The 2016 class of Hollywood’s Walk Of Fame honorees was announced today, Variety reports. It’s a wide swath of folks chosen seemingly at random, with the radio voice of the Los Angeles Clippers, Ralph Lawler, being the lone radio inductee for 2016. Live theater/live performance inductees include Kevin Hart, Angélica María and Harvey Fierstein.
For recording, LL Cool J, Cyndi Lauper, Shirley Caesar, Joseph B. “Joe” Smith, Itzhak Perlman, Adam Levine, and Bruno Mars will be recognized. (It’s unclear if Levine and Mars are actually being recognized, or whether it’s simply their white T-shirts and hats, respectively, earning the kudos.) “Mama” Cass Elliot will receive a posthumous star.
In the motion picture category, Batman (a.k.a Michael Keaton), Kurt Russell, Quentin Tarantino, and Ashley Judd will be honored. Steve Carell will receive a long-overdue star, to which we imagine Michael Scott would offer a celebratory, “It’s Britney, bitch.” Toshiro Mifune, the Japanese actor whose filmography is staggering (totaling nearly 170 films), will be recognized posthumously. Bradley Cooper is also receiving a motion picture Walk Of Fame star, and we choose to believe it’s not for any of his movies, but rather for the Will Tippin scream heard ’round the world in Alias, because that’s the best work he ever did.
In the television category, Tracy Morgan, Kathy Bates, Debra Messing, Rob Lowe, Roma Downey, Barbara Bain, Gary Sinise, and William S. Paley, the late founder of The Paley Center, will be honored. Inexplicably, Allison Janney also hasn’t had a star until now (trying to make sense of how the Walk Of Fame system works is a futile task, but it largely involves buying in), but the omnipresent goddess will finally get a slab of sidewalk to call her own in 2016. David Duchovny has been having a renaissance year between his book, his music career, kissing, crying, the show you probably haven’t watched, and, oh yeah, that little X-Files revival that’s happening. He, too, will get to stick his hands in some wet cement, so when aliens eventually land in the streets of Hollywood, they’ll know that American humans had some weird as hell traditions.