· Music round-up: The Who at Long Beach Arena; Division Day at Spaceland; Simon Dawes at the Echo;, Go Betty Go at The Scene.
· United 93 came away empty handed at the Oscars, but actors Christian Clemenson and Trish Gates will be on hand at a special AFI Awards screening at the ArcLight tonight to discuss how director Paul Greengrass was happy just to be nominated.
· Silver-haired CNN newsbot Anderson Cooper interviews media icon Walter Cronkite at the Gibson Amphitheatre, where no less than a third of their talk will be devoted to discussing the impact Anna Nicole Smith's death has had on the world of 24-hour cable news networks.

As we mentioned earlier, the glamorous and insane Sharon Stone and her failed comeback vehicle, Basic Instinct 2, won more awards than any other at the Razzies—the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation's flatulent response to Hollywood's biggest night. Stone picked up Worst Actress, and the film won Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Prequel or Sequel. The Wayans brothers' dwarf-in-a-diaper comedy, Little Man, won two awards: a shared Worst Actor award for the siblings, in addition to Worst Screen Couple (beating out Stone's "lopsided breasts"), and Worst Remake/Rip-Off. M. Night Shyamalan won Worst Director for Lady in the Water, and a Worst Supporting Actor Razzie, for casting himself in the "pivotal role of a writer whose book will one day bring salvation to humanity." The results are somewhat bittersweet, as we were hoping until the very end that there would be a Wicker Man upset, and that the bad movie genius that is Nicolas Cage in a bear suit clocking a coven of honey-hoarding schoolmarmish types would get its proper due. Alas, it was not meant to be.

Between Ellen DeGeneres' monologue attack and Jack Black's follow-up, operatic threats about bludgeoning sentimental Best Actor upset candidate Peter O'Toole to death with his Nickelodeon award, the antediluvian performer had already suffered enough indignities in the course of his winless Oscar night, but now a gossipy cater waiter adds to the slights by passing along a story about O'Toole's unexpected visit to the event's food prep area to The Envelope's Kudos Crasher:

Hotshot HBO exec Michael Fuchs held his famous (among all the right people) Oscar party at his East Village-ish penthouse last evening, and all sorts of high-profile people were invited. How do we know? Because he forgot to Bcc, of course! The strangely diverse guest list (Bette Midler! Various Tisches! Michael Wolff! Katarina Witt! Tim Zagat! Mort Zuckerman! Uh, Nikki Finke?) after the jump.

An eagle-eyed reader directed us to return to the TiVo for a replay of Martin Scorsese's Best Director victory speech, during which an inopportune cut to audience reactions clearly spotlights the hand of Clint Eastwood's wife taking a couple of swipes at the Oscar-nominated helmer's crotch. Sure, she's probably just brushing some crumbs from his pants, but she just as easily could be patting Lil' Clint, doing her best to console her husband's suddenly withering manhood after a disappointing loss to an inferior Scorsese effort.

Our initial disappointment that this video didn't deliver its promised clip of Gwyneth Paltrow talking about the YouTubes at last night's Oscar ceremony quickly gave way to awe as we realized what we'd actually stumbled upon: Some cameraphone footage smuggled out of VF's legendary Morton's bash, in which a newly bald Jack Nicholson proves once and for all that he only shaved his head to play the part of a terminal cancer patient and not because of any mysterious malady of his own, demonstrating his incredible health by removing his shirt and jumping repeatedly into a hastily constructed bonfire. The audio's garbled to the point of incomprehensibility, but we could swear we hear him say, "Now bring me Reese Witherspoon. All that bouncing around's got me all revved up!" after his final tumble through the flames.

We realize we left many of you hanging Friday, with news that BravoTV.com executive blogutante Andy Cohen had just swept into town for a few days of aerobic famewhoring. Well, the follow-up report is now live, and we wouldn't dream of not passing along the details of Andy's Oscar-weekend whereabouts. The show itself gets low marks, though Andy remains frustratingly tight-lipped about where he actually saw it. (Perhaps anything less than having experienced the ceremony from atop Leonardo DiCaprio's shoulders might not have been deemed worthy of a mention.) The very act of shaking Oprah's hand, meanwhile, gets three solemn paragraphs, after which we get some fly-on-the-wall observations about the temporary L.A. branch of Soho House:

· Oscar Recap Mania! Var and THR remind you about the Oscar moments you were too drunk to remember this morning. [Variety, THR]
· In your face, Altman, Hitchcock, and Kubrick! Martin Scorsese's Best Director win betters the recognition received by those directing legends, who had to settle for honorary Oscars (Bob and Alfred) or nothing at all (Big Stanley). [Variety]
· Warning, members of the media bold enough to suggest that The Departed might not be one of Scorsese's better films: Producer Graham King will melt off your fucking face with lasers emitted from his eyeballs. [THR]
· More Oscar Fun Facts: Alan Arkin's win comes 40 years after his first nomination. That offers some hope to Eddie Murphy, who'll only have to work until 2047 to have a shot at repeating the feat of the man who stole his Oscar last night. [Variety]
· The Oscar telecast's ratings are up slightly over last year's Crash-marred debacle, bumping from 2006's one billion viewers to last night's 1,000,000,002. [THR]
· Anyone who claimed to know that The Departed would win Best Picture is full of shit, says Var. Nonetheless, we'll go on the record as being full of shit: We totally knew! [Variety]

An operative who attended last night's Oscar viewing party and fundraiser at The Abbey sends in this report, where television's Ghost Whisperer demonstrated an aloofness and general lack of Oscars spirit that set hundreds of Gay Whisperers' tongues wagging, while Joe "I Will Trade You This Fine Girls Gone Wild T-Shirt For a Lifetime Of Shame And Humiliation" Francis impressively demonstrated how he he can find eager female (at least they looked female) companionship anywhere—even at WeHo's premiere sausage factory:

Blogging from the press room at the Academy Awards, Variety's On the Town asked Officially Oscar-Recognized The Departed producer Graham King the uncomfortable, inevitable question about Paramount emperor Brad Grey's losing appeal to have the opportunity to hop onstage and clutch the Best Picture statuette he helped win for a rival studio:

· Sharon Stone (who swept the Razzies!) brought the dominatrix-auctioneer routine she perfected in Berlin to Elton John's annual AIDS fundraiser, where "unsteady on her feet and slurring her words, [she] rambled, 'I've been sitting at my table with P. Diddy and Jon Bon Jovi, and I'm a little messed up.'" She did manage to coerce $4.2 million out of attendees, for auction items like a $65,000 soccer lesson from Dave Beckham, and $125,000 to have James Blunt promise he wouldn't perform all evening. [AP]
· Vanity Fair's Little Gold Men blog has updates and photos from the VF party, where they note a preponderance of "impossibly glowy women" and an extremely not-glowy Nikki Sixx. [VanityFair.com]
· Anderson Cooper and Daniel Craig shared a corner banquette at the VF party swapping secret agent tips, while party host Elton John planted a deep, passionate kiss on American Idol judge Simon Cowell, who couldn't help but gush all evening that "the little girl I once accused of being utterly forgettable and dressed like an overstuffed burrito had finally arrived!" [Towleroad]
· Enjoy TMZ's nausea- and seizure-inducing handheld camera footage of celebrities entering the Soho House after party, including "bushy-browed Martin Scorcese [sic] and a boob-a-licious Courtney Love." [TMZ]

One of the last things we saw before we collapsed head-first into our laptop mere moments after the final credits rolled on the Oscar telecast was this press release from Access Hollywood, concerning the virtue-protecting jinx eventual Best Supporting Actor usurper Alan Arkin put on precocious co-star Abigail Breslin:

We're always a little surprised that studios and exhibitors don't halt all operations in solemn observance of Oscar weekend, but we suppose that even Hollywood ostensibly pauses to celebrate excellence in its field, it still needs to make sure people have access to the crap that keeps it in business. On to the box office numbers!

Welcome once again to our Oscars liveblog, where for roughly the next four hours and seventeen minutes (adjust your Oscar pool tie-breaker answer accordingly), we'll be huddled over our laptop, offering alcohol-delayed commentary on the very things you're watching on your TV at home. And because we're not afraid of the kind of cutting-edge innovations that will be on display in the Academy Awards telecast, this year we'll be blogging from inside a Lucite tank that will slowly fill with refreshing, liver-perforating pink André champagne; should the show exceed four hours, we'll perish by drowning unless our quick-thinking Sober Intern can fish us out before our lungs have completely filled with affordable sparkling wine. Should we not survive, embeddable YouTube video of our grisly demise will be made immediately available.

· Oscar crashes on our couch for the weekend, and shows up with a jailbait date.
· Britney Spears liberates herself from her split-ended demons. Will the real eBay sale please stand up? Her Beverly Hills house goes up for sale. In again, out again, in again. PAPS: Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? K-Fed pops by Promises.
· Welcome to The CC, bitch.
· Ray Liotta scores a DUI, we're just not sure what he was U the I of.
· The Obamaship has landed. David Geffen never forgets. Hillary drops into the CAA deathstar.
· The Week in Anna Nicole: Clown video to haunt your dreams. Did you know you could cry with a Bronx accent? Kimmie has to set the record straight after a malicious Kimmie-like spreads anti-Sternian venom.
· Berry Gordy gets an apology for Dreamgirls. Now he owes us one for The Last Dragon.
· L.A.: The City of Brotherly Contempt.
· Idol Camp: Your child will never forget the summer they were publicly humiliated for being neither special nor memorable.
· Don't forget: We'll see all of you back here Sunday at 5 pst/8 est for our Oscars liveblog. Come dressed in your snazziest lesbian tuxedo!

· Sacha Baron Cohen sued again, this time because Ali G ran at the mouth about knocking up one of Cohen's childhood friends.
The latest in MirrenPorn: Buying a microwave! Hott!
· The Miramax party smells nice, but was pretty dead.
We refuse to believe Katherine McPhee's breasts are real until we're granted a Tyra Banks-level tactile test.
This just in: DeGeneres nervous, excited about her big night! Also: lesbian.
· Oh yeah, and so is Suze Orman.
· Fantasia flips off America. We're sure it was intended just for Cowell, not the whole country.

· Sacha Baron Cohen sued again, this time because Ali G ran at the mouth about knocking up one of Cohen's childhood friends.
· The latest in MirrenPorn: Buying a microwave! Hott!
· The Miramax party smells nice, but was pretty dead.
· We refuse to believe Katherine McPhee's breasts are real until we're granted a Tyra Banks-level tactile test.
· This just in: DeGeneres nervous, excited about her big night! Also: lesbian.
· Oh yeah, and so is Suze Orman.
· Fantasia flips off America. We're sure it was intended just for Cowell, not the whole country.

Paparazzi caught Kevin Federline driving through the gates of Promises Malibu today (motto: "We're not making any!"™), where inside*, he found the mother of his children undergoing the latest in rehabilitatory advancements, chained to a radiator in a Confederate flag cut-off. From People.com:

Friday
· Music round-up: Veruca Salt at the Viper Room; The King Cheetah at Spaceland; Jon Brion at Largo.
· Maya Angelou, a poet with whom even illiterate mouth-breathers like ourselves are familiar, lectures at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. [via flavorpill]
· Naive socialites! Eccentric aristocrats! A duffel bag containing a million dollars in cash! Check out "Noblesse Oblige," running all weekend at the Stages Theatre.
Saturday
· More music: Mia Doi Todd at the Smell; Gwendolyn & the Good Time Gang at Amoeba; Too $hort at the Viper Room.
· Swap Meet! Swap Meet? "Swap Meet is a monthly gathering where you can come with your favorite music files and trade them with other physical human people. Then, holler along with the dulcet tones of handcrafted MIDI karaoke. It's like the Internet, but with people and beer." Yup, we're sold, as our internets are too often lacking for both. At Betalevel.
Sunday
· You can't escape the 79th Annual Academy Awards, so why even try? We'll see you here for the liveblogging. Be drunk, unless your substance abuse recovery program specifically frowns upon such behavior. And even then, consider a relapse. It's not gonna be easy to get through all four-plus hours without the help of some 80-proof demons.

Because the only way we know how to watch the Academy Awards is drunk to the point of blindness on cheap champagne while pounding a laptop keyboard with clenched fists and cursing a cruel and uncaring Creator for delivering undeserved victory into the hands of the artistically bankrupt, we will be liveblogging the Oscars telecast for a third straight year, generously sharing our semicoherent, real-time expressions of despair with those who, like us, are unlucky enough not to have anything better to do on Hollywood's Biggest Night. While we've previously promised the morbid spectacle of the first-ever liveblogging suicide, we fear that if last year's Crash win couldn't drive us to slit our own throats with the shards of a Brokeback Mountain screener, the far lesser cinematic evils of this year (really, who can get that whooped up about Little Miss Sunshine or Babel?) probably won't be enough to push us over that particular edge. Still, one never knows how one might react to news that Children of Men has lost to The Black Dahlia in the cinematography category while in André's volatile, bubbly clutches, so please do drop by on Sunday evening just in case.