Forget it, nothing to see here, I’m off today.  Read the paper instead.  I’ll be listening to my cool new favorite group and staring at a wall.  (Yes I did buy their CD at Starbucks and one of those stupid artisan cheese sausage biscuits, too!  What are you going to do about it, huh?)

If you’re in New York this morning, stop for a buttery nipple at the Penthouse Club.  The rest of you, grab a bagel. 

Man am I tired.  A., are you this tired?  Is it something in our water? 

Peace and love and sun-bright sparrows.

* To hire me to blog live from your next party, click here.

* If you are a movie star and need ideas on how to make future awards shows more eco-friendly, click here. 

2007 ACADEMY AWARDS! 

5:30pm – I call Shanthi to tell her I can’t make it to her Oscar party. “Um, yeah, thanks,” she says drily.  “They’ve already been on for half an hour, loser.”

5:35 – I finish G.’s 100th Day project and turn on TV.

5:35:30 – I tell Jr. to stop asking for candy, “No, you cannot have any candy, stop asking me.”

5:37 — A. says Rachael Weisz looks like “ivory”.

5:40 – A. tells Jr. to stop asking if he can have candy.

6:25 – G. and Jr. yell out at the same time, “Lightning McQueen! Mater!”  A adds, “As in, tuh-mater!”

6:36 – Al Gore is on and, unrelated, A. tells Jr. “No, you can’t turn the fan on, it’s freezing in here.” Jr. says, “but I’m hot!”

6:37 – I remind everyone about the time I met Al Gore.

6:37:15 – I remind everyone about the time I had dinner with Bill Clinton.

6:37:30 – Everyone rolls their eyes.

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… From the Events section of my new local paper:

A Carhartt fashion show from 5:30 to 7 PM at the Elks Lodge.  Tickets cost $25, which includes beer, a pulled pork sandwich and live jazz.

[P.S.  A. has those  pants.]

… My shopping list from last year’s Oscar party:

cold cuts (2 kinds, 8 people)
1 cheese
olives
5 oz. goat cheese
thyme
lemon
french-bread baguette
white cheese popcorn
1 1/2 lbs. green beans
1/2 cup walnut halves
8 oz. blue cheese
parsley
6 lbs. meaty lamb shanks
navy beans
4-5 carrots
bottled water
juice
sodas (sparkling stuff)
TV dinners
toilet paper
martini olives
brownie mix
ice cream bars

First, where’s the vodka? Maybe A. picked that up. There were two house drinks — both flavored martinis, one had pomegranite juice (recipe and ingredients by Janet). And lots of wine, sparkling and otherwise. Kathy liked the Tempranillo. Then allow me to remind you I have children — 2 of them — and they were the TV dinner eaters.  I didn’t foist aluminum food on my glittery guests. Though I did, apparently, foist toilet paper.

I copied the menu from of a magazine.  It was some sort of lamb stew (Gary raved), with a blue cheese-green bean salad, and some other stuff I forget.  A. came up with his very own secret lemon-thyme appetizer of goat cheese; divine.

John won the bronze hand, the prize for getting the most Oscar picks right and the night went off pretty well despite the part about Channel 2 not coming in on our TV. That wasn’t so good.

I’m just saying all this because I stumbled across my shopping list (for some reason it calls up QuickTime), and my ghastly penmanship, which is no reflection on Mrs. Critchlow, and thought to myself, at the start of another day of pounding rain — “Oscar parties are fun!”

They are, you should have one. This year they snuck up on us — the Oscars, not the parties — and we’re too far away (we moved) for anyone to come (we don’t have new friends.)  Also we haven’t seen the movies, which is key — A. gallantly sailed through them all last year, all categories. He had just started a new job days earlier and was a great trooper to shake up the drinks and stay up all night and then hop up wide-eyed and suited, hours later, to command his battalion.

This year we’ve been invited to a party, far away because we’ve moved, and I wasn’t thinking we’d go. But life is short and parties are good ways to remember it by and so maybe I’ll give my friend a call right now and tell her we’re in.

The Departed will win Best Picture, all others will mirror the Golden Globes, there. Now give me the hand.

Then We Came to the End. I’m intrigued, too, from an earlier plug I saw on Powells (which now I can’t find). Nice work, VOL, you might have found something.

A. and I watched Dick Cavett’s Katherine Hepburn interview last night; it’s riveting. She was 60-ish, I guess, and had never been on TV. So she stopped by his studio one afternoon to feel it out, as he’d been trying to get her to come on the show and they filmed from the get-to. She came in all business — moving misplaced tables, deriding the carpet, swapping seats and cups. She had the crew scurrying about terrified. You can’t hear what the crew is saying as they scramble to make things suitable but you do hear Hepburn say, “Don’t tell me about it, just fix it.”

Anyway, she decided to give him an interview right there, with Dick in his casual Friday white jeans and sneakers, herself elegantly swathed in sandals and khaki trousers and looking regal as a queen. It’s great TV. As she said, “it doesn’t matter much whether we stand or sit or dance around does it, as long as we’re interesting.”  No one danced but she was fantastically interesting.
Howard Hunt wrote over 70 novels and Gore Vidal found them “overheated,” and “slightly dizzy.” Who knew?

Eat your vegetables.

Because I have nothing else and because G. is sick, or maybe not I can’t seem to tell, I’ll give you this — a bit and piece of nothing.

* * * * *

It was the summer of the spider; they were everywhere. They brought doom but Ellen kept it to herself, Howard couldn’t be expected to see portent.

June started cloudy and the spiders were dormant, but when the sun popped out hot in July one morning, they were there in hundreds of furry-spindled shapes. Fat-bellied spiders strung themselves up between trees and archways, in the middle of everywhere Ellen wanted to go. They stared out at her, haughty and she batted their sticky thread from her hair as she stepped out the door, walked down the stone stairs, opened the garage.

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… Did you know?

Teddy Roosevelt said “bully” when he meant “awesome.”

He’s the “Teddy” of “Teddy Bear.”

He put a dead ibis in the icebox once, which made the waiter on the family houseboat scream. Oh, the humanity.

More at 5:00.

… There were two little coffee tubs in the drawer yesterday evening. This morning, after A. left, there was one. Marriages are made and shattered on this kind of stuff. I had the Tully’s Italian Roast and I want more!

Anyhoo.

Mark knows how to not read a book, buy his book!

And Dick Cavett is suddenly everywhere (again). Well, in two places. If you find more, please tell. I heart Mr. Cavett.

Hug a president.