I watched the last part of the Academy Awards (from Jerry Lewis onward) live and then went back and used TiVo to get through the first part in well under an hour. It seemed like a decent show to me. I think a lot of people expect the Oscars to be something they can never be. I mean, a lot of the show is about giving awards to people who do Art Direction and Sound Editing. The folks in those categories are totally deserving of their moments in the spotlight but there's a limit to how much entertainment value you're ever going to realize from those portions of the show.

The idea of having five presenters in the acting categories struck me as a good one. Some time ago here, we did a little poll on who they could get to present who might be exciting. The consensus seemed to be that no one living person would be that exciting but that certain combinations of presenters might make things extra special. I think it did, though some of the dialogue — the little speeches where past winners told the nominees how brilliant they were — seemed a little excessive.

The audience ovation for Jerry was moving but the honoree almost looked like he was back on the Percodan. I half-expected him to lapse into his profound mode and say something overly schmaltzy. Instead, he said very little and you got the feeling the audience was disappointed he wasn't more like Jerry Lewis. But good for the Academy for finally honoring a guy they should have recognized decades ago…and wasn't it nice to see one person on that stage who'd been in the business longer than Steve Martin? (Yeah, I know there were a few others. But it sure didn't feel that way.)

Hugh Jackman seemed like a pleasant-enough host. The guy's impossible to dislike…and the irrelevant music number wasn't as bothersome as they usually are since the show moved along at a good clip. It ran 3 hours and 30 minutes, which is probably what its producers were aiming for. Yes, I know they said 3 hours in the listings but that's just what they put in the listings. They never really intend it to be that length. I also liked the fact that I didn't see anyone get played off in mid-speech because their thank yous were running long.

I was surprised that Sean Penn bested Mickey Rourke for Best Actor…and I got the feeling everyone else was too, including Sean and Mickey. Penn's speech seemed a bit clumsy and inelegant, and also unnecessary given the earlier, more moving acceptance speech from Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the screenplay for Milk. I agree with what Penn said but wish he'd said it better.

All in all, it was a pretty good show…at least if you make good use of the Fast Forward button on your TiVo or VCR remote. If you found it dull, you oughta try my method.

The Reprise Theater Company is currently presenting a superb production of Man of La Mancha. It's up at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA and it runs through March 1. Michael Michetti, who did such a good job staging their production of Li'l Abner last year, really outdid himself…and there are two especially interesting changes in the material.

One was to eliminate the overture. That sounds like a mistake since the overture is usually quite a treat…but without the overture, the orchestra doesn't start playing until Cervantes begins telling the story of Don Quixote. Therefore, all the music occurs more or less within his imagination and the effect is worth the sacrifice.

Then they changed some dialogue. Dale Wasserman, who wrote the book for the musical Man of La Mancha, had written it previously as a non-musical play for television called I, Don Quixote. With Mr. Wasserman's blessing, some lines from the TV play were interpolated into the Reprise production of the musical. (Mr. Wasserman literally gave his approval on his death bed. He passed away last December 21 at the age of 94.) It all worked. All of it.

Most of that was due to a superb cast. Brent Spiner is playing Cervantes and therefore Don Quixote. He's great in the part, just as he was great playing John Adams when I saw 1776 on Broadway a few years ago. What a shame that some people only think of this superb musical comedy talent as "that guy from Star Trek." Lee Wilkof is a great Sancho Panza…and I hear opera star Julia Migenes is wonderful as Dulcinea but we deliberately didn't see her.

Carolyn and I went to the matinee today and at matinees, Dulcinea is played to perfection by a lady named Valerie Perri. Let me tell you about Valerie Perri.

Thousands of years ago, when I was a story editor on Welcome Back, Kotter, the night receptionist — the lady who answered phones when we worked late — was Valerie Perri. She used to sing around the office and, ever-so-politely, invite us to see a little musical she was appearing in on weekends. I went and was blown away by her talent. (There was also another new performer in the show who was obviously star material — a then-unknown actress named Wendie Jo Sperber.)

When Valerie went on to better things, I was utterly unsurprised. Just a few years later, the biggest theatrical event in Los Angeles was a production of Evita that ran a long time at the Shubert Theater. They had a big star playing the title role at evening performances and this unknown named Valerie Perri playing the role at matinees. One of the local theater critics wrote a piece that said, approximately, "Hey, the lady playing Evita at matinees is better than the lady playing Evita in the evenings!" Before long, Valerie was the evening Evita in many other productions — Harold Prince personally cast her — and she went on to other roles and other plays. She now divides her life between raising handsome twin boys and performing in shows all around the country. You can find her schedule (and hear some of her singing) over on her website.

Aiding her in her great performance today was another friend of mine. Brad Ellis was the Musical Director of this production of Man of La Mancha. Everything sounded great and after, when I told Brad that, he said it was because Reprise splurged for a full orchestra, the same size the show had on Broadway, and it had "no garage band instruments." That means real horns, real violins, etc., and no synthesizers and such. That's probably one of the reasons the music was so magnificent but I also think Brad had a lot to do with that. Maybe one of these days, I'll post some audio here and let you listen to some of the songs we've written together. He's real good, too.

If you're in or around L.A. and want to catch Man of La Mancha before March 1, here's a link. I've raved enough.

Next Saturday evening while I'm in San Francisco for the WonderCon, I'm taking a bunch of friends to see Frank Ferrante perform his glorious Groucho simulation at the Jewish Community Center. And hey, why shouldn't an Italian guy play a Jew? Chico Marx was a Jewish guy playing an Italian.

Anyway, one of the friends I'm taking, Tom Galloway, sent me a link to this article about Frank. See? I'm not the only person who writes about him.

On Sunday, March 8, Frank's doing his show for one matinee performance at the La Mirada Theater in, of all places, La Mirada, California. That's as close to Los Angeles as he's been in years and he probably won't be Hackenbushing anywhere near L.A. again for quite some time. So a number of folks I know in town here (including me again) are going down to see him there. La Mirada isn't as far as it sounds. It's about midway between downtown L.A. and Disneyland and they have a very nice theater down there.

Here's a nice article about Teller of Penn & Teller. Most people think Teller is shorter than he is. He just looks short because Penn is so tall. Some people think he can't talk. He can, and is very articulate when he does. Some people even think what Penn and Teller do is not really magic. It most definitely is, and Teller is an excellent magician by any standard. As you'll see from the article, he's very serious about what he does.

I don't even know where to start with the current Screen Actors Guild situation. Their Negotiating Committee hit an impasse bargaining with the AMPTP. After many months, SAG's national board ousted that committee and its Head Negotiator, replacing them with something they called a "task force" and sent it in to try and get an acceptable deal. The task force made some major concessions and the AMPTP made some major concessions. But when the two sides failed to reach a deal, the talks collapsed. The Producers sent out what they called their "last, best, final" offer…and now the SAG national board has rejected it with a 73% vote.

So where does this leave things? Up a creek, sans paddle. The SAG national board doesn't want to put this offer to a vote of the membership. They don't want to ask for a strike authorization. The Producers are refusing to restart the talks. So whatever brief light there might have been down at the end of the tunnel has now been extinguished and no one seems to know what happens next.

The scenario some people are hoping for is something that might be called The Lew Wasserman Move. Lew Wasserman was an old-time Hollywood agent-mogul who more-or-less ran the town in the sixties. When things were at an impasse with some union, Lew was known to pick up the phone, make a few calls and broker a deal. Everyone seems to be hoping something of the sort will happen now…or at least, that's the fantasy. The reality is that today, at a time when entertainment companies are owned by international super-corporations, there's no one with the expansive power of a Lew Wasserman…no one who can call all the principals and say, with a note of Threat in his voice, "Hey, let's get this settled."

I have no idea where things go from here. It may depend on whether this new impasse causes the rival factions in SAG to bond and unite against their common enemy. Three days ago, this seemed about as likely as me winning Best Supporting Actress tonight. Now, that reconciliation is a remote possibility…and if the studios see they've overplayed their hand and are fixing a broken SAG, they may scurry to better the offer.

The big obstacle at the moment seems to be the expiration date of the three-year contract. SAG wants it to run out three years from when the old deal did. The AMPTP wants it to expire three years from when it gets signed. If SAG got its way, the union would be in a much better position for the next negotiation. If the AMPTP date prevails, SAG would again be last in line behind the other unions, most notably AFTRA which undercut them this time by going first. This is probably solvable if both sides put their mind to that goal. At the moment though, no one is trying to solve it. Jeez, what a mess.

Manohla Dargis profiles Jerry Lewis, the man who tomorrow night will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Why do I have the feeling that at this very moment, Jerry is at home, carefully rehearsing how he'll say the wrong thing?

A month or two ago, TV reporter Aaron Barnhart and I sat in a delicatessen not far from CBS and discussed the fate of NBC late night in its forthcoming reconfiguration. At the time, Aaron was starting to predict not-good things for the Peacock Network in that daypart…and his reservations have blossomed into this firmer foreboding. I think he just may be right.

At the same time, I'm surprised there aren't other players in this game. If I were running a cable network or a big syndication company, I'd think this was the ideal time to jump into late night with something altogether different. As Aaron notes, America's interest in Jay, Dave, Conan and the rest is in decline. Maybe the new configuration of Jay, Conan and Jimmy Fallon will turn things around. Maybe. Or maybe it'll just make viewers feel oversaturated with the same kinds of shows, whereupon they'd flock to something more spontaneous. The talk shows of today have cribbed everything possible from Steve Allen except the notion that it can be fun when the host doesn't know everything that's about to happen and is prepared for anything.

Anyway, go read Aaron for why the new NBC layout may have problems.

Another interview with Stephen Sondheim.

In the past, I've complained here about always being invited into these social and business networking deals like LinkedIn and Grouply. I didn't see what any of them did for me that the plain ol' vanilla World Wide Web didn't, plus I had a bad feeling about some of these services. They reminded me of the loonier religious cult movements where you join and are instantly told that you now have an obligation to get all your friends to join and won't get as much out of your own belonging if you don't. Also, I have my e-mail and Internet routines all configured to work for me and didn't want to move any of it over to someone else's format, nor did I see any advantage to me.

But I broke down and joined Facebook, and so far I'm glad I did because I've actually "networked" to the point of reconnecting with several folks I haven't connected with in many years. I don't care for the fact that if we exchange messages through Facebook, that mail does not wind up stored on my computer like normal e-mail…but so far, I'm enjoying the connectivity.

At the moment, I have 268 Facebook "friends," many of whom I even know. I like seeing the quick lists of what they're all up to and I like being able to occasionally catch someone online and jump into a quick chat, even if it's only to exchange phone numbers and move to voice contact. I still haven't figured out some of the odder features, like what it means to "poke" someone or what the deal is with giving "gifts." But I suppose I'll either master these things or figure out I don't need them. I could also do without constantly being "tagged" with these challenges where I'm supposed to list 25 things I wish I hadn't put in my mouth or 36 parts of my body I shave or whatever.

Oh, look. I just checked and in the last 20 minutes, I got two more "friends"…and they're both people I actually know! At this rate, everyone I know will be on Facebook in about five more years and we can rename the whole thing. We can call it The Internet.

One week from today, a lot of us will be in San Francisco for the annual WonderCon…always a great gathering. If you can get there, get there. That's all I have to say about it except to post this banner again…