"The dirty deed is done, the little naked guys have been delivered, and Hollywood is once again breaking its arm patting its own back." I wrote that two years ago, and nothing much has changed since about the Oscar proceedings, surprise winners notwithstanding.

Back then I also added "Let the morning-after carping begin!" However, this year I missed my chance to carp during the early part of the day due to logistic issues, leaving me only with late-night whining. Not being comfortable with extensive whining, let me riff on last night's events while also reassessing my earlier expectations for Oscar night.

The night began auspiciously enough with an Oscar for Spirited Away, showing "the Academy could recognize brilliant animation without it punching their noses," something I really didn't expect from them. Other realized expectations (and forecasts) were the wins for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on Visual Effects, Chicago for Sound, Frida for Makeup, and Eminem for his 8 Mile song, "Lose Yourself." Too bad no one sang it last night, neither did Mr. Mather's show up to accept his statuette; I was looking forward to a scathing speech, perhaps something on the same frequency as Michael Moore's (who delivered the same "ficticious times" rant the day before at the Independent Spirit Awards and only received a sweeping ovation, no booing at all).

The Kaufmanses, however, didn't win for Adapted Screenplay. Too bad, I really wanted to see Charlie suffer a meltdown on-stage. However, the winner of the night, The Pianist, was one of the happy surprises of the night, just like Adrien Brody's and Roman Polanski's were. That and Nicole Kidman's and Chis Cooper's awards kinda made up for all of Chicago's wins in the other major categories, the ones which confimed what I said about them being "the people's choice awards."

And did anyone else pay attention to Gael García Bernal drifting from the script to call the war "war," instead of just hinting at it by mentioning peace and freedom, saying Frida would be outside the Kodak Theater protesting it? (Well, Slate's David Edelstein did, and he didn't buy it...)

Last Friday, I congratulated Ian Williams on the publication of his first story for Salon. Now it's time to congratulate him again, this time for his second Salon article:

Generation gung-ho
Many of the 42 million Americans aged 12-24 think President Bush is "a little dumb," but they are more pro-war than you might think.
By Ian R. Williams
March 21, 2003

Ian mentions a Febrary 2003 Gallup Poll "reported that 58 percent of teens favored the war..." Is Generation Y really that warmongering? Guess not all of them share Stephen Downs' views, then.