My Oscar Picks

For the 79th Annual Academy Awards, I predict the following winners in the major categories. These are my guesses for how the Academy will choose, not my personal choices because I haven't seen all the films nominated. It is surprising to see that no film swept the nominations. It's going to be a very mixed night.

Actor - Leading: Forest Whitaker (though I hope Peter O'Toole wins)
Actor - Supporting: Eddie Murphy (I love Eddie, but I'd love to see Alan Arkin get it, too)
Actress - Leading: Helen Mirren
Actress - Supporting: Jennifer Hudson
Animated Feature: Cars
Directing: Martin Scorsese
Documentary Feature: An Inconvenient Truth
Foreign Language Film: Pan's Labyrinth
Original Score: Pan's Labyrinth
Original Song: "Listen", Dreamgirls
Best Picture: The Departed (I'd pick Babel)

Good luck, players!

*Incidentally, in the picture above is the Oscar won for Sound by The Alamo (John Wayne's version). I could tell you where I took that photo, but then I'd have to kill you.

Oscar Sunday 2007

OK, here we go again. I can tell you this year I'm pretty much over the Oscars, at least the whole behind-the-scenes production of the television ceremony. There's obviously a tremendous amount of money to be made from it; otherwise, the Academy wouldn't go to so much trouble.

Actually, it's those of us who live and work in the Hollywood community who go through all the trouble. You can imagine how inconvenient it would be to have a major traffic artery closed for a week, but how about every street within a square mile? This picture shows the extent of the street closures today.

The Hollywood & Highland complex is a huge retail/restaurant/entertainment complex (including the Kodak Theater) which encompasses two full city blocks. I live about two miles southwest of this place. Today I avoided dealing with traffic and lack of parking and took the bus as far north as I could get (Sunset) and walked the rest of the way into the seige.

I wish I had taken photos of the police barricades blocking the streets for blocks and blocks. It looked like a preparation for war. There were cop cars and parking enforcement vehicles everywhere and the last few civilian cars quickly got towed away. Helicopters buzzed overhead. Police officers and security personnel were everywhere. It was more security than President Fuckhead gets when he's in town, I can tell you that! Now I know that security was somewhat heightened because of Al Gore's presence. Hell, half of Hollywood is hoping he'll jump back in the ring for 2008.

Finally I made it to the tour office only to realize I hadn't brought my store keys -- attached to the car key, and no need for that today -- and the store was locked. No worries; the boss left a note taped to the door that they were walking the tour route one last time to double check and would be back presently.

The other three guides arrived and we stared in wonder and disdain at the crazy scene on Hollywood Boulevard. A guy dressed like The Rocketeer held an American flag over his head. Now, we're used to seeing people in costume on Hollywood Boulevard. We call them "the characters" and they all earn tips by posing for photos with tourists. That Rocketeer guy is not one of the regulars -- none of us had ever seen him before!

Luckily our tourists arrived on time at the rendezvous down on Sunset. We pulled the three coaches into the In 'n' Out Burger parking lot by Hollywood High School. The 100 or so tour participants piled out of the buses and we made our way back up the hill into the fray. Actually, things were pretty quiet that early. It was pretty quiet inside the secure zone (we passed through security twice along the route).

The tour went OK and even though we couldn't see much of anything, the tour guests had a great time and got into the festive spirit of the occasion. Afterwards, I made my way out through the gathering throngs of people lining up hours early, hoping to get a glimpse of their favorite celebrities arriving at the red carpet.

At home, I enjoyed viewing the show on television -- definitely the best view available -- and I guessed 14 out of 24 awards correctly.

W. E. DeSpain

Heard some sad news yesterday that my favorite Uncle Gene died in a car accident near his home. Apparently a big truck broadsided his car and killed him instantly. He was 80 years old.

Gene DeSpain was the nicest man I ever met, and he became a huge influence on me in my formative years. My sister and I used to visit my Aunt Sandy and Uncle Gene for a week every summer when we were kids. We'd fly down from Denver to San Antonio, where they lived. They had a beautiful house which was palatial compared to my family's home, and I remember vividly the summer when they installed the swimming pool in the back yard. It was like heaven!

Besides hanging at the pool, we always took a drive to my Uncle's ranch outside of the city. He had over 200 acres of land with open fields, big trees, and several ponds called "tanks." My Sis and I rode horses, hunted snakes, and generally enjoyed the hell out of ourselves. I can still hear Uncle Gene shouting "Rocky!" to call in his favorite horse when we arrived at the ranch house. He even gave my sister her very own horse named Burt. My favorite summer trip may have been the year we took the boat down to the coast at Port Arthur and Corpus Christi. Piloting that boat and fishing in the Gulf of Mexico was a great time for me.

Uncle Gene was very intelligent and well-mannered and he became a powerful role model to me. He rarely watched television, but constantly read books and magazines about history, business, and golf. He stayed fit mentally and physically. He taught me how to drive a car, how to hit a golf ball (he was an avid golfer with a 2 handicap), how to enjoy a cold beer on a hot day or a glass of wine with dinner, and how to treat a lady with the proper respect. My Dad taught me how to be a man, but Uncle Gene taught me how to be a gentleman.

Uncle Gene knew everyone of importance in San Antonio. People recognized and greeted him everywhere we went. He had many friends and business aquaintances, and every maitre d' in town said, "Welcome, Mr. DeSpain!" when we went out to dinner. I'll never forget one hot day we went for lunch at a local cafe and happened to run into some aquaintances at the restaurant. After exchanging pleasantries, we sat down and Uncle Gene cringed in embarrassment for being spotted in public wearing short pants! He was very reserved that way.

Uncle Gene was the Vice President of the Holt corporation, the largest dealer of Caterpillar construction equipment in the United States. We got to visit the plant one time and see the big tractors in action. I was too young to drive one, but my cousins Tim and Tracie climbed aboard to handle the huge machines. Typical of his generation, but very rare in mine, Uncle Gene started at Holt as a young man and worked his way up the corporate ladder all the way to the vice presidency. He retired after 40 years of service, for which the company gave him a 40-foot Winnebago as a retirement gift. My aunt and uncle traveled all over the country in that RV (affectionately dubbed "The SanGee"). They loved to visit family and go on golfing trips.

Because of his connections in the construction industry, Uncle Gene knew a lot about the buildings and developers of downtown San Antonio. I'll never forget the time we took a horse-drawn carriage tour of downtown and the tour guide apparently told us some wrong information about a particular building and its developer. Uncle Gene politely corrected the young man, explaining "I know the man who built that building; he's a customer of mine."

I hate to think I'll never see him again, nor hear his funny way of speaking. Every time we met, he'd say the same thing: "Scotty, you're too thin!" And he always referred to my Aunt Sandy as "Sugar." He was generous to a fault and had little patience for fools. We all idolized him for taking care of my aunt after her unhappy first marriage and divorce. Years later, after my Mom divorced, she always said, "I hope I can find me an 'Uncle Gene' someday." We should all be so lucky.

A Night at the Opera in Mahagonny

The Los Angeles Opera's production of Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is so much fun, it makes you sick. This 1930 German Expressionist theater piece, banned by the Nazis, tells the story of a group of depraved outlaws who end up stranded in the desert and decide to create their own sin city named Mahagonny (pronounced Ma-ha-GO-nee, if you weren't sure). They even put up their own "Welcome to Fabulous Mahagonny" sign, an exact replica of the famous entrance to Las Vegas.

The group succeeds in luring gold-rich miners from Alaska into staying in Mahagonny and spending their money on women, booze, glutony, and boxing to the death. It's all fun and games until everybody runs out of money. Then the town falls into utter misery, execution style. In Mahagonny, the worst crime possible is to not have any cash on hand: "In the whole human race there is no greater criminal than a man without money."

The big treat were the stars of the show: Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone, both legendary aritsts in the world of musical theater. Audra McDonald became the first person to earn three Tony awards before age 30, plus she earned a fourth for 2004's A Raisin in the Sun. Patti LuPone won a Tony for Evita and has been honored many times for her work on stage and screen, including the recent hit production of Sweeney Todd on Broadway. Both performers make their LA Opera debuts with this production at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Audra McDonald shatters her wholesome Broadway image with her saucy turn as Jenny Smith, the hottest and most expensive piece of ass in town. Ms. McDonald not only possesses the best voice of her generation, she burns up the stage in her sexy bordello bodice and six-inch high heels. Every note from her was pure gold and I wanted to hear her sing more songs than her part allows -- and she's the lead!

I felt chills every time Patti LuPone sang a note. Her distinctive tone is etched in my brain from her performances in Evita and Anything Goes and every other incredible thing she's done. I would have killed to see her in Sweeney Todd. Having conquered Broadway for decades, she recently started singing in opera companies. Her voice has matured so nicely, a perfect balance of Broadway brass with the rich warmth of a legitimate contralto, particularly on the high notes that she would have belted out in the past. Ms. LuPone skillfully inhabits her character, Leocadia Begbick the wicked bordello madame, with greedy surliness. She sounded amazing and did some kick-ass singing in her solos and in harmony with the other artists. She really held her own against the other opera singers.

All the singers were outstanding, especially the excellent tenor (Anthony Dean Griffey), the doomed hero who falls (and pays) for Jenny Smith. Jenny faithfully pleasures him until he runs out of money and then not even his Alaska miner buddies will loan him a dime. All the supporting roles and even the chorus were great. The chorus played a huge part in the show and they all sang very clearly together with perfect diction. The opera company plays Super-titles with the libretto above the stage, but you barely needed them because the elocution was so good.

I was lucky to get a rush ticket for $20 cash and the man at the box office gave me a great seat in the orchestra right section. It was my first time on the floor at the Chandler and damn it's worth the hundreds of dollars most people pay per ticket. I can only imagine what the Founders Circle just above the orchestra would be like. Actually, I got to sit up there once when I took a tour of the theater with a student group. It was really fun to see how the truly wealthy class live, even though there wasn't a performance on stage at the time.

This is not an easy show to endure. The music is demanding and suprising hummable despite some very challenging tonalities. I don't know how those singers held on to the vocal melodies with the orchestral "chaos" happening underneath them, under maestro James Conlon's expert conducting. Mr. Griffey in particular picked some unaccompanied notes right out the air and stayed in tune every time. It was quite impressive.

The most famous song from the show is the Alabama Song, famously revived by Jim Morrison and The Doors, and later covered by David Bowie. I was surprised to hear the song so early in the show - it's the second number - and to hear it sung by Jenny Smith and her troupe of vagabond prostitutes. "Oh show us the way, to the next whiskey bar/Oh don't ask why, no don't ask why."

Despite the outstanding performances and the innovatively sparse staging, the audience didn't stand for the curtain call. We cheered for the singers and we appreciated their efforts, but I think we were too exhausted and depressed to rise from our seats. The cynical themes of the show, raucously tongue-in-cheek in Act One, pummeled us into darkness and despair by the end of Act Two. As the people of Mahagonny declared after the hero's execution, "Nothing will help him or us or you now."

Iran next target in Bush's War on Terror

Here we go again. It's been rumbling around in the blogosphere and in certain areas of the media lately that the Bush administration is gearing up for the next phase in the War on Terror. Target: Iran.

So far the rhetoric regarding Iran has focused on their dangerous nuclear ambitions, but now Iran is being blamed for supplying weapons to the Iraq insurgency. Bush admitted so today. It was reported yesterday that the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has fled Iraq for Iran in anticipation of Bush's controversial troop "surge" -- it's a much nicer word than "escalation," isn't it?

By the way, if you haven't figured out yet that the U.S. news media is owned by a few major corporations that earn tremendous profits from the war and therefore can't be trusted to fully expose government corruption, pull your head out of the sand and get informed. When I want to know what's really going on in the world, I visit overseas news agencies such as The Guardian or BBC News, among others. Thank God for the Internet!

Here's a very interesting article published in The Guardian (a liberal British newspaper) which reports that the U.S. military is already building up forces in the Persian Gulf in anticipation of an air strike on Iran:

"The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office."

According to the article, both Cheney and the Neo-cons are urging Bush to start another offensive in the war, but the State Department and the Pentagon are against it. That's probably because we have no way to justify another attack or invasion, nor can we afford any further escalation. In fact, we can't afford the current wars. The Bush junta will end up bankrupting this country if left to their own devices. They publicly deny any intentions for attack, yet the military build-up progresses, just as it did before we invaded Iraq.

Didn't we just leave this party?

Chewbacca Attacks Tour Guide

You know it's hard out here for a pimp, and for a tour guide. Luckily this wasn't me or anyone with my company, but everybody on Hollywood Boulevard knows you don't piss off Chewbacca.