A Grouch's Oscars

INOTBB fan* alert:

I'm going to try to do some live Oscar-blogging, assuming someone says something stupid, wears something ugly, or dances with Snow White. After all, anything I do will be anti-climatic now that they've spent 5 minutes with Celine Dion on the red carpet.
4:40 pm

Was that the first time Stan Brakhage got name-dropped at the Oscars?
5:36 pm

Note to self: never wear a flesh-colored microphone--makes it look like you have a big boil. Oh, and is Jack Black just Buddy Hackett for goyim?
5:57 pm

And Jessica Biel proves you can be in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre film and still present an Oscar. Emphasis on present.
6:19 pm

Yowza--Magnetic Fields used in a dog food ad, The The in a spot for M&M's...this is the most depressing Academy Awards ever. Oh, and then the Pogues for Cadillac. Because Shane MacGowan drives one.
6:42 pm & later, too

As one of my co-watchers just said, watching Sherry Lansing, UC Regent, get an honorary Oscar: "She's my boss. She got an award." Oh, her "husband Billy" is William Friedkin, who oddly enough, has been invited twice to UCSB to do film and filmmaker events. Wonder if Sherry came along and the chancellor got to schmooze.
7:11 pm

Wow, Chinese spoken at the Academy Awards. I don't know about you, but I was hungry for another thank you ten minutes later.
7:45 pm

It's been bugging me all night, trying to figure out who Jack Nicholson looks like this evening, but now I get it. He must be auditioning for Daddy Warbucks for a Jupiter Dinner Theater production of Annie.
8:45 pm

Is it just me, or will Reese Witherspoon grow up to be Jay Leno? Check out that chin!
9:02 pm

Is it over? I just woke up.
10 pm

*Intentionally singular, as I'm trying to figure out who you are, now that my wife has her own blog to obsess about.

Wall Street Weak

Wall Street retreated sharply Friday as investors glumly absorbed the news that Anna Nicole Smith had died. "Sure there was a spike in oil prices, and two Federal Reserve officials commented that unexpected economic growth could prompt an interest rate hike," said stockbroker and longtime Playboy reader Jack S. Pecious, "but Anna--my god. Where will the tragedy end?"

Clearly the mood at the New York Stock Exchange was focused on inflation, peak oil, and silicone implants. One broker, who insisted on remaining anonymous, particularly after making a tasteless joke about how sad he was that now he would never get to do any "insider trading" with Smith, claimed, "I guess first everyone has to clear out pharmaceuticals from their portfolio. Second, the companies who own magazines like People and the Star are going to be scrambling until the next talentless bimbo comes along. This really hurts."

Pecious said through his tears, "She was a symbol for our nation, a beaming dyed blond light that anyone could become anything, if by anything you mean a reality TV star and centerfold. She was clearly our generation's Susan B. Anthony, except Anthony wasn't hot. I mean, you totally know why they replaced her dollar with Sacagawea--grrrr."

Ted's a Lucky Man...

Originally uploaded by mills70.

...but I took this photo, so we know who she's looking at.

Yeah yeah, the camera.

Wild Glyph

The AFP headline trumpets:

Soggy throng delights in Prince's Purple Rain performance

and I've never felt so thankful for an "r."

A Blogger and a Gentleman

Penultimate moment of the day--having Ed Asner say to me after I had to thank him for doing a photo op (and I paraphrase a bit): "I fucking hate having my picture taken. Back when we had to do the promo shots for Mary Tyler Moore and they would all be beaming with their fucking implants showing their ivories and I'd have to show my gap teeth...."

Ultimate moment: Getting caught up in a conversation about the 2007 baseball season with ex-Expo Warren Cromartie and Louis Gossett, Jr.

The weird week just gets weirder, and the go-go girls don't gyrate away.

Wasted Blogs and Wasted Nights

Still dragging a bit after a night of silhouetted go-go girls (see above--image courtesy Edhat), eating food that will appear on Food Network's Dinner: Impossible (air date tba), as chef Robert's assignment was catering our party for 350, and meeting Kofi Annan. Well, the actor who played him at the Mark Taper in David Hare's terrific Stuff Happens. (He also played Lisa's dad on Saved by the Bell, for those of you not into the the-a-tur.)

It's a weird life.