Oscars

In the end, Tracey Edmonds turned out to be Eddie Murphy's most necessary accessory on Oscar night. When he peered into her reflective sternum after he lost and realized he wasn't a good enough actor to hide the burning, seething, frothing rage shooting like lasers from his eyes and nostrils, he quickly hightailed it out of the Kodak Theater lest the producers spend the rest of the evening gleefully cutting to furious closeups during everyone else's golden moments.

Unfortunately for Tracey, she was the one stuck wearing the thing, which managed to give her the illusion of flesh rolls she almost certainly doesn't really have. So really, neither of them were winners here.

They're called camisoles, Joy. It almost rhymes with areola, which is what I can see because you're not wearing any kind of undergarments. Although, actually, you'd probably need something strapless, since when you stapled your flimsy translucent fabric together, you were determined to do it in a way that thwarted anything strapped. So perhaps I should say, "They're called undergarments, Joy." And they result in your boobs not being entirely visible to the rest of the world. Do you have a friend who can take you to Victoria's Secret -- you know, the giant pink panty palace in the mall where 40 photos of Gisele in tiny underwear stare down at you as you wonder whether you can handle that much lace in your nethers? Yes, that place. You might want to go there.

Perhaps the saddest thing we've seen amid all the Oscar hullabaloo is the "Night of 100 Stars" gala. Doesn't that feel like it should have been "Night of 1,000 Stars"? Indeed, I was positive I was just spotting a caption typo, until the red-carpet backdrop confirmed that the organizers prefer to aim low.

And, when you have your sights set significantly below the awe-inspiring cliche, why toss two of your invitations at the Peldons?

Granted, our favorite Hollywood style-and-scent minxes are looking very pretty; Courtney's dress looks a tiny bit like what soft restraints might have been in ancient Greece, but Brown's is quite unusual and flattering, and considering their catalog of failures in the past, we're willing to give this a thumbs-up. But it's not like either of them even sneezed near any of the nominated films, so once again, we have to applaud either their moxie or their management team's ability to convince people that they're the Olsen Twins.

Not that it matters, in terms of this event. By next year it will have become the "Night of 10 Stars," so discounted because Barbara Walters will have thrown a massive snit fit not only at having been included on a guest list with two girls who tried to sell her a perfume called, "The Aging Daytime-TV Babysitter," but also with this "star":

Hola, bitches!

Admit it, compadres, you all sort of love me now. You love it when I show up wearing something not even royalty could pull off that well, you love it when Marc has color in his face, and you LOVE that you cannot figure out why I am so happy all the time. And yet, I am. Look at me! Do you think silly skinny Reese could wear all these sparkly things without one of them snapping her collarbone? NO. Do you think Celine Dion could wear this? NO, because when she pounds her fist against her chest, she would break it open on all these jewels. Do you think pointy little Jennifer Garner could get her hands on anything this awesome from Ben Blahfleck? NO. Whatever you're thinking -- the answer is NO. I am rocking this dress as only I, Jennifer Lopez Noa Judd almost-Affleck Anthony, could ever do. And I don't care if you think I'm pregnant. MAYBE I AM. Or maybe I just wanted to leave room for when I go eat a Double-Double with animal-style fries later tonight -- did you ever think of that, smarty cows? Marc loves things animal-style, although when he's saying that, usually he is drinking from one of the household rats we have in the attic. Anyway, pregnant, not pregnant, whatever, it doesn't matter to YOU. First, I will look hot either way, and second, I floated in here on a cloud of glamour, and SECOND, I am bored of your talk. Marc, vengame -- let's go stand next to Cameron Diaz and make her cry! HA HA HA HA! I'll show YOU how to be elegant, you rangy, mangy surfer person!

This is something delightful to me about Suzanne Somers. It's not leftover sentimentality from a childhood of watching Three's Company, because even at a young age I found her character irritatingly dim. If I were Jack Tripper, I would have spent all my time down at the Regal Beagle so as to avoid having to make the effort to communicate with her. I am not secretly also running a website called Go Thighmaster Yourself -- a fact which is, tragically, immediately apparent. I have never read either her book of poetry, or her 2004 publication, The Sexy Years: Discover the Hormone Connection - The Secret to Fabulous Sex, Great Health, and Vitality, for Women and Men, although The Sexy Years sounds like the name of an awesome Justin Timberlake retrospective produced in approximately 2023. In fact, I have no idea where this affection comes from. It just is. However, I have no affection for this:

This is what happens when a bridesmaid's dress meets a craft store fanatic: tragedy, and enough rosettes to last any woman's lifetime. Also, dyed to match shoes. However, that enormous chestral-ruff does seem like it would come in handy if you ran out of places on which to set your drink.

I don't mind this dress, in theory, but something about the way it hangs on Kerry Washington makes her look kind of bloated and large. And we're sure she's not. Because, seriously, no one in this town has eaten solid food in two days.

It bugs me that the illusion netting is bunching up on the side, and the entire line of the gown just swallows her whole. What is it? She just broke up with David Moscow -- is this going to be another Brady-Moynahan story, but without the hot quarterback and the supermodel third-wheel? Is there something fertile in the water in Los Angeles? Or was Kerry just the victim of a waist-gobbling gown?

I guess we'll find out soon. However, we may have already lost interest. What can we say? It's just not potentially soapy enough. Get back to us when her presumed-decapitated high-school sweetheart turns out to be the father.

Apparently, in Hollywood, there's a party for people who didn't get invited to the Academy Awards, and they get all dolled up in their finery and congregate to watch the telecast together. It's like the Red Carpet, Jr. Which is both sweet and maybe a little sad, like it's the overflow audience for a talk show that just missed the cut, except with better clothes. Still, these parties probably had a killer open bar, and who are we to imply that anyone should refuse it?

Certainly not when they look as divine as Jennifer Love Hewitt did.

This is a woman who's historically had a lot of trouble dressing the boobs and the hips without making herself look ten pounds heavier than she is. So we're thrilled to see how this dress skims her in all the right ways, putting a little cleavage -- okay, a lot of cleavage -- on display and giving herself graceful, clean lines everywhere else. She's even got a soft, romantic updo and her bangs are out of her face, an elegant change from the everyday for her.

Whatever Ross McCall is doing for her, he obviously does well, and so we hope he keeps doing it. Maybe he's The Fug Whisperer -- he sees her fug when she can't, and he helps it cross over into the light so that it leaves her alone and she can get on with her life without worrying that a possessed peasant top is going to throw itself at her and bind her to it for an entire afternoon.

Whatever it is, well played, both of you. Just don't go any further with the Mystic Tan.

Debbie Gibson appears confused. Is she at an Oscar party, or does she think she's heading to another stint on So You Think You Can Skate, Celebrity? or whatever that show is called?

Actually, I think I can explain what's going on here. I recently read an article in which Debbie explained that she's been obsessed with Liberace ever since her electric youth. She, in fact, owns his famous white, mirrored piano.  Clearly, this gown is a salute to Liberace, with the white and the spangles and the cape-y draping and the flamboyant enthusiasm. She probably has a candelabra in her purse. But sadly, this sort of look works only in her dreams. I feel that it would be in her best interest to shake her love over to Barney's and find something else to wear, because if this dress, out of the blue, found that it had a beat, that beat would be a foolish one indeed.  I'm sure, like most of us, all Debbie wants is for someone to love her. But how, I ask, can she find someone to get lost in her eyes if they're staring at her dress in horror? Think about that, carefully, Debbie.

We understand why Penelope Cruz changed out of that magnificently show-stopping feathered ball-gown (tough to pull off unless you play the hair, makeup, and accessories to perfection and know how to strut a red-carpet with panache, which she does/did): To be sure, that train would be a nightmare to negotiate at a party. It'd be brown by the time the night ended and half the feathers would be stuck to the bottom of people's borrowed shoes. But still. If my collegiate Spanish classes have stuck at all -- and let's hope they have, because my parents would probably be pleased to see me using at least ONE skill I studied in college -- I can say this: Penelope, vuelvate to the limo and hide there until someone brings you a coat, okay? Because this is not an acceptable follow-up to that red-carpet spectacle. We've covered dresses over pants. Dresses over leggings. And dresses over heads. But dresses over other dresses? That's a new one.

It's like she took a slinky nightie and belted a tube-dress around it. I wish I could've seen this without the distractingly disco attachment. As it stands, we're left to wonder what madness drove her to this, and also, what happens if we tug on the tassels. Does the silver part roll up to reveal a hilarious message? Does her limo show up to sweep her away? Does a shower spray spontaneously appear over Orlando Bloom's head wherever he might be?

So many mysteries.

Back in the day, I was deeply into Adam Brody. I was even given a tee shirt reading "Mrs. Seth Cohen." This was Season One of The O.C Adam Brody/Seth Cohen, who, as I'm sure we all remember, was almost too cute to bear, unlike latter seasons' iterations of the character, who became almost too aggravating to deal with, especially since it seemed that Cohen was totally phoning it in. I'm of the belief that you have to give a show more than 13 episodes before you're allowed to feel like you're too awesome for it, myself. But that's all neither here nor there. What is both here and there is my theory that Brody is either deeply depressed about something, or honestly does think he's too painfully cool for school. Check it out:

Kid, it's the OSCARS.   At least shave your neck.