The dream factory with its golden aristocracy of screen deities, bathed in the light of a million flashbulbs; red carpet royalty who have levitated far beyond the reality of life as lived by the common man.
And the football factory, beloved of the common man worldwide, its gates thrown open every weekend to the heaving masses, its stars the royalty of street and slum and a million boozers.
But of the two, it was the FIFA Ballon d'Or shindig in Zurich that seemed more like la la land. The Golden Globes in LA, by comparison, was as dirt-gritty as a dilapidated breeze block dressing-room.
The contrast exemplified how uncool sport is in its civvies. And of all the sports, soccer probably takes the brass ring for its sheer all-round naff culture. And of course it has no idea how naff it appears to the outside world. It is so big and so rich that it doesn't have to engage with the rest of society. It is a sealed off, self-contained monolith with its own enormous self-sustaining economy. It is the oil industry of the sports industry; it is so rich it can do as it pleases. It exists in a cocoon of oblivious self-regard. It is a monument to corporate conformity. It is impervious to outside influences, critical voices, alternative modes of thinking. The internal air conditioning seems rarely to be freshened by a cold blast of self-awareness. It has all the self-awareness of a spoiled rich kid. It has terrible taste; it doesn't read books. It has a bent moral compass, a massive bank account and no life of the mind.
It is remarkable that a sport which liberates the physical imagination like no other could be quite so dumb.
The Ballon d'Or went to Cristiano Ronaldo, the very embodiment of football's athletic beauty on the field, and its vacant stare off it.
The game has always attracted its share of brown-envelope businessmen and imitation Crombie coats. Now that it has gone Wall Street, it attracts all kinds of millionaire-billionaire carpet-baggers with big yachts and small consciences.
So of course Sepp Blatter is the perfect man to sit atop this weird Ruritanian empire. FIFA's president is the archetypal Great Leader who long ago became lost in his own delusions. The world is laughing at him but he thinks they're laughing with him. They are pouring scorn on his head and he thinks it's acclaim. They are drowning him in their contempt and he thinks it's a warm bath of gratitude.
The Ballon d'Or ceremony was broadcast live on Sky Sports. The room had all the atmosphere of some mausoleum to old communist henchmen. The ceremony was frigid with control and conformity. All human spontaneity had been hollowed out. Where the Golden Globes bristled with wit and mischief and risqué comedy, the Ballon d'Or was sanitised and stultified into a moribund charade.
It was a football ceremony that managed to hang a sort of totalitarian pall over its proceedings. There was the one token grassroots fan in the audience who'd been granted permission to ask a question: an amateur PR gesture, the token nod to democracy.
Then there was Blatter's Presidential Award, a personal benediction from the king of Lilliput. He awarded it to a veteran journalist, Hiroshi Kagawa, who has covered 10 World Cups. And having presented it to the Japanese Jimmy Magee, Sepp declared it was timely in light of the Paris atrocities. "Tonight we are all Charlie," declared this walking tribune of transparency and accountability.
Naturally all attempts at humour on the evening were beyond pitiful. Because humour is dangerous. It's hard to tame. A few nervous titters of laughter punctuated the otherwise soporific silence.
And even by the lamentable standards of televised sport, the guest interviews took the cringe factor to a whole new low. Once again grown men and women, superstars of their trade, were treated to sub-infantile questions, which they duly answered with childlike simplicity.
In scenarios like this, Ronaldo and Messi appear to have been machined into blankness by their calling, as if they exist only in one dimension - the football field. At one point the TV broadcast showed them sitting in their seats while a Swiss pop group played a song onstage. It was a lively tune, the lead singer was giving it socks, but the audience responded like a brick wall.
Neither Ronaldo nor Messi moved a muscle. They stared at the musicians as if these were aliens onstage. They looked not so much bored as baffled.
The difference obviously between actors and footballers is that actors pretend to be someone else for a living. But there's no faking it in soccer (except when they're diving). Top sports people exist in the most competitive environment perhaps devised by mankind.
And in this environment Messi and Ronaldo are the best of the best, modern marvels of the sporting universe. They are stretching the limits of what was previously thought possible. But like some sort of flawed Hollywood superheroes, their football powers seem to have taken over their entire being. When they can't express themselves with a ball, they can't - or won't - express themselves at all.
But inside the football bubble, of course, this is all perfectly normal.
