Yep. Liveblogging the Oscars once again. What? This ain't the first few episodes of "Gotham". Fish Mooney don't govern my life.

8:30 If i didn't know that Elfman did this music, I'd think it was someone asked to imitate him.

8:32 A montage of the year's movies, not as impressive as you'd find on YouTube.

8:33 "I counted at least 15 people in that montage."

8:35 Wait, was that Richard Roundtree behind Angelina Jolie?

8:41 Some great material here; head and shoulders over the last few years.

8:44 Emily Blunt and Charlize Theron present Best Original Screenplay. The Oscar goes to...Spotlight. Carson Reeves is gonna shit a brick.

8:47 Well, that's new: the people the winnners thank scrolling at the bottom of the screen. Will this shorten the ceremony? We'll see...and not bad, the director of The Cobbler winning an Oscar.

8:48 Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe present Best Adapted Screenplay amidst the first dud material of the night.

8:52 The Oscar goes to...The Big Short.

8:58 Okay. A montage featuring the struggle to get people of color in movies. Wake me when it gets funny.

9:00 Okay, the bit from The Martian was pretty funny.

9:01 Was that really Dionne from Clueless...and is she better, now?

9:02 Sarah Silverman introduces "Writing's on the Wall" by Sam Smith.

9:06 "My favorite song is 'Father Figure'."

9:07 Kerry Washington and Henry Cavill introduce The Martian...

9:08 ...and The Big Short.

9:09 J.K. Simmons presents Best Supporting Actress.

9:12 The Oscar goes to...Alicia Vikander (1/24)! Boom. Nailed it.

9:18 "And we're Black."

9:19 Cate Blanchett presents Best Costume Design (wouldn't this be a conflict of interest as she was in two of these movies...and from the same designer?). The Oscar goes to...Jenny Beavan for Mad Max: Fury Road.

9:22 Steve Carell and Tina Fey present Best Production Design. The Oscar goes to...Mad Max: Fury Road. Fuckin' seriously?

9:24 Margot Robbie and Jared Leto present Best Make-Up. The Oscar goes to...Mad Max: Fury Road. Humph.

9:28 Benicio del Toro and Jennifer Garner introduce The Revenant....

9:30 ...and Mad Max: Fury Road.

9:35 Rachel McAdams and Michael B. Jordan present Best Cinematography. No way the Academy screws this one up. The Oscar goes to...Emmanuel Lubezki for The Revenant (2/24)! Told you.

9:38 Priyanka Chopra and Liev Schreiber present Best Editing. The Oscar goes to...Margaret Sixel for Mad Max: Fury Road (3/24)!

9:42 Black History Month Minute with Angela Bassett. Nice reversal.

9:47 Wait, that's not Richard Roundtree. That's Lou Gossett, Jr. My bad.

9:48 Chadwick Boseman and Chris Evans present Best Sound Editing. The Oscar goes to...Mad Max: Fury Road (4/24)! Ironic. Someone fucked up the sound for a moment.

9:50 And now, the Oscar for Sound Mixing. Mad Max: Fury Road (5/24).

9:54 Andy Serkis presents Best Visual Effects. The Oscar goes to...Ex Machina. Holy shitballs.

9:57 Olivia Munn and Jason Segel tell of the Sci-Tech Awards.

9:59 The droids from Star Wars: the Force Awakens, for some reason.

10:05 Please tell me that they're not trying to redo that lame-as-fuck pizza party gag from a couple years ago, but with Girl Scout cookies.

10:07 Best Animated Short Subject presented by...the Minions. As a wise squirrel once said, 'Allen Funt is a dead man'. The Oscar goes to..."Bear Story".

10:10 Best Animated Feature presented by...Buzz and Woody. Didn't this go out with the mid-2000s (I think we still remember that one award presented by Pierce Brosnan and Edna Mode...well, I do.)? The Oscar goes to...Inside Out (6/24)! So, despite the (undeserved) failure of The Good Dinosaur, Pixar came out on top, after all this past year.

10:13 The sound cut out on Kevin Hart for a moment. What were they expecting? Anyway, he's introducing "Earned It" by The Weekend. Me, neither.

10:21 Kate Winslet and Reese Witherspoon introduce Bridge of Spies...

10:23 ...and Spotlight.

10:24 Outside a Compton movie theater, Rock interviews regular people on their thoughts on the Oscar controversy.

10:27 Patricia Arquette presents Best Supporting Actor.

10:31 The Oscar goes to...Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies. I have no danged idea who this guy is.

10:36 Is that Quincy Jones conducting the orchestra?

10:37 Louis C.K. presents Best Documentary Short Subject. The Oscar goes to... "A Girl in the River: the Price of Forgiveness" (7/24)! Guessing wins the day, again.

10:41 Daisy Ridley and Dev Patel present Best Documentary Feature. The Oscar goes to... "Amy" (8/24)! Like I just said...

10:44 Okay. The Oscar ballots were tabulated by kids? Sounds good. Kids are honest, right?

10:48 And now, we're back to the Girl Scout cookies.

10:50 Whoopi Goldberg tells of the Honorary Oscars given to Gena Rowlands, Spike Lee and Debbie Reynolds.

10:52 President of the Academy Cheryl Boone Isaacs.

10:54 Louis Gossett, Jr. introduces the Obituary montage, complete with musical performance by Dave Grohl (!).

11:03 Abraham Attah and Jacob Tremblay present Best Live Action Short Subject. The Oscar goes to... "Stutterer".

11:06 Sofia Vergara and Byung-hun Lee present Best Foreign Language Film. The Oscar goes to... "Son of Saul" from Hungary (9/24)!

11:09 Vice President Joe Biden (wait, what?) delivers a PSA on stomping out sexual assault. A worthy cause, to be sure, but what does this have to do with movies?

11:11 Lady Gaga performs "Til it Happens to You".

11:19 Quincy Jones (oddly, never an Oscar-winner himself) presents Best Original Score. The Oscar goes to...Ennio Morricone for The Hateful Eight (10/24)!

11:25 Common and John Legend present Best Original Song. The Oscar goes to..."Writing's on the Wall" from Spectre. However, nothing for "You Know My Name", any of the Shirley Bassey tunes or "The Man with the Golden Gun" (yes, I'm fucking serious!).

11:28 Olivia Wilde and Sacha Baron Cohen (as Ali G) introduce Room...

11:30 ...and Brooklyn.

11:35 J.J. Abrams presents Best Director. The Oscar goes to...Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu for The Revenant. I'll be damned.

11:43 Eddie Redmayne presents Best Actress. The Oscar goes to...Brie Larson for Room (11/24)! Here's hoping that Ramona Flowers is next to an Oscar.

11:51 Julianne Moore presents Best Actor. The Oscar goes to...Leonardo Di Caprio for The Wolf of Wall Street (12/24)! I just knew he'd win for that movie. It took a couple of years, for some reason, but justice prevailed.

11:59 Morgan Freeman presents Best Picture. The Oscar goes to...Spotlight.

Once again, I call half of the awards. That's life.

If I picked the winners...

Picture: Popular opinion dictates that the big award will go to Mad Max: Fury Road...even though I didn't think it was the Best Picture of the year.
Actor: Cool as it would be for Cranston to win this, Di Caprio has deserved this as far back as Catch Me if You Can.
Actress: I didn't see any of these movies, but if I were to follow the buzz...Larson.
Supporting Actor: Didn't see any of these, either, but it wouldn't be right to go against a sentimental favorite: Stallone.
Supporting Actress: Despite a wonderfully nasty turn by Leigh, I really think that this is Vikander's award.
Director: Gonna be a close race between the grueling, Tom Hardy-starring outdoor adventures, but I think it'll go to George Miller; sort of a career valedictory and a just reward.
Original Screenplay: Inside Out.
Adapted Screenplay: The Martian, full stop.
Cinematography: Another year, another upset by Chivo. What can you do?
Art Direction: If Fury Road sweeps, this will likely be one of the casualties, but most of the action takes place in the sand. That's Art Direction?! I'm voting for The Danish Girl.
Costume Design: It may be tempting to say Fury Road and move on (especially in the wake of a sweep), but I believe they're gonna want to give something to Carol.
Editing: This, on the other hand, is definitely going to Fury Road. I just have a feeling.
Original Score: Heard Sicario on Spotify and was summarily unimpressed; this took the slot of Inside Out (...and Crimson Peak and The Danish Girl and Cinderella)?! Carol getting Carter Burwell his first nomination is the best thing I can say about it. I'm not like those boors whining about how similar it is to Philip Glass; the music just wasn't as strong as his work on Mr. Holmes. Basically, this is a three-man race. Bridge of Spies, The Hateful Eight and Star Wars: the Force Awakens are all worthy, but I think it will go to Ennio Morricone.
Original Song: Unlike last year, there's nothing I can think of that would be worthy of the award, in or out of the category. Maybe..."Manta Ray".
Make-Up: Let's go crazy and say The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.
Visual Effects: Mad Max: Fury Road; a nice mix of practical and pixelated.
Animated Feature: Of course, it's going to Inside Out, but like I said, a win for When Marnie Was There would be a great personal victory.
Animated Short Subject: Yet another case of 'it's the only one I've seen': "Sanjay's Super Team".
Live-Action Short Subject: "Shok."
Documentary Feature: Probably Amy.
Documentary Short Subject: "A Girl in the River: the Price of Forgiveness".
Sound: Fury Road.
Sound Effects Editing: See previous.
Foreign Film: I dunno...Son of Saul?

See you tomorrow.

Well, I've dug myself into a hole. My credit cards are overextended, my phone service is cut off (making it hard to make or receive calls on it) and my car note is soon to be two payments behind. The job I have now just isn't gonna cover this. I've been applying for jobs and sending off scripts like crazy, but nothing has come of it.

In theory, things could be much worse and I'm sure I'll know all about that when I no longer have a car.

Went to the movies today. The ticket - for a matinee showing, mind you - was $9.99.

The bag for the small popcorn looked to be comically (and I use that word ironically) small, so I had to go for the medium...$7.09, plus tax.

Because of the assigned seating, some asshat made a big thing of it when I was in his seat; if it had mattered to him, he wouldn't have wandered in during the trailers.

On the bright side, all of this taught me to never deal with AMC Theaters ever again. Also, Deadpool rocked hardcore, so the day was sufficiently salvaged.

With all the hullabaloo over McDonald's and their all-day breakfast, I'd like to talk about an item that'd be worth having any time of day: the Spanish Omelet Bagel.

The sausage, the cheese(s), the eggs, the bagel and I didn't even mention the sauce (which you can't see in this pic). It was glorious!

Apparently, there's a way to make it. Google search reveals a number of recipes for a homemade Spanish Omelet Bagel (proving that there was an audience for this item).

Just to pick one example out of a hat...

Ah, the good 'ol days of the Sci-Fi Channel: anime, MST3K, a wide variety of genre programming (classic and new), and, of course, movies. These customized openings never failed to bring a smile to my face:

Really, would it take that much effort to bring these back; give some semblance that the inmates running the asylum give a damn about the network?