quote 1.

She began to make mistakes, trying to see with her eyes the things that intuition allowed her to see with greater clarity.

-Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

2007 oscars running diary. whatever.

tha's right - it's my second oscars running diary! to see what the deal is with these puppies, if you dont already know, why not read my first oscars running diary?

NOTE: I DONT WANT TO SPEND TEN YEARS ON THIS, WHEN I SHOULD BE WRITING OTHER, MORE IMPORTANT (OR AT LEAST JOB-RELATED) THINGS, SO IM JUST GONNA POST THIS, PRETTY MUCH AS IT WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN, SANS A LOT OF EDITING AND (ANY) LINKING. OTHERWISE, THIS WOULD BE A BEAST I HAVE NO TIME FOR. MUCH LIKE THE OSCARS THEMSELVES. ISNT IT IRONIC?

one key change from last year: instead of ranking the people who pop up in the diary as either stars, big stars, or legends, as i did last year, im simply grading them on a stardom scale of 1 to 10. a 1 would be a total non-celeb, like the guy at the deli who never gives me a plastic spoon with my yogurt, so i end up eating it with a plastic fork b/c that's the only extra plastic cutlery we ever have in the office. a 10 would be a worldwide, prolly-recognizable-for-generations-to-come-or-at-least-
has-already-been-recognizable-for-generations actor, like, i hate to say it, tom cruise. the grade, in parens, will follow the first mention of the given person.

also: since last year's diary, i have become too big for my proverbial britches, whatever those are, so i have fired brady as ombudsman, in so small part due to her less-than-sexy penchant for eating her own stomach hair. she still lives with me, so i think this is gonna be an awkward few weeks - or however long a cat's memory lasts - going forward, but them's the breaks.

now onto the show.

8.30. live from the kodak theater, it’s the 79th annual showing of my bar mitzvah photos! jk jk. it’s the 79th annual academy awards, aka the 79th annual most self-aggrandising ceremony in the world!

we begin with a really good errol morris montage of nominated dons, including stars, doing sound bites against that classic errol morris white background. sometimes the subjects' individual soundbites combine to form sentences ('im glad to be nominated,' 'i did editing,' 'id like to thank,' etc.). really excellent piece, actually. errol morris is just a clean, solid filmmaker. he doesnt flower it all up, like either of the burns brothers, whose grandiose documentary style i have to say i prolly prefer. what can i say? im quite grandiose myself.

8.36. ellen degeneres (8.2) walks out. i like ellen degeneres. generous, though misspelled, is part of her name for chrissakes. she’s wearing a red velvet suit. her routine is pretty funny. not so lol, but amusing. then it gets not funny at the end. hosting this thing is a no-win situation for the host. ellen's pointing out notable people in the audience. she points out abigail breslin (2), the girl from little miss sunshine. i saw the movie. it was good. off-beat good, heartwarming. but it’s getting way too much press. way too much. enough already. ellen also informs us that apparently peter o’toole (8) has been nominated eight times without winning. let’s hope he wins tonite otherwise it would be cruel. now we see jennifer hudson, former american idol star. then ellen hits the best joke of night: 'jennifer hudson, wasn’t voted the winner by america. then we have al gore here, who was.' bravo. im a BIG Al GORE FAN. this switches to leo decaprio. then ellen makes a hyper-lame joke about how there’s no hyper-lame joke to be made, but the ladies want to look at him. then: ‘if there weren’t blacks, jews or gays, there wouldn’t be oscars.' that one was too crammed down my throat. she continues: 'or anyone named oscar.’ that was at first funny, then i realized it doesnt really make sense. a trick joke. i mean, there are a lot of jews named oscar?

then she does this needless gospel number, where she goes into the crowd with a whole gospel-singing troupe, singing about god knows what. it's stupid and pointless. and im taking notes on this!



8.45. Nicole kidman (8.5) and Daniel craig (7). if it’s ever sitting in your seat, dont even bother asking it to get up - nicole kidman’s forehead moves for no man. that's all i have to say about that. they present the award for best art direction. i have pan. it wins. im 1 for 1!

8.48. mags gyllenhall (7.9) comes out to tell us about her having hosted the 'scientific and technology' oscars sometime before tonite - possibly this afternoon, possibly ten years ago. we might never know, and we surely will never care. mags is actually attractive, in that allison janney-brainy-attractive way. that’s all i have to say about her at this time, aside from the fact that it’s weird that her and jake gyllanhall are such big stars and are brother and sister. why aren’t simone and i like that? luck of the draw i guess.

8.53. will ferrell (8.5) sings a song about comedians not getting love at the oscars. jack black joins him. though i love them both, this is not funny. then another petey o'toole ref. o'toole looks half dead btw; his win might be posthumous by the time it's given. now john c. reilly joins the aforementioned pair. ive never understood his appeal. then the three do the award for makeup. i have pan. two for two! pan is shaping up for a historical night. it’s like a babeball player who hits three home runs the first game of season. nowhere to go but down.

8.59. speaking of nowhere to go but down, abigail breslin (again) and pursuit of happyness boy jaden christopher syre smith (1.8) (real son of will and jada apparently, btw) come out. i have learned that when you have a black child star, he/she always has three to four names in his name. i learned that on the cosby show. i hate child strars. everyone's lauhghing at some lame joke now, just cuz it was told by children. lame. they present for animated short, then live action short film. i have no picks for either. who cares about either of them?



9.02. danny and ilana walk in to find me eating brady's stomach hair. a tacit agreement to never speak of the incident again is unanimously and instantly ratified.

9.14. greg kinnear (7.9) and s. carrel (8, cuz of his starring in a current sitcom) come out to present the award for sound editing. they’re annoying.

this is also another category where apocalypto is nominated. it’s like, ‘apocalypto, sound and editing by the nazi party.'

9.17. james mcavoyy (1 cuz he's unknown to me) - some scottish dude (im proud for nailing his accent, same time as danny) - and jesssica biel (7.7). im a big fan of hers, but she doesn’t look that great. they do sound mixing. who cares.

9.20. rachel weisz (7.5) trots out to do best supporting actor. she doesn’t look that great either. how hard is it to look good on these shows? i have eddie murphy, even though i didnt see dreamgirls. the buzz seems to be going that way. it’s allen arkin. im certain this was a lifetime achievement award. he was good in sunshine, but im not amazing or anything.

9.30. randy newman (7.5) does the song from cars. with james taylor (8.5, still)! james taylor must have early alzheimer’s, cuz what other explanation could there be for the dude who wrote something in the way she moves, fire and rain and carolina in my mind doing a song for cars? someone couldn't save this man from himself? he’s probably sitting his own feces up there. dear god. vroooooom!

9.33. now melissa etherige (8.4) does her song from inconvenient truth. who cares. did her and ellen degenerese ever go out? doesn’t it seem like they did in your memory, but they didn’t? just seems like they’re by far the two most famous lesbians out there. i mean, they’re like the shaq and kobe of lesbians. how did they never end up on the same team?

9.35. leo d. (10) and al gore (8.9) trot out. leo asks gore if there’s anyting he wants to announce? he just talks about global warming again. bah humbug. they announce oscar.com as a place to learn how you can be more environmental - go visit that bastard now! leo d. kisses gore’s ass. c’mon, leo’s kissing your ass. just run already. id really like that. leo really pushes the former veep to announce. then he begins fake announcing, and they cut him off with the 'get-going' music. it was all canned, but i found it funny.

9.42. a shot of jack nicholson (9) reveals that he is now tot. bald. he looks like a giant mischievous wrinkled baby. it’s a little weird.

9.43. Cameron diaz (8.5) comes out. danny (0) says that she 'exudes retardedness.' i think she exudes hotness. this is a typical disagreement between danny and me. anway, justin t. tossed her out like refuse. it’s sad. she presents for animated feature. i have happy feet. it’s happy feet. this is so easy.

9.45. ben affleck (8.6) comes out. danny: "king of all chotches." aflac presents a short clip-film - an ‘affectionate look of how writers have been portrayed in movies in last fifty years.’ danny, ilana (1, for d & d) and i shout out the names of the movies we know. i cream them. they each get one. i get at least ten. it’s a cakewalk. im surrounded by mediocrity.



9.49. hellen mirren (8.6.) and tom hanks (9.4) for best adapted screenplay. i have notes on a scandal. the deshmarted wins. diced.

9.59. ellen comes out wearing an oscar bjorn (like a baby-carrier). my patience is wearing thin.

emily blunt (6.9) and anne Hathaway (8.2), both from the devil wears prada – liked it a lot – for wardrobe. danny: "marhsall slept with anne Hathaway!" i was thinking the same thing. they joke a little bit about how they’re both still beholden to meryl streep, who’s in the crowd. tot. unfunny. i have devil. marie antoinette wins. son of a bee sting. danny: "you have to say something about how odd this woman [the winner] looks." and thusly i have.

10.05. tom cruise (10) to present the career of sherry lansing, an executive. tom cruise is a tot. clown, but i like him. me: "tom cruise - total clown, right?" danny: "in contention for king of clowns." apparently, when sherry’s mother died of cancer, she started STOP CANCER, and she’s on the board of teach for america. also, as howard stern would say: 'her farts smell like chanel perfume.'

i guess the award is for lifetime achievement and charity or something. lansing seems classy, but really, why would i give a f*ck about her? i don’t. me: 'blah blah blah.'



then, ellen interviews clint e. (9.2) in the crowd. they do a little bit about a missing script or something, and then her wanting a picture of the two of them. steven spielberg (9.5) gets involved. the concept - that it’s funny that in this crowd, you ask someone if they can take a pic and it’s spielberg - is funny. the execution, however, is pathetic and not funny.

10.12. gwynneth (9) comes out. ilana: 'i am not digging that dress at all.' she does cinematography. surprisingly, i don’t have a pick. so who cares.

10.20. naomi watts (8.5) and robert downey jr. (8.5) come out for best visual effects. i have superman. danny: 'i think you’re going down in this one.' it’s pirates of the carribean. f*******************ck. when danny is right and im wrong, im convinced an angel loses its wings. just a theory.

10.24. ken wantanabe (7.99) and some woman i don’t know come out to announce some all-time historical films award thingie. wantanabe can barely speak english. i can barely speak japanese. but im not presenting in japan’s academy awards, either. even though those awards would benefit from my presence immensely. ive actually seen a few of the fifty movies they show clips of. whatever.

10.29. clive owen (8.5) and cate blanchett (8.6) for foreign film. i have water. it’s the lives of others. the winning dude literally jumps out of his seat. danny: 'that dude popped up like toast!' the dude barely sounds german at all. he speaks english really well.

10.32. g. clooney (9.2) trots out. danny to ilana: 'you think he’s good looking?' me: 'i love him!' best supporting actress. i have hudson. that’s the buzz. ilana: 'no way.' Clooney: 'and the oscar goes to, jennifer hudson. deluca, you are so dense.' ok, i made that last part up. jennifer hudson gets really emotional.

g-cloon just presented an award to j-hud. american idol has officially infiltrated the 'highest' levels of pop culture.

now im stopping for a while. i got two hours in.

cant stop for too long b/c at:

10.44. jerry seinfeld (9.1) comes out. he mentions comedian , which he was in and which didn’t win sh*t a few years ago, as an example of a documentary. ‘i love documentaries. they have a very real quality,’ he says. lol. i love this man. then he follows it with good routine about how movie theater code is: 'we get ripped off on food, we get to litter on the floor of the theater.' again, i love seinfeld. ‘these five incredibly depressing movies are nominees for…'

i have inconvenient truth. it’s truth. shot of larry david as al gore is handed oscar by lead guy who accepted. real bean moment, lemme tell ya.



10.50. clint eastwood (9.2). to present lifetime award to ennio morricone, who scored a lot of the spaghetti westerns (a lot of which clint was in). gina’s a big fan of his. apparently he scored that classic high noon showdown doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-woo whistle. a classic. and other big movies like the mission, bugssy. danny: 'this flying notes thing they’re doing (superimposing giant music notes on images from the films while his music plays) is stupid looking.' me: 'you’re stupid looking.' danny: 'how did i know that was coming?'

10.57. celine dione is singing for some reason.i couldn’t care less.


11.06. hugh jackman (8.6) and penelope cruz (8.7). best score. i don’t have a pick. im comatose.


11.12. tobes mcguire (9) and kirsten dunst (8.7) come out for original screenplay. i have sunshine. it’s sunshine. and it’s time i admitted i honestly have a talent for this.

11.30. switching back from an infinitely-more-interesting sportscenter, i see etherege won for her inconvenient truth ditty. i didn’t have a guess. then a commercial. we're past the three hour mark. this diary. is over. three hours, even with a couple of little breaks in there, is all that can be expected. ill still list the final categories, predictions and winners tomorrow.

next morning. i learn that important oscars went to mirren for actress (i was right), whitakker for last king (wrong), scorcese for departed (right) and departed for movie (wrong).

final note: the departed was a tot. emperor's new clothes for me. a good whodunit, but i couldnt have cared less about the characters, which is a shame, b/c scorcese is best at making us care about flawed characters. but everyone is pretending it's a great movie. no accounting for taste. this was a lifetime acheivement don for marty, through and through. he deserves all this recognition. just not for this movie, which was shallow. there, i said it.

i mean, compare the departed to raging bull, goodfellas, casino, or even the friggin aviator. you care about several characters in each of the former movies, maybe you care about one (mark wahlberg) at most in the latter.

final tally on categories in which i made predictions (in the time-stamped post below): 7 out of 16. that's a .437 clip. considering there are five nominees in almost every category, that aint bad.

my oscar predictions. i only made predictions in categories in which i felt had some earthly clue of who might win. which is not to say ive seen all the movies in every category i made a prediction on. id say ive seen about fifty percent of the movies in any given category i made a prediction on. predicted winners are bolded.

BEST PICTURE
"Babel"
"The Departed"
"Letters From Iwo Jima"
"Little Miss Sunshine"
"The Queen"

DIRECTOR
Alejandro González Iñárritu, "Babel"
Martin Scorsese, "The Departed"
Clint Eastwood, "Letters From Iwo Jima"
Stephen Frears, "The Queen"
Paul Greengrass, "United 93"

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Leonardo DiCaprio, "Blood Diamond"
Ryan Gosling, "Half Nelson"
Peter O'Toole, "Venus"
Will Smith, "The Pursuit of Happyness"
Forest Whitaker, "The Last King of Scotland"

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Penelope Cruz, "Volver"
Judi Dench, "Notes on a Scandal"
Helen Mirren, "The Queen"
Meryl Streep, "The Devil Wears Prada"
Kate Winslet, "Little Children"

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Alan Arkin, "Little Miss Sunshine"
Jackie Earle Haley, "Little Children"
Djimon Hounsou, "Blood Diamond"
Eddie Murphy, "Dreamgirls"
Mark Wahlberg, "The Departed"

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Adriana Barraza, "Babel"
Cate Blanchett, "Notes on a Scandal"
Abigail Breslin, "Little Miss Sunshine"
Jennifer Hudson, "Dreamgirls"
Rinko Kikuchi, "Babel"

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Guillermo Arriaga, "Babel"
Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, "Letters From Iwo Jima"
Michael Arndt, "Little Miss Sunshine"
Guillermo del Toro, "Pan's Labyrinth"
Peter Morgan, "The Queen"

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer and Todd Phillips, "Borat"
Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, "Children of Men"
William Monahan, "The Departed"
Todd Field and Tom Perrotta, "Little Children"
Patrick Marber, "Notes on a Scandal"

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
"After the Wedding" (Denmark)"
"Days of Glory" (Algeria)
"The Lives of Others" (Germany)
"Pan's Labyrinth" (Mexico)
"Water" (Canada)

ANIMATED FEATURE
"Cars"
"Happy Feet"
"Monster House"

ART DIRECTION
John Myhre and Nancy Haigh, "Dreamgirls"
Jeannine Oppewall, Gretchen Rau and Leslie E. Rollins, "The Good Shepherd"
Eugenio Caballero and Pilar Revuelta, "Pan's Labyrinth"
Rick Heinrichs and Cheryl A. Carasik, "Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
Nathan Crowley and Julie Ochipinti, "The Prestige"

COSTUME DESIGN
Yee Chung Man, "Curse Of The Golden Flower"
Patricia Field, "The Devil Wears Prada"
Sharen Davis, "Dreamgirls"
Milena Canonero, "Marie Antoinette"
Consolata Boyle, "The Queen"

MAKEUP
Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano, "Apocalypto"
Kazuhiro Tsuji and Bill Corso, "Click"
David Marti and Montse Ribe, "Pan's Labyrinth"

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
"Deliver Us From Evil"
"An Inconvenient Truth"
"Iraq In Fragments"
"Jesus Camp"
"My Country, My Country"

VISUAL EFFECTS
John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall, "Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"
Boyd Shermis, Kim Libreri, Chaz Jarrett and John Frazier, "Poseidon"
Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard R. Hoover and Jon Thum, "Superman Returns"

FILM EDITING
Stephen Mirrione and Douglas Crise, "Babel"
Steven Rosenblum, "Blood Diamond"
Alex Rodríguez and Alfonso Cuarón, "Children Of Men"
Thelma Schoonmaker, "The Departed"
Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse and Richard Pearson, "United 93"

2 minute warning.

happy birthday to me! im 28 - a number that keeps making me think of marshall faulk.

fittingly, it's a nice day out today.

and along those lines, here is my gift to you - the song for which this blog is half-named.

ps - eerie that my b-day should fall on ash wednesday, but this aint the first time. it last happened in 1996.

do you like grits and frank sinatra?

as lionel sings so tenderly - hello. like hitting the sweet spot in life? let's make a connection. swm seeks swf. must love cats, jimmy stewart, magical realism, and the bible. good heart is a plus, as is the ability to make pillows. must be creative and kind and quick and nice to look at, especially for blind people, who look with their hands. i want you, terrible. let's dress up in fat bug suits and visit the red pandas at the central park zoo, and eat inverted massaman triangles. caveat emptor: we can never watch chinatown together.

speaking of love songs.

this might be my favorite.

harry chapin (1942-1981) will always have a place in my heart. first introduced to the distinguished troubador by friends and counselors at scatico in the summer of 1993, i have returned to the album greatest stories live time and again ever since. one such time was this past friday night, when i wanna learn a love song, recently added to my ipod nano, came up in the 'shuffle songs' mode. (click on the link to hear the song.)

in this post, im not gonna go on about why chapin is so classy; suffice it to say, id make a long, effective, poignant case. i am simply going to trumpet the above-mentioned track, as evidence that chapin was a master live performer/expert songwriter. i recommend listening to the song itself (again, via the link), but the following transcript of the first minute of it proves my pt. i dont know when/where the concert was, but it doesnt really matter; the scene is timeless, universally emotive:

we hear the sound of in-between-songs applause at a concert, then a couple of guitar-tuning chords, indicating a song is about to begin.
male voice from the crowd: do it for nancy!
harry chapin: oh? for nancy?
multiple voices: yeah!
harry chapin: this is for nancy...i never did it to nancy, so i'll do it for her.
raucous laughing and applause.
harry chapin: a-one, a-two - chuckling - a-one, two, three, four...

his rejoinder was so off-the-cuff, chapin himself couldn't stifle a laugh. and you can hear how much the audience loves him. and then the song begins with such effortless chords, and the opening lyrics are so great:

I come fresh from the street, fast on my feet
Kinda crass and corny
Not much meat on my bones, and a whole lot alone
And more than a little bit horny
The old six-string was all I had
To keep my belly still
And for each full hour lesson I gave
I got a crisp ten dollar bill

every time i hear that sequence, no matter where i am in my life, it gets me psyched. chapin really was a novelist wrapped in a musician's soul.

here's to people who inspire.

as a child.

he once told me that the thing with his hair began after he started skiing. i divined the rest.

he was all of four years old at the time. four years old, and he had already met, and fallen head over heels for, his one true love. (even i dont pretend that my place in his heart was nearly as great as that of skiing; neither should anyone else who knew him.)

on the heels of intuiting - for what other real knowledge do little children possess, other than intuition - that he had found his soul on the snowy mountains, he surely had to resign himself to the fact that his raison d'etre was, for all intents and purposes, seasonal. due to his family's location in the world, he couldnt fly down the crystalline slopes but a few months out of the year.

no sooner did he fall in love than he had a long distance relationship on his hands, and this must have pained him in his gut - for that's where dread lies, alongside intution, which makes the two so easily confusable, to say nothing of the fact that they're often one and the same.

and so the hair thing was an outer extension of his guts, not his heart. his heart always belonged to the winter, to the mountains, and it longed for them always, but it was also always able to keep its steady rhythm, measuring time with a drumbeat. his gut, however, had to ache and sob with the seasons until winter was finally approaching, at which point it would turn over like a swollen wave, releasing all its tension with a cathartic crash.

at that magical time, when the air became decidedly crisper, his hair would naturally become a whitish blonde - it's true color, close to snow. then, from the tops of mountains, it would soak up the sun and take on a golden hue, more like wheat. but during the rest of the year, his hair would gradually assume different colors and shades, echoing the different, kaleidoscopic tones of the remaining three seasons - greens, browns, reds, always a little blue. his hairs had roots in his head, but those roots extended, invisibly, to his gut - always waiting for it to cease its rocking and wailing and to finally be at ease, content with the ability to ski, then left to start the whole changing process up again after his last run of the season.

his mother noticed the color changing soon enough to be able to dye it -whitish blonde - so that no one ever knew. she rightly decided that too much of this particular changing couldn't be good for a child's sense of self. even if it was natural.

then, when he was thirteen, she decided to let his hair color itself of its own extraordinary volition. and this brought about the peculiar phenomenon of people thinking that his parents had let him experiment - wildly, they would have liked to add - with hair dye at a premature age; when in fact, his hair was, for the very first time, in its natural state.

when i was with him, and we'd bump into someone he hadn't seen in a while, they'd always marvel - some of them smirking, some of them not - at his hair color. they'd ask him what color it had been the last time they saw him. they'd laugh. and his gut - which was also connected by invisible sinews to his face - would ease a bit to allow him the faintest hint of a smile. it was a smile like that on the mona lisa, which we saw together once. it was that smile that says, in the face of insecure scrutiny: i know exactly who i am.

wikipranksters are QUICK.

this will be removed soon enough, but the wikipedia entry for recently-deceased (as in, today) anna nicole smith currently contains this section:

Memorial plans

On February 12, 2007, men across the country will wear their zippers at half-mast to honor Ms. Smith's memory.

ps - just as i was about to post this, i checked back on wikipedia and the section's been removed. wikauditors are wicked quick too.