^{Oscar Diary}

I'll start by saying I'm a total whore for the Oscars. I think it's great fun and I haven't missed it in years. Even now that I barely make it to a theater a handful of times I still watch the Oscars. I've also already admitted to reading Bridget Jones' Diary. I have no explanation for this other than I'm a total girl and that's not acceptable so let's just move on.

8:30 This may be the first time I've tuned in to ABC on purpose in years. Is anything on ABC anymore? I wouldn't notice if they turned into the all Jim Belushi network.

Wait. I've watched Monday Night Football. (Would a total girl do that? Huh?)

8:31 And the Oscar for Best Make Up goes to whoever shoots the person who did Billy Crystal's make up. He looks horrible, but he also looks like a horrible version of somebody else. Somebody old, vaguely Jewish, with cheek flaps. Joe Lieberman? Maybe it's because I haven't seen a Billy Crystal movie since When Harry Met Sally, when Crystal was young enough to play himself as a college student, but he looks awful. Martin Landau?

8:40 The opening monologue has a pretty low laugh to minute ratio, causing the following exchange:

Mrs. BoneDaddy: Does he get paid enough so he doesn't have to work the rest of the year?

Me: I hope so.

8:45 Crystal does his movie songs. He pokes some gentle fun at some actors. The people behind the Oscars know we tune in to see celebrities embarrassed. We like Crystal making fun of Eastwood's age or Nicholson's sobriety, but the Academy also wants to keep it nice enough to preserve the upscale image and to keep the celebrities coming back. So Chris Rock will never host. Russell Crowe appears to be a no-show. (Mrs. BoneDaddy was looking.) Did he skip because Steve Martin made fun of him hitting on that old lady from Titanic? This is the kind of thing people who run the Academy worry about.

8:52 Tim Robbins. Complete lock. The only way he could have missed was if voters were worried he'd pull a Michael Moore. He throws 'em a curve and doesn't even mention Iraq. Maybe just to prove he could. Remember those right wing freaks who uninvited him from the Baseball Hall of Fame saying he couldn't possibly keep his mouth shut about politics? Screw them. Maybe he's just mature enough to understand that he's going to have 1,000 interviews after this and 999 of them will ask him about Iraq.

I love Tim Robbins. Has everyone seen Tapeheads? Robbins and John Cusack in an 80s comedy about music videos, featuring Fishbone in a cameo as a country bar band. "Nay, Gods!" You must see this. Also Cradle Will Rock, a slightly more mature work that still manages to have Bill Murray as a right-wing ventriloquist and Jack Black as a gay student ventriloquist. (I'm not even going to ask if everyone has seen Bob Roberts because if you haven't I'd have to turn away from you in disgust. I haven't seen Mystic River, but for the these other movies, I'm pretty happy for Robbins.)

8:59 Another reason we watch the Oscars is to see starlet cleavage or starlet fashion mistakes. And I'm saying "we" just assuming there are other people like me. I'll pay attention even for actresses I can't stand. Case in point: Angelina Jolie. I'm annoyed when the microphone rises from the floor and blocks my view of her cleavage. Mrs. BoneDaddy says, "Do you think she's using that tape?"

9:10 Part of the reason I like the Oscars is to watch Mrs. BoneDaddy get worked up about things like boob tape. When a young-looking guy accepts the award for Finding Nemo, she says, "He's a baby!" He mentions a note he wrote in the 8th grade and she says, "Which was what? Two years ago?"

9:20 Renee Zellwegger give a dippy speech, because that's what she does, and looks pretty hot, which is something else she does. When you dress up starlets, they're either going to look hot and we get to appreciate their hot-itude, or they're going to look terrible and we get to make fun of them. And they're rich and famous so I don't really feel bad about doing it.

9:30 Pepsi puts an off screen crying baby in a commercial. Are they trying to kill me?

9:40 Liv Tyler breaks the streak of actresses looking decent. Her hair is slicked over to one side and then curled up. The Asymmetrical Sassy Flip. Who let her do that? Then she puts on clunky black framed glasses. You know those movies that transform some wallflower into a bombshell? She's auditioning to be the 'before.'

9:41 Sting starts to sing "You Will Be My Auld Land Syne." Time to do some dishes.

10:05 Lord of the Rings has been cranking along. Although this means I've gotten all my lesser picks right, watching is a total bore. No one will broadcast the short films, short animations or documentary shorts and then they expect us to be interested in the awards for them.

Who does Crystal look like? Arlen Specter? Edith from All in the Family?

10:25 The sound editing guy from Master and Commander says, "I'd like to thank the guys from Lord of the Rings for not being nominated in this category." Okay he doesn't, but he should.

10:30 Marcia Gay Harden, with her enormous pregnancy boobs and shellacked beehive hairdo, looks like Elvira. Is it evil to make fun of pregnant women? I'll stop. Bald, round Phil Collins looks like Bob Hoskins and Crystal looks like ... Ren? Or was it Stimpy? The skinny, skull-like one.

11:00 The Death Montage. They pulled out Bob Hope and Katherine Hepburn so their ovations wouldn't embarrass the other dead people. The people in the montage generate a low level sustained applause which skips a bit but doesn't disappear for Leni Refinstahl. That's right, folks, don't pause for the Nazi.

Leni Refinstahl. Great documentary film-maker, responsible for many innovations. Did you know she put her cameras into holes to film Olympic pole vaulters? Also a psychotic Hitler supporter, but she did the big cameras in holes thing.

11:15 Lord of the Rings wins for Best Song. If this were a Little League game the mercy rule would have kicked in.

General boredom and the focus on Bill Murray leads me and Mrs. BoneDaddy into a discussion of Stripes, which she has never seen. I try to get across that it's a hysterical and great movie even though it's still a stupid 80s sex comedy with scenes of John Larroquette spying on the women's showers. I think Stripes is far better than the more popular Caddyshack, for example, which has too much Chevy Chase and Ted Knight for anybody's good. Bill Murray's the only good thing in Caddyshack and he's a bit player. He is Stripes. For years, whenever somebody caught me getting a little confused I'd say, "Maybe I shouldn't have had all that cough syrup." It was great if you were driving. Most of those great lines only work with Murray delivering them, but I repeat them anyway.

"You're a lean! Mean! Fighting Machine!"

"Blooown up, sir!"

"This is one heavily -armed recreational vehicle."

And anyone surprised that Bill Murray could make it as a serious actor didn't pay attention during the "Who cried when Ol' Yeller died?" scene.

11:20 The women who wins for Foreign Film steals my 10:25 joke.

11:35 Tobey Maguire still strikes me as vaguely reptilian. I don't understand why anyone accepts him as the hero. He's standing at the podium about to present something and I don't hear a word he says because I'm trying to figure out if he flicked his tongue to its full extension, would it hit the second row?

11:36 Susan Sarandon still looks good. Mrs. BoneDaddy says her dress is "held up by force of will." Sarandon and Marcia Gay Harden don't seem to have gotten the memo that went around. Is cleavage suddenly out? Don't get me wrong, many of the women look good with their simple, understated dresses. Jennifer Garner looked great and I've always been fairly indifferent to her. Still, this is the Oscars. I want cleavage, fashion mistakes and incoherent rants. Also, I want another clip from Pirates of the Caribbean. Does Crystal look like Geoffrey Rush as the zombie captain?

11:45 Jeff Spicoli just won an Oscar. He should bang it on his forehead and say, "Dude, that was my skull! I'm so wasted." This is the big miss in my picks. Mostly, I thought that Lost in Translation, as a movie about adultery, would reverberate with an audience that commits a lot of adultery. Murray, in Translation, nobly turns away from temptation, even though he still gets to sleep with someone. He has the nobility of not cheating with his wife while still banging groupies. Don't get me wrong, I liked Lost in Translation, but this adultery angle added to the possibility that the voters will never get another chance to give Murray an Oscar made this pick for me.

Too Late to Go to Bed Early Lord of the Rings wins. This is a surprise to exactly no one. Seems fair to me. Peter Jackson made a landmark set of films. He sustained excellence over three movies unlike those Matrix guys and if we give him an Oscar now maybe twenty years from now he won't be tempted to go back and make horrible prequels. Although if he did, I bet he could cast Billy Crystal as a young Gollum.

I'm not staying up next year.