Jerry Lewis made me feel old

We at Chez Shoes enjoyed the 81st annual Academy Awards show quite a bit, dining on salad and salmon while we made our usual (badly informed and highly prejudicial) comments on everyone and everything.

To keep this short and sweet, I will just make a list of my highs and lows:
Highs - The dress Penelope Cruz was wearing. Kate Winslet's dad whistling from the audience.
Melissa Leo. Richard Jenkins. The '5-previous-winners-introduce-the-nominees' concept (loved, loved, loved that!!) Queen Latifah. Heath Ledger's family. Sophia Loren and Shirley MacLaine. Meryl (great as she is) NOT winning. Beyonce. Some humility and genuine gratitude. More ethnicity. (although I could also put that on my lows list as I am compelled to wonder it has been all these years???)

Lows - Goldie Hawn. That vampire dude from Twilight. Eddie Murphy's lackluster presentation of the Jean Hersholt award. Jerry Lewis being 82 and looking it. Mickey Rourke losing out. The film montages - no classics and way too much hyper-editing. Christopher Walken's hair. Jessica Biel's dress.
Ditto the obit section...just give us a few still shots so that those of us over 15 can focus please.
It was a pretty pleasant night, and The Wolverine did a passable job of hosting.

To be honest, I had a hard time concentrating on the show as I was poised between dread and grief all night - waiting for (and hoping against) a call from my daughter, who is in Bolivia and was last heard sobbing uncontrollably from a roadside phone booth as she pleaded to come home.
That is a long story for another time, but she is on an educational/volunteer service trip to South America and going through some serious culture shock and homesickness....
"This too shall pass" seems like seriously weak sauce when one must shout it over thousands of miles, but I keep trying to pass her courage and self-reliance messages because...well, what else can I do?

There is much, much more I could write about - but duty calls (bills gotta get paid).




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