LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — "This morning, Peter Jackson woke up with Seabiscuit's head in his bed."

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — That's right: When someone on stage mentions the war in Iraq, cut to Tim Robbins in the audience.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Three minutes in: First Gigli joke.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — An early trend: Neckties instead of bowties.

And you get the idea that a lot of those stars really don't like that guy prowling around the audience interviewing them? It's like you can see them thinking, "Hey, I was willing to put up with this on the way in. Does he have to be inside?"

Aw, they didn't get Neil Ross back as announcer. He did such a great job last year.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — You know what I miss during these Oscar arrivals? I miss Edy Williams. There was a span of maybe five years there where she used to show up each year in something outrageous and revealing. One year, I think she was in a leopard-skin bikini with a live leopard on a leash. I don't know that she ever got inside or even tried to, but the reporters would flock to cover her entrance, stampeding over Jimmy Stewart and Debbie Reynolds to get to Edy. It was almost all she was known for but it was, in a way, enough. One year, the night after the Oscars, Johnny Carson made a comment on the air, something like: "Poor Edy…she still doesn't know it's over." Not necessarily because of that, I don't think we ever saw Edy walk down the red carpet again. Or wear it.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — I had to flee my post during the pre-game activities. Hearing just a little too much about what Naomi Watts is wearing. But we're back and ready to hear the snide references to Gigli. Bill Murray is discussing his suit and being interviewed by the kind of host he used to parody on SNL.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Just set the TiVo to record tonight's Oscarcast. On first generation TiVos, this was a problem because if the schedule said a show was three hours, that's how long TiVo would record. Now, you can pad, and I padded this recording by an hour. I don't expect it to run that long but in years past, I padded 20 or 30 minutes and it sometimes wasn't enough.

As I recall, the last few Oscar shows have come in relatively close to the announced three hours. It seems like we've moved past the day when the producers would say it would last that long, knowing full well it would be more like four. A theory used to exist in the teevee business that it was preferable to lie about the length of shows that ran late at night. One local Los Angeles station used to run a late movie that started at 11:00 PM and they always claimed "90 minutes" in the TV listing even though the movie, after commercial insertions, was always going to be an hour longer than that. (And the station knew it. If you looked closely, the start time of the next program was always around 1:30 AM.) The idea here was that you'd be less inclined to tune in the broadcast if you knew in advance you wouldn't be getting to bed 'til 1:30.

The Oscars have this problem that they have to be live. This means programming for the West Coast and East Coast. When they were Monday night, the network and producers didn't want to start the show any earlier than 6 PM in the West because people would be coming home from work. This meant 9 PM in the East. Which meant that for folks on the right coast, it would mean staying up well past Midnight…some years close to 1 AM. So they'd lie and say it would be three hours when they knew it would be four. They figured that though Eastern viewers might get annoyed at not being able to go beddy-bye by 12, they weren't about to tune out then and miss the big awards. A few years back, the ceremony was moved to Sunday. Since fewer people work on Sunday, it seemed possible to start the show at 5:30 Pacific Time, giving them an 8:30 start in the East.

One thing to remember is that the Oscar broadcast really doesn't run long in the sense that its producers thought it was going to be a lot shorter. Most of it is rehearsed and timed…everything except the acceptance speeches, which are usually limited in time. Even if everyone rambled an extra minute, that wouldn't add an hour to the show. If they say it's going to run three and it's 45 minutes longer than that, it's because they decided to let it run long.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Joan and Melissa are now counting down the ten worst fashion statements at Oscars past. Sally Kirkland looks like she's wearing Scarlett O'Hara's drapes. Courtney Love is a slut. Dennis Rodman looks like the doorman at a gay Bed and Breakfast. (Hey, Joan: How do you know what the doormen look like at a gay Bed and Breakfast?) Pam Anderson and Elizabeth Hurley are "trailer trash all the way," apparently because their breasts are exposed. And Number Uno is Bjork's famous 2001 swan dress but at least Joan recognizes that it was intended as a joke. Joan knows about jokes because, rumor has it, she used to do comedy.

LIVE OSCAR BLOGGING! — Just tuned in the E! Network and heard someone say something about predictions for tonight. Turns out, various fashion designers are predicting what the stars will be wearing tonight. For the men, that's easy. I always thought it was odd that regarding formal attire, the biggest sin a man could commit was to have his tux stand out, whereas for women the biggest sin was to dress like anyone else.

Alison Krauss is going to singing the nominated songs from Cold Mountain wearing a pair of shoes valued at two million dollars. The gent who designed them is calling this an "anti-Hollywood statement." Yeah, I can see that.

Joan and Melissa Rivers are counting down the "Top Ten" fashion statements from the years they've spent working the Red Carpet outside the Oscars. Their number one pick is Halle Berry in 2001 mostly because (Joan says) of how she tastefully displayed her breasts that year. Yeah, but were her shoes worth two million dollars?

It always amazes me how to some people, the Oscars are all about what the ladies are wearing. One year, I watched the ceremony at a Hollywood-type party where the consensus was that it was all a colossal disappointment. I agreed but not for the same reason as half the people there: The outfits weren't great, and the director had failed to give us a good look at them. This is why the transparent podium was invented.

Don Markstein, curator of Toonopedia, notes that February 29 is also the birthday of Little Orphan Annie.

Superman…Captain Marvel…and Little Orphan Annie. What do these three folks have in common besides a tendency to never change their outfits?

Come to think of it, February 29 was almost my birthday. I was born in a leap year and due on that date. Two days later, when I hadn't shown up on schedule, the doctors went in and dragged me out.

This may explain why to this day, I never like being late for anything. Deep down, I'm afraid they're going to do that again.

The Los Angeles supermarket strike seems to be ending with a vote and a whimper this weekend. The whole thing looks like a lose/lose situation for the three supermarket chains involved (Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons) because they lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and for the union because they lost months of wages and only wound up turning a terrible offer into a slightly less-terrible offer. Much of the public lost too, because the markets will try to make back that lost money somehow, and also because if you went into a Ralphs during the strike, you probably got lousy service and maybe even spoiled food.

So if all those parties lost, who won? Non-striking markets like Trader Joe's and Gelson's seem to have profited. Last night, we stopped in a Gelson's and there was a sign out front that said something like, "We appreciate that the strike at other markets prompted you to shop here. We hope that our superior service and food will keep you coming back." Based on my experience, that's not even hot air. Gelson's has long been a much better market than Ralphs, Vons or Albertsons. It will be interesting to see how much of their business they lose back to those other chains.

What I find sad is that the union seems to have caved to the old two-tier negotiating strategy. This is unfortunately common in labor relations. Management offers a devastating package of rollbacks and reduced benefits. The union panics and braces for a fight to the death. Then Management comes back and offers, in effect, "We'll let you keep most (not all) of what you have…but there will be no increases and you'll have to agree to a two-tier wage structure, meaning that new hires in the future will get stuck with the lower salaries and less health insurance." And the union, to save its current skin, accepts. I understand why after months of lockout and picketing, the union would take such terms but I think it's a shame. Given this country's "jobless recovery," this is not a good time for that class of labor, and I suspect it will get worse.

Jim Hanley, who runs the fine comic book emporiums known collectively as Jim Hanley's Universe reminds me that before February 29 was designated as Superman's birthday, it was said to be the birthday of Billy "Captain Marvel" Batson. Separated at birth?

My pal Andy Ihnatko seems to think I stole the notion of Live Oscar Blogging from him. Can he be so utterly unaware that Live Oscar Blogging goes back to the days of Edison? That it was all the rage back in the days of D.W. Griffith, back before the Internet had sound or color? Admittedly, before the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, Live Oscar Blogging mostly consisted of people posting, "I hope someone starts giving out an award called an Oscar some day," but the idea was there, at least.

Yeah, I guess I did steal the idea from Andy. So in return, I'll plug his page of Oscar predictions. They are all brilliantly picked and wisely deduced, except where they disagree with me since I'm right and he's wrong. Matter of fact, if the Academy presents the awards tonight except as I indicated, they're wrong, too.

I don't know if it's still the case but once upon a time, the folks at DC Comics in charge of Superman said that his birthday was February 29. I'm not sure how they arrived at that date. I mean, I assume the editors there picked it because it was unique but I'm not sure how they figured Superman knew that. His home planet blew up, taking all birth records with it…and of course, there was no February on Krypton, nor did it probably rotate at a speed that required the insertion of an extra day after four years.

So maybe that was the date on Earth the day he was born on Krypton…except how would anyone know this? Superman could conceivably have figured out just when Krypton went kablooey but how could he have known how many days or weeks before that date he was born? So I'm guessing that he adopted as his birthdate, the day his rocketship landed on Earth. And I'm not sure DC Comics still holds to that date but just in case they do, many happy returns, Man of Steel. Use that super-breath to blow out the candles.