious canine lover Mickey Rourke, who has six dogs of his own? Does the unexpected triumph of Stump signal something in the air that could transmit all the way from Madison Square Garden to the stage of the Kodak on Sunday? From some angles Rourke and Stump even look alike. Perhaps they share the same groomer.  Could they have been soul mates in another life?

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