Oscar roundup
 

Charlize's dress and body looked fabulous, but her skin and face, not so much. I assumed she had a spray on tan, which her makeup person then topped off with bronzer. Maybe someone with HDTV can chime in with an opinion. It would take some fucked up inconsistent Hollywood vanity to sunbathe at the same time that she's getting other youth enhancing treatments. Such a shame that at the biggest moment of her career, she was unable to show any expression in the top half of her face. Botox at 28? Fucking Hollywood. Can't even relax a tiny bit before you turn 30.

Annie Lennox, on the other hand, seems to be aging fabulously well without the help of plastic surgeons or needle-wielding dermos (one can always hope). She's so striking, chic, and cool, you just have to love her.

As for Bill Murray, I just wanted to hug him. Why did Sean Penn have to get his Dead Man Walking Oscar this year?

Elijah Wood and his co-hobbits looked like they were on a field trip to the Oscars from Hogwarts. And Hermione appears to have grown up and married Peter Jackson.

Oscar roundup
 

Actually, the whole Salon article on the Oscars has me giggling so much I had to post some highlights. The reviewer must have been REALLY bored, and her imagination has gone into overdrive to compensate:

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/03/01/oscar/ [go get a free day pass]

"Janet Jackson ruined tits for everyone, so the vast majority of dresses were strictly Mormon prom. ... Nobody even had interesting new plastic surgery, apart from Joan Rivers, whose face looks like it was gnawed out of marzipan by the savages of Easter Island"

"That’s comedy so anciently borscht-belt it should have been in Aramaic. "

"The Wonderful Magical Black Person is now a cliché so absurdly pervasive I’m surprised there aren’t Franklin Mint collector plates of damp-eyed homeys gazing heavenward in a spiritual, Native American fashion..."

"The Road to Oscartown has always been paved with retardation and weight gain, which is why it was obviously Renee Zellweger’s turn to get best supporting actress -- fat, thin, fat, thin….she may be the greatest actress since Oprah. "

"Hilary Swank got the gold when she transformed herself into young Donny Osmond, and it almost worked for Salma Hayek when she grew her mustache out. "

"Spare me the sight of quaint, depression-era crowd scenes that look like they’ve been swaddled in tweeds by J. Crew, surging in rapture to majestic life-insurance violin orchestrations. That shit was strictly for Burl Ives, Pepperidge Farm and creamy ranch dressing."

""Mystic River" – eh. Sorry, boys: Emotional Violence for Dummies. While Sean is great at bawling openly towards the sky-cam in "Why hast thou forsaken me?" fits of bathos, unrestrained Mook Feelings do not count as emotional nuance, in my book. "

"I didn’t really dig the maudlin Irish sob-fest that was "In America" – it was a shamelessly heart-poking, Spielbergian emotional short-con -- basically "The Color Purple" for broke, co-dependant Catholic honkies.... Samantha Morton is the most Serious Actress going, these days, in that she tends to naturally look like she’s put on twenty extra pounds and a prosthetic nose"

Oscar roundup
 

She's not Hollywood skinny. At least she wasn't in "Lost..."

Didn't watch, but can someone tell me what was up with Alison Krauss's shoes? Just my opinion, but $2 million shoes will blow holes in your bluegrass street cred.

eta: What do I see in Scarlett Johansen? She seems nice enough to me. If I were to have a laminated list, I do not think she she would be on it.

Oscar roundup
 

She's finally gotten the cotton-candy prom dress of her dreams. Way, way too young for her--mostly a function of the baby-shower color, not the cut.

Likely at her age, it's the other way round, the bodice holding up the rack. Either way, smashing cleavage. Ditto Marcia Gay Harden--all those stick-figures (though she never was one) should get knocked up, it invariably improves their post-partum ability to fill out a dress. Though at least this year there were no Gwyneth Paltrow "Mo-om! I only had them leave extra room up top because you said I could wear the padded bra!" crappy-fit problems.


[edited to fix quotes. ncs]

Missed most of it but saw red carpet. nicole kidman, who I am not normally attracted to, looked great in that dress. not anorexic. naomi watts is not beautiful but average hollywood looking chick though she is aussie. liv tyler always looks off to me- is she crosseyed? beautiful skin of course but something is jsut a little off and hindering her from being a knockout. I finally figured out what I dont think is gorgeous about charlize theron- her mouth is weird. on the other hand, jennifer garner is gorgeous- love the bone structure. heath ledger and jude law are going bald.

i understand sean penn showed and spoke. what did he say? I love him and am glad he was recognized for the dozens of great perfrmances he has given. best actor of his generation.

another reality tv show
 

So I watched a show on A&E this weekend called something like House Builders, where 16 contestants build a house together somewhere in Florida and are voted off one by one until the final person wins the house that they built. Sorta like Survivor with a house. People were vicious in the game. One guy who apparently has the biggest hard luck story is (what I would classify as) a religious wackadoo. He had an alliance with another religious guy, who helped him out a number of times, but when the wackadoo dislocated his shoulder and the other guy got put up on the block for voting out (only 2 are "red hats" and eligible to be voted out each show), the wackadoo decided that God had spoken to him and told him to vote his friend off. God wants wackadoo to have the house and is wasting his/her time sending messages to wackadoo instead of dealing with the war and starvation issues.

Anyone besides me seen this show?

he made a dig at Bush along the lines of -- everyone in hollywood knows that there were no WMDs...

then he thanked people . he did mention that his kids thought it was presumptious and uncool to prepare an acceptance speech, and so he didn't have one. he then proved it by rambling through the thank yous and (it seemed) nearly forgetting his wife there at the end.

another reality tv show
 

No, but that sounds hilarious. And strangely like howard Stern's "homeless bingo" or whatever it was.

I've seen a bit of house wars (like 5 minutes), but not enough to understand the premise of the game. Sounds like it might be similar but with renovations and with families competing instead onf individuals.

Both sound like strange premises for a competition - I mean, would I really want to live in a house I had constructed or renovated myself? I suffer from delusions of competence as much as the next person, but I must say "um, no."

another reality tv show
 

I forgot to mention the best thing about the show -- it is hosted by George Wendt. Also they have this little door prop and the way they decide who will be red hats (and therefore up for elimination) is that they have all contestants pick keys from a plate and then take the keys and try to open the door. Those who draw the 2 bad keys are unable to unlock the door and walk through to the wooden plank on the other side.

another reality tv show
 

Last summer, I exchanged my manual labor in the renovation of my brother's apartment for the design and installation of a new fireplace. My brother is an architect, and I figured it'd be no big deal for him to figure out how to take my fire place out of the disco era. (At some point in the 70s or 80s, someone thought it'd be a grand idea to mirror in the fireplace. We have absolutely no idea what is on the other side of the mirror.)

So we finally got around to talking about the fireplace on Sunday, and not only has he been rethinking my fireplace, he's been rethinking my kitchen and bathroom too. The "let's take a weekend to take down the mirrors and put something else up" has turned into "let's gut the kitchen and bathroom and tie the whole house together with different uses of 1"x1" tiles." Of course, he keeps dangling phrases like "designer discount" and "can be done only for a couple thousand dollars" in front of me so I don't keep my focus just on the fireplace. At one point, I think he'd doubled the size of my house and added a whole new wing.

another reality tv show
 

There must be something wrong with me, because this whole paragraph makes me incredibly hot.

another reality tv show
 

Whatever you do, don't do this. Never decide to gut, remodel, or do any repairs to the only 2 rooms with running water. It will suck.

another reality tv show
 

I'm glad it's not just me. What can I do to get my brother to become an architect?

Another crappy movie
 

Christian Slater is looking to make a film about his adventures (with Affleck) at the strip club in Vancouver which is purportely the cause of the Bennifer break up.

OK, Slater and Affleck in a strip club. How hilarious can that be? Will there be tits? Lots and lots of canadian implants? Somehow I just don't see hilarious. canadian boobs