I thought Chris Rock's opening monologue was reasonably funny, but not especially Oscars-y. I still like Billy Crystal best. (And I love Chris Rock, it just wasn't the right venue for him.)

This seems to be a minority opinion, but I liked the having the nominees on stage/giving out some awards in the audience thing. It made the show feel a lot shorter, and it gave a better look at the nominees than the five seconds in the audience we usually get.

I hadn't seen many of the nominees, so I had no real opinion on the winners. (I want Scorcese to win, but it would be nice if it were for a movie people actually liked.) Swank and Foxx both went on too damn long in their acceptance speeches, though.

This is in'eresting (from Wired ):

Scorsese matched the record of Oscar futility held by a handful of legendary filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Altman, who also went 0-for-5 in the directing category.

Skipped the Oscar watch-n-post because, dude, 700+ posts! On a Monday morning! Sooooooo not happening.

Everyone at my watching party hated the new format too -- bringing all the tech category people up onstage is lame and condescending, and giving out the awards in the audience is almost worse.

Did anyone else notice that the seat-fillers were really not doing their job this year? Tons of empty seats in every shot.

I thought Chris Rock did a great job. I'm pretty sure that he didn't get to write his own material except for the monologue, so I'm willing to give him a pass on the mid-show banter.

Oh, and possible cereal:

Laura Linney looked weird, I liked Renee Zellweger's dress but not the hair, ditto Scarlett Johanssen though I kind of admired how very shiny she was, Drew barrymore and Salma Hayek were lovely, and Beyonce's best dress was the one she arrived in. Worst was the silver disco ball thing that managed to make her look like she had enormous hips, which she so does not.

Worst was the silver disco ball thing that managed to make her look like she had enormous hips, which she so does not.

Oh, I thought she looked fantastic in that. It was definitely the style du jour, but she was the only one with the curves to pull it off.

Did anyone else notice that the seat-fillers were really not doing their job this year? Tons of empty seats in every shot.

Yeah, that was weird.

New Nickel!!

[link]

Contains spoilers.

Also, later in the year another version of the nickel will debut - complete with spelling controversy.

edit: I dinna can spell...

ditto on what Lyra Jane said.

Laura Linney had bad eye make-up at the GGs too.

I hate nickels in general, but I like these new ones.

Bush jokes at the Oscars? I'd've thought they would steer clear of anything political after the Michael Moore stuff.

This may just be my environment here though, since everyone is very pro-Bush and support-the-administration. I hear that people in America think the Iraq war isn't going well, but I don't live it, so anybody joking on Bush in a public setting seems very outre.

No luck on briquettes, because I've been trying to find someone to give me any information on having a layette shipment sent out. Maybe I can talk the DH into going out for dinner.

It's starting to snow. Raquel, I think you picked a good winter to move to the Mediterranean.

You know, it's a good point that snow that doesn't shut the city down is a real pain. At least I am not having to deal with the snowplows either not showing up or burying my car this year. Still, I'll trade you guys for a couple of days!