That's entertainment!  Yes, Bill-the-Honeybear and I watched as much of the Oscars last night as we could.  Not that we fell asleep halfway through, no.  But our cable provider was having a spat with ABC over how much ABC should get paid for the cable provider to be allowed to transmit their offerings.  And the Oscars were being carried on ABC.  The upshot was - officially - that both sides decided to allow ABC to continue to be shown on Cablevision (that's my provider) while they were negotiating the payment amount.  So the Oscar broadcast started to be shown at just about the time the first award was being handed out.

My thoughts?  First, since ABC is available for free to anyone with a working roof antenna, why are they getting paid by Cablevision?  I learned long ago that broadcast networks make their money by selling ad time on the air.  It's not like the ads are being removed for cable customers.  And second, whose bright idea was it to pull ABC off a major cable company in the New York metropolitan market when ABC can use every rating point it can glom onto?  It's like NBC saying, "We're going to pull our station from your cable service - oh, yeah, and the Olympics start tomorrow!"  I'm thinking some too-clever network executive(s) are going to get a severe talking-to this morning.  Let's face it:  It's 8:00 Sunday night, it's Oscar night, you turn to ABC on Cablevision, and all you see is an announcement from Cablevision saying ABC pulled their station from the cable broadcast roster.  Even if they start broadcasting at 8:01, aren't you by that point going to be watching, oh, anything else you can find? 

Now, on to the awards ceremony.  Mostly I admired the class with which most of the winners accepted their awards.  And I appreciated how most of the presenters handled themselves - but please, can we keep Sean Penn away from the microphone?  He's a fine actor and a fine humanitarian, but lately put him on unscripted and he just, well, "babbles" isn't quite the word for it, but his mind goes fuzzy and his mouth doesn't help.  I've never seen Ben Stiller do anything as funny as his presenter's monologue in way, way too long.  But oddly enough, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were hit-or-miss all evening (although the two of them in snuggies watching backstage was precious).  I have to ask, do we really need hosts as well as presenters?  Especially when you have the faceless voice announcing who's coming on stage to present the next award, and giving us bits of trivia and statistics as winners are walking to the stage?  Put that salary money back into the production budget, thank you.

Who in God's name made the stupid, stupid choice to start the "in memoriam" section with a long shot, thus obscuring the names of the first three people being remembered?  Fire that director's ass.  Now.  Before he works on another awards show with an "in memoriam" section.

I did like the dance segment to the music nominated in the "best score" category.  But I have to ask, who forgot to turn off the under-stage-stored microphones?  When the dancers were being energetic in certain areas of the stage, you could hear every footfall.  Loudly.  Thud. Thud. Thud.

This was the first year that I didn't make any comments about the gowns, save one.  This year, the women in attendance managed to pick dresses that were beautiful and fitting to the occasion.  (The exception?  The actress shall remain nameless, but her dress had two panels that started over each breast and swept into the train, sort of a light rose against a darker rose dress.  The parts over the breasts looked for all the world like air bags just after deploying.  So where was everyone's attention drawn?  Right... )

Best part of the night?  Switching over to Turner Classic Movies (TCM) at 12:15 to see Show People, a 1928 silent comedy from MGM, starring Marion Davies, all about a young woman from Georgia who comes to Hollywood to become a dramatic actress.  It was filmed all over the Metro lot and on the streets of Hollywood, so it's a beautiful snapshot of one major studio (plus many of its stars and the film's director King Vidor) at the time when silents were making their final bow.  Davies was a splendid comedic talent, and was universally loved as one of the most open and generous people in Hollywood.  Her co-star was William Haines, an MGM star in both silents and talkies, usually cast as the all-American guy.  He quit the movies when he was forced to choose between his career and his male lover.  A bold stand to take, considering the times (the early 1930s).  But his story had a very happy ending:  thanks to Davies, Joan Crawford, and others in the industry, he forged a successful second career as a home decorator and antique dealer, living with his lover, James Shields, for nearly fifty years until his death from lung cancer in 1973.