Live Blogging the 83rd Annual Academy Awards

7:37PM Hated the intro.  Stupid.
7:40PM "I just saw Marky Mark" comment from James Franco's grandma: classic.
7:41PM Alice in Wonderland for Art Direction!  "Why didn't I lose that 20 pounds?"
7:47PM Cinemetography award goes to Inception!  Well deserved.
7:49PM I highly doubt anybody really cares about Britney Spears' important announcement tomorrow.
7:52PM Kirk Douglas is 94!  He doesn't look a day over 107.
7:53PM BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS????  I predicted Amy Adams, but then changed it to Melissa Leo...because she won the Golden Globe.  And she won the Oscar!  Then she acted like she couldn't believe it, which I hate.  She just dropped the F-bomb!  Whoa.  And then she acted like a crazy person.  And then made fun of the old man Kirk Douglas by stealing his cane and pretending to walk with it!  Classic.  Crazy person, I tell ya.  Crazy person.
8:00PM James Franco seems like he's totally stoned.
8:02PM Mila Kunis' boobs look SO good.  What a pretty dress.  Am I right?

Photo credit to justjared.buzznet.com.

8:03PM I love Justin Timberlake!
8:04PM Short film went to...I can't remember, I was busy typing.
8:05PM Toy Story 3 is totally going to win.  I called that.
8:13PM Adapted Screenplay...James Brolin's white coat is way too tight.  Was that a joke Aaron Sorkin?
8:16PM Original Screenplay...King's Speech.  David Seidler.  Loved that movie.  "Late bloomer" joke - amazing.  First 'near tears' moment: David dedicating the award to the stutterers of the world.
8:23PM LOVING this song Anne Hathaway is singing about Hugh Jackman.  James Franco as Marilyn Monroe?  Not funny.
8:26PM Russell Brand is hilarious.  Best Foreign Film Oscar goes to sweaty armpit lady.  Susanne Bier.  Forever remembered by billions of people with wet armpits.  At first it was a shadow.  BUT NO.  It didn't move with the lights, like shadows do.  Because it was a wet spot.  And then one on the other side.
8:31PM Supporting actor.  Christian Bale.  He got the Golden Globe.  And the Oscar.  Again I'm surprised by this British accent.  It's his job right now to make himself likeable.  I think he did OK, especially with the plugging of that guy's website and then tearing up when thanking his wife.  (Although it kind of looked like he forgot her name!)  Kudos, Christian Bale, you almost made me forget that you threw that phone at that guy.  Second 'near tears' moment of the night.
8:42PM Best Original Score - I predict Inception...but Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails got it!  WOW, Trent Reznor is so poised and professional!  I can hardly recognize him.
8:46PM Scarlett Johannson's hair is amazing.  Best Sound Recording...goes to...Inception.  Well deserved.  This woman Lora Hirschberg is a good example of why you need a good bra people.  Who is styling this lady for the Oscars, for real?  Eeks.
8:49PM Sound Editing. BO-RING...Goes to Inception.  Well deserved, and whatnot.  Again. Scarlett Johannson looks freaking amazing, and whatever for the Oscar going to Sound man what's-his-face.
8:54PM I just LOVE Marissa Tomei.  But this part of the Oscars always bores the CRAP out of me.  BORING.  "Congratulations, nerds."  haha funny James Franco brought it back around.
8:56PM OMG I love Cate Blanchett.  Her dress is so good.  "that's gross", to the wolfman stuff. haha.  Love you Cate Blanchett.  LOVE YOU.
8:57PM Wolfman white ponytail.  NERD.  NERD NERD NERD. 
8:59PM Costume design.  Alice in Wonderland.  NO NO NO to the see-through gloves on this one lady.  You're a fantastic costume designer.  But the see-through gloves?  Bad bad idea.  And you totally phoned in your acceptance speech.  It's OK to read the speech, but Wikipedia-ing info about Alice in Wonderland and then reading it off?  BORING.
9:02PM Randy Newman is amazing.  YES but I can't hear you.  Turn up the vocals. 
9:05PM Mandy Moore and the guy from Chuck singing a song?  I didn't know they sang.  haha Her dress is really BIG.
9:13PM I should really watch short films.  These look so good.  And poignant.  Luke Metheny.  "I shoulda got a haircut!"  Classic.  His mom did craft services for the film.  Awesome.  Sasha Gordon, you're a lucky girl.
9:19PM LOVED the made up musical part with making songs from Toy Story and Harry Potter and Twilight and The Social Network.
9:19PM OPRAH! OPRAH! OPRAH! OPRAH! OPRAH! OPRAH! 
9:21PM Banksy didn't win Best Documentary.  I don't even know if he showed.
9:23PM Film effects.  Boring.  I don't even know who won.  But Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. are pretty good lookin'.  Including the white ties.
9:36PM The Social Network won another one. Yay good for them.
9:42PM Florence and the Machine lady looks and sounds great.  Love the golden microphone.
9:44PM GWYNETH!  GWYNETH!  GWYNETH!  GWYNETH! GWYNETH!  GWYNETH! 
9:47PM I have a feeling Jennifer Hudson's boobs would look very pancake-y, flap-jacky, if you will, if she were to be naked.  But she looks great! 

Photo credit to justjared.buzznet.com

9:49PM Randy Newman is so cute.  Glad he won now for the 2nd time only after 20 nominations.
9:55PM Halle Barry
10:01PM Hilary Swank has awesome arm muscles.  Her dress is really pretty.  King's Speech wins best Director!  Touching story about how his mom recommended this play for him to direct.
10:14PM Best actress - oh it just has to be Natalie Portman. And it is!!! No more "near tears" moment. I actually for reals cried when she thanked her fiance for giving her the best role ever (in her tummy. the BABY! so touching.)
10:23PM Colin Firth is totally gonna win.  Mark Darcy you are so sexy.  "My career's just peaked."  I'm so glad I watched the King's Speech last night.  What a good movie.  Watch it now.
10:33PM All the nominees for Best Picture were SO GOOD.  But...I think the King's Speech is gonna win it.  Because usually Best Director and Best Picture go together.  And it won the Golden Globe.  YAY!!! It won! 
10:42PM Love the little kids and the song. 


This is why I always win the Oscar Pool SUCKAS.  Cuz I'm good.  I'm that good.  And a little obsessed.

Live Blogging the Oscars Red Carpet

I LOVE award shows so MUCH.  And I love celebrity news.  So of course, I can't miss the Oscars.  I can't say this with one hundred percent certainty, but I think this is my 34th year watching them.  In other words I'm pretty sure I've never missed an Oscar night in my entire life.  Even last year when I missed them due to travel, I was able to watch them on my mom's TIVO in June.  Phew!


ABC Red Carpet show:

6:01PM Whoa Tim Gunn is super excited to be there! 
6:02PM One-shoulder dresses on interviewers Barbara Roberts and Maria Menunos.  Must be a trend this year.  Crap.  All my ball gowns have two shoulders.
6:03PM I wonder if Banksy will show up?
6:04PM Mila Kunis wasn't a dancer before Black Swan? whoa. And she sounds so cute with her sick voice!
6:05PM Holy crap there's a lot of press on the red carpet.
6:06PM Jesse Eisenberg should wash and cut that hair.  He seems in real life no different than how he played Zuckerberg.
6:12PM Tom Eichinger called me on Skype and I told him I gotta go! The Oscars are on!
6:14PM Jennifer Lawrence has a deep voice but I love that red dress.
6:14PM Didn't Kevin Spacey do something embarrassing a few years back?
6:17PM ICK I hate Melissa Leo's dress.  Wait, no I like it.  I can't decide.  It's ugly. Slash beautiful.

Kinda looks like one of those cut out snowflakes you make in third grade.

6:18PM I would marry Justin Timberlake.
6:18PM 5th graders.  Boring.  Wait.  No.  Not boring.  Inspirational.  "Mr. B" looks best not in cornrows.  He is SO much cooler than my fifth grade chorus teacher. 
6:27PM Cate Blanchett looks so much cuter in my haircut than I do.  And I LOVE her Givenchy dress! Stunning.

Photo credit to osoyou.com

6:30PM The Mominees!  What a great idea! Moms are so cute.
6:31PM Mark Ruffalo's wife's dress is ugly.  I don't like this one shoulder thing. 
6:32PM Marissa Tomei's dress is completely FANTASTIC!  50's Vintage.
6:37PM Scarlet Johansson says that most people bring a snack to the show, because it's super long.  Her hair looks awesome.
6:42PM I wonder if Annette Benning gets sick of people asking her if she's sick of losing to Hilary Swank?  Also I think she gave away an important plot point when she said that Julianne Moore falls for Mark Ruffalo in the movie.  Oops.  Maybe she assumed eveybody's already seen it since it's been out forever.
6:43PM Valentino looks like crap.  Then again, he's 126 years old.
6:48PM Anne Hathaway looks great.  GREAT.
6:49PM Mark Wahlberg in a bow tie.  Lots of dudes wearing bow ties this year.
6:50PM Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth look great, and The King's Speech was a great movie.
6:52PM Reese Witherspoon sounds so CUTE with her sick voice!
6:54PM Love Robert Downey Jr's white tie.
7:01PM Jennifer Hudson.  WOW.  She looks STUNNING.
7:01PM Natalie Portman looks great.  But why is her stomach so fat?  Just kidding. She's Pregnant. Get it?
7:03PM I am in love with James Franco!
7:05PM I am in love with Justin Timberlake!
7:06PM Sandra Bullock.  No jewelry except a simple bracelet and ginormous diamond earrings.  Gorgeous.
7:13PM Nicole Kidman looks pretty good.
7:13PM Can't wait for Gwyneth Paltrow's performance! Calvin Klein is always a good choice for her.
7:15PM It's a little weird to hear Christian Bale's British accent.  I knew he was British, I guess...


TIME FOR THE SHOW!!

I Think I Might Have Scared This Man

You really get to see amazing sights in Costa Rica.  A monkey swinging overhead in the trees.  Five people on one scooter.  Oxen yoked together pulling a cart of watermelon for sale.  Once Nicole saw a man riding in the engine of a car.  No joke. 

Yep.  Amazing sights.  You may be eating rice and beans at a family-owned restaurant in a small town in the middle of nowhere, and a local man walks in wearing a Minnesota Vikings jersey.  And then you run at him screaming,  "That's my state!  That's my team!  I am from Minnesota!"  Then he crouches down and puts his arms over his head to protect himself from your flailing arms.  And then you run and get your camera and run at him again.

Can you see the fear in his eyes as I GRAB his arm and point it at the camera?  Look at my crazy eyes.

After the attack, he sat right next to me at the lunch counter and ate his rice and beans and we did not talk.  After all, I couldn't care less about football.

I am a Creepy Old Man

So I'm at the beach the other day, and I saw this little guy run past.  His butt was hanging out, he had ice cream all over his face, and it made me laugh hysterically at how cute he was.  Then he started karate chopping the air and running around in the waves, making his dad look and laugh.  I wanted a picture.  Or three.  So I went running after him with my camera.  But he only faced me for the photo.  Obviously.  So I told him in Spanish to turn around so I could get a picture of his butt.  His dad was standing there, so I felt weird and creepy but still I told him, "I just want a picture of your kid's butt."  I believe the word I used though was 'culo' which technically means 'a**'.  You see, Spanish is my second language and I'm not so aware of what words are terribly offensive in which countries quite yet.  But the dad didn't flinch thank goodness and told his kid to turn around for me.  Sad.  After I laughed maniacally (as usual) and took my photos, the kid took off running again.  But I loved him, and so I threw my camera to my friend and chased him screaming "I'm gonna GET you!", while trying to actually GET him, arms outstretched.  And then he fell in the water and later on my friends told me because I was chasing him with my arms out it looked like I totally pushed him facedown in the water.

Kady Dangerously

So today I made plans to make brunch for George, a dude who has had Nicole and I for dinner no less than three times without a returned favor.  Since Nicole had other arrangements, my plan was to ride my bici-moto over to Tamarindo and on the way stop at the vegetable market in Villa Real for some supplies.  Well the stupid thing hasn't been running properly and it killed on me a few meters from my place.  So I decided that maybe I flooded it.  And then my new friend Dustin suggested taking out the spark plug and making sure it was clean and dry and then trying again but I didn't have that tool.  And then the gate guard dude told me in Spanish something I didn't quite get and then my friend Katie's boyfriend Jon told me to start it several times with no gas rolling to clean the gas out of the carburator and that didn't work either.  Stupid machine.  All I ask is a couple ten mile rides out of you and all I get is sputter. 

But I was desperate to get out of the apartment today and on down to Tamarindo.  SO I decided to take the bus, but at the last minute changed my mind, because the bus here is not really on a schedule and who knows when it comes?  I decided to hitchhike.  I've never ever ever hitchhiked in my life.  Seems like something I should scratch off my life's to-do list.  Facing another fear, perhaps.  Well, I decided I was in the right place for it.  People here do it all the time.  Grandmas.  Little kids.  It's how everybody gets around.  Why not me?  So I grabbed my crap and stood on the road with my thumb out, determined not to be afraid, to do it like the locals do.  I could be selective about what car I got into.  Right?  Ten cars passed.  Nothing.  It dawned on me that they were being selective.  Ha.

Finally, a car pulled over.  Filled with two shady sketch old dudes and one high weird young one.  I was hot and the sun was burning me, so I called George, walked around to the back of the car, read off the license plate to him for safety, and got in the car. 

Danger. 

My middle name.  I was feeling pretty good.  I would have patted myself on the back, except my patting hand was clenched around my wallet in a death-like grip, and my back was stuck to the cheap vinyl seat.

Adventure.

Now my job was to get these guys to like me so they wouldn't dream of hurting me, so I used my basic Spanish to find out all about them and their kids and blah blah blah.  Then we started stopping.  Miles from my destination.  I got scared.  'Why are we stopping?', I thought, and got ready to jump out and do the tuck and roll.  Suddently the guy next to me (the one with only four teeth) got out and paid the taxi driver.

That was when I realized I was in a taxi.

Appetizing...

I Wouldn't Want to Hurt His Feelings...

I don't really know how I get myself into these situations. And yet, they happen all the time. Take one night last summer for instance: I'm bartending at the Lodge in Northern Minnesota, sitting on a barstool, and some strange man is opposite me, rubbing lotion onto my stinky waitress foot, cradling it too near his crotch. It all started innocently enough, of course, earlier that evening:

I'm returning to the bar from outside on the deck. I have dirty dishes in hand, and need help getting the door open...which interrupts one male customer from bear-hug-cracking the back of another male customer. I decide against making a "that looks a little fishy" joke. Later, I find out the crack-ee is a doctor and I mistakenly assume the crack-er is a chiropractor. Nope. Massage therapist. One of the screwy kinds. I know this because four minutes later he's telling me that he has diagnosed cancers. Fast forward to me standing behind the bar. He's belly up. I'm serving him beers and he motions for my hand. He rubs it. It feels just OK. Nothing earth shattering. In an attempt to involve all of my customers in conversation, I decide to play “how old am I?", my favorite game because people are too nice to guess anything near my real age and I always win. (This may also be because I haven’t yet learned to dress my age.) He looks at my hand, rubs it some more, looks into my eyes, and guesses one year older than I am. The hands don't lie. Harumph. He asks me to take off my "mood ring".

NOW LET ME BREAK FROM THE STORY REAL QUICK-LIKE TO TELL YOU THIS RING THING IS A SORE SPOT WITH ME. Dude, you’ve already put me at 34, and now you’re calling my ring a mood ring? It’s not a mood ring. Who over the age of fourteen wears a mood ring? The stupid thing happens to have cost me $120. A virtual fortune for me, an unemployed person. I picked it up in Australia under duress. My travel companion was buying a wheelbarrow full of jewelry at this adorable boutique and I felt as if I too deserved a bauble. My one concern was that I wasn’t sure if it looked like it cost $120. If I'm going to spend that kind of money on a piece of jewelry I want it to LOOK expensive. The friend I was with assured me that it did, and so I bought it. A few weeks later I flew to New Zealand and accidentally left it behind in Melbourne. My hosts mailed it to my new address in New Zealand. On the envelope, the post office asked the sender to list the value of the goods enclosed, where "$20" had been scribbled in. Blurg.

BACK TO STORY. Now to add insult to injury this dude calls it a dern mood ring. I blow him off and decide I’ll forgive him since he’s totally massaging my bartending, 34-year-old hand. He asks if I can feel the warmth as his hand hovers close to mine, but doesn't touch it. I ask him what vibes I am sending him. He says, "oh it's not about what you're sending me, it's about what I'm giving to you." I feel nothing.

A few minutes later he's rubbing my neck and shoulders, which somehow leads to him asking about my feet. I can tell so much from a person's feet, he says. (Show me one waitress who would say no to that.) It's only as he's spreading the lotion on my foot, and his eyes are closed, lips pursed and head raised up to the ceiling that I wonder if I've made a wise decision. Still, I don’t know how to stop this crazy train and instead I ride it all the way to the same outside bear-hug-crack situation in which he had the doctor previously. It’s not until mid-crack, when he whispers in my ear that he's a little clairvoyant and he's sensing that I'm having problems with my brother that I realize that sometimes I let people get a little too close. Do I tell him I think he's full of crap? NO! I wouldn't want to hurt his feelings!

p.s. the guy looked like the guy with the cane above 

How to Handle Roommate Disputes

I Haven't Laughed this Hard in a Really Long Time...slash cried.

There's a New Katie in Town

My newest roommate shares my name.  Not the spelling, but the name.  Never before did I realize how often I talk to myself.  For example:

Me: "Get out of bed, Kady"
Katie: "???"

Etc.  You get the point.  I actually talk to myself a ton.  A TON.  "Come ON! Kady"  When things aren't going right...  "Go to WORK, Kady", when I couldn't tear myself away from a Saved by the Bell episode, (back when I used to work.)

More confusion to follow.

And hilarity. Like tonight, I screamed, "KATIE!!!", and she was like, "what?" And I was like, "oh, I was talking to myself."

I know what you're thinking, and yes, she is cuter than me.

Fun With Language, Vol. 3

I mean, I knew toilet seats were fragile, but this is ridiculous.  Check out the underside of the cover of not one, but two friends' guest room toilets:

Sharp abjects?

Washing with Stain-brushes? Knives? Chemical liquor?  Volatized one?  Diluted one?

If only that ol' seat I broke came with such easy to follow instructions.



Getting Googled, Volume I-Can't-Remember

Is everybody getting a kick out of this stuff?  Or is it just me? 



"Stop picking your nose I told you it's gross song."

"Lady talking about turds."

"Response to my email. I want you to consider it sold"

"Jessica Simpson farts you love my stinky"

Thank Goodness for Dayna

Haircuts in another country.  What can I say?  I can't trust anyone!  Friends have been cutting my hair for YEARS and they do such a great job, and now I'm in a country where long black hair is the norm.  UGH.  And remember the horrible ugly 90's Saved by the Bell mushroom cut from Panama?  I have been wearing it for a month-and-a-half.  New roommate Dayna's mom is a stylist and other new roommate Katie has texturizing scissors, and so we went to town. 

Me, pretending to be scared

 

No more line!  p.s. nice face.

Yay for friends and scissors.

Oprah? (Hal-isms, Vol. 12)

I called and talked to my parents today.  Their new pole barn/garage is finished, but it seems that the contractor sort of put it up on stilts, so much so that, according to my dad, "a woodchuck can run in without touching his hairs", and "you could crawl in on your belly if you wanted."

Some other gems from the conversation:

Getting in his jab about me traveling:
"We're watchin' Oprah.  Why don't you go back to singin' Enchilada or whatever you do down there?"  (And then he turned up the TV and I distinctly heard, not Oprah, but Judge Judy talking.)

I just don't see it?* 

Complaining about my mom not giving him enough space for his stuff:

"I got a gun closet big enough for one pair of shoes and I got 10 guns in there."

When I explained I have to hike Machu Picchu May 11th, and can't come home until June 1st:

"All they got is a buncha pot bellied Chinese up there.  Isn't that what those buddhas do?  Sit on mountains?"   (maybe. But not in Peru.)

And then he was over talking to me.  He said, "Oprah's really gettin' wild.  I can see it in her 'spressions".  Then he turned up the TV again.  I was like, "Ok, I guess I'll talk to you later...enjoy Oprah."  Who doesn't even have a show any more.

*(photo courtesy of homorazzi.com)

The Piano Man

So our hotel in San Jose has a Piano Bar and we were hanging out there tonight.  I used an old trick I learned at work to google the lyrics with my laptop and we sang and sang and sang.  It was super fun.

Before I ran up and got my laptop though, I was working with my horrible memory to think up the words, and got mortifyingly embarrassed the six or seven times I came in too soon and the piano man shook his head at me 'no', or said out loud 'not yet'. 

The piano man is European, and he was done for the night but we begged him to do American Pie, which is the longest song in the history of my memory, and he did it.  We sang every verse and finally at the end, he goes, with thick accent, "this song. it never ends."

Gettin' a Big Head. For No Reason at All.

A weekend trip to San Jose, Costa Rica offered my beach-town friends and I a rare opportunity to get fancy and go out for Indian food.  And by "fancy", I mean that since San Jose's climate is so much cooler than Huacas, we could take showers and NOT be immediately drenched in sweat from the humidity -- making it possible for makeup and long sleeves and pants.  Fancy!

I had been living out of a backpack for several months and didn't really have anything I wanted to wear "out".  My roommate Nicole came to the rescue and lent me a few things.  It felt so nice to get dressed up!  I was quite happy with the result.  I might have even held my head high and strutted a bit.  I must have projected my inner monologue onto one of our male friends who had been patiently waiting for all of us to get ready.  I was almost certain that I heard him say to me:

"Wow, you look SO good."

I responded with a surprised, "thanks!"

He looked totally confused, so I rewound the scenario in my head. He wasn't looking at me. He had a candy bar in his hand. His mouth was full. I recalled my sense memory of his voice and replayed it. I was horrified. Here's what he really said:

"Wow, that is SO good."

The outfit

The candy-bar-eater-unintentional-feelings-hurter

My Redneck Family

Many years ago I brought a friend that was visiting from Colombia on a road trip up north to see my parents. I wanted him to see beautiful northern Minnesota.  We stopped at my sister Kim's house to visit and go ice skating on her pond.  She has a picture winow in her living room overlooking her yard.

This is the view from her living room.

Here's what it looks like in winter.

Anyway, we were all sitting in her living room, gazing at the view.  Right outside the picture window, Kim set up a birdfeeder so she could watch the birds from her couch.  A tiny chipmunk scampered across the roof of her porch, eating the birdseed.  I think my Colombian friend liked that the best.  We stared and stared at God's beautiful creation, as it ate and scampered and ate and scampered.

Suddenly "KAPOW!" the chipmunk fell over dead.  My sister shot it from her bedroom window.  Apparently the dirty varmints had been stealing her birdfeed for years and she'd had it.  You should have seen poor Ricardo's face.  It was kind of like this scene from the movie Australia:

Now that I think of it, poor Ricardo actually DID get to "see" beautiful northern Minnesota.

RIP, Pinky Toenail

I understand my feet are a little bit ugly, so this is for educational purposes only.  As you know, or may not know...I wrecked my toenail in Korea in June, and subsequently crushed it in Nicaragua on November 29th.  My poor little pinky toenail never had a chance.  It has hung on this long, but today I regret to inform you that it has lost its long battle with my clumsiness and has gone to the garbage can greener pastures.  Of course I remembered to photograph the entire scene for posterity my stupid blog.

See the floating imaginary nail, hanging by just a thread?

Here's a disgusting fuzzy picture of me opening it from the side.

That reminds me of a commercial that I was never able to physically deal with.  GROSS!  Remember this guy?  He's a little gross fungus cartoon character who "needs a place to party" and naturally opens up the nail of a dude, and then jumps! in, and has a party with his weird fungus friends.  YUCK.  Buy Lamasil!  (My dad should check into it.)

Kind of a strange marketing ploy, don't you think?  And look at that nail.  OUCH!

Anyway, my huge fear was that something would like catch it, and rip it off, so I have been band-aiding it like crazy hoping it would just fall off naturally.  But it's really just attached in one little place.

So I clipped it from the side, leaving the 'thread' it hangs by.

That was traumatic.  Now, let's just hope I never have to cut off my own arm.