The Oscars have come and gone for another year, but not without leaving more than a few viewers shaking their heads.

A collective gasp went up at the Kodak Theater and around the country as “Crash” walked away with the award for Best Film, rather than the heavily favored “Brokeback Mountain.”

The tale of two star-crossed cowboys will be remembered, however, for another legacy, a phenomenon known as the “Brokeback mashup.”

A mashup, for those of you born before the dawn of the techno age, is when a computer-savvy prankster takes an original work, say a movie or song, and combines it with an unlikely partner to create a new, and hopefully humorous, product. The resulting footage, usually just a few minutes long, is posted on the Internet for all the world to see. Nothing has caught the imagination of cyber mashup makers like “Brokeback Mountain,” AKA “The Gay Cowboy Movie.”

It’s a movie that is prone to producing fits of discomfort-induced snickering anyway, so turning it into something made for laughs is a short trip.

The movie’s famous tag line, “I wish I could quit you,” has already made the rounds of every comedy and late night talk show, and looks destined to become part of our lexicon, alongside such classics as “Play it again Sam,” and “May the Force be with you.”

The “Brokeback” mashups play off the relationships between two male characters in movies that were not originally intended to be interpreted “that way,” and no movie is safe. The more macho the character, the better the spoof, or so the logic goes.

Thus, “Walker: Texas Ranger” becomes “Walker: Brokeback Ranger,” and “The Last Samurai” becomes “The Brokeback Samurai.”

There’s “Brokeback to the Future,” “Brokeback Gump” and even “The Empire Breaks Back.” Nothing is sacred to these jokers. For trivia nerds, the “City Slickers/Broke Jack Palance” parody features cuts of a very young Jake Gyllenhaal as one of Billy Crystal’s students. Prophetic.

In case you’re wondering about copyright infringement, parody is a protected form of free speech.

While the “Brokeback” mashups make fun of the movie, they are also mocking the homophobia that created much of the buzz surrounding the movie, the first mainstream film featuring two openly gay lead characters.

You think you’re being all macho, going to see violent flicks like “Pulp Fiction” or “Fight Club?” Think again. Are those fight scenes really very different from the passionate love scenes in “Brokeback?” Mix one part double entendre with two parts emotionally charged eye contact, and voila — instant gay subtext. A bond is a bond is a bond.

NOTE TO PARENTS: I am in no way recommending that your underage children check out these mashup Web sites on their own. Some are PG, others contain R-rated content or links to sites you may not want them visiting. As always, you need to monitor what your kids are doing.

Are galleries an endangered species?

Speaking of the Internet, a gallery owner e-mailed me last week, upset that I had included the Web site address of the artist featured in the gallery. The owner’s concern was that the gallery was the artist’s representative in the area, and he didn’t want people bypassing the gallery and buying directly from the artist.

That got me thinking. I found the artist’s Web site the same way anyone who knew her name could: by Googling it. What’s to stop anyone who sees the show from doing the same thing? I can see how this is making gallery owners very nervous.

Artists and galleries have always had a sort of symbiotic/saprophytic relationship. Artists needed galleries in order to have a place to expose the public to their work; galleries needed something to sell in order to stay in business. But since it is business, galleries routinely charge artists a 50 percent — or higher — commission on their work. After all, they have to make a profit to stay in business and support other artists. But, this means that for all their creative hard work, artists get less for their work than if they sold it themselves.

By selling their work over the Internet, essentially setting up their own store, artists bypass the gallery middleman and get 100 percent of the profits. Who could resist that?

Galleries are a wonderful addition to a community, and it would be sad to see them go away, but are their days numbered? I welcome your thoughts on this. wu