Forgive us if we yawn a lot today; blame those darn Hollywood types and their utterly abysmal sense of pacing. Three hours scheduled for the Oscars? Puh-leaze. Ask those event planners how long it takes to boil a three-minute egg and they'll say "about twelve seconds, but it might run a little long." Consequently, today the AtAT staff is puffy-eyed and crabby because we were up 'til 1 AM on a school night watching a seemingly endless parade of oddly-dressed (two words: "fringed tux") showbiz types thank the Academy, their spouses, and their accountants (and not necessarily in that order).

Of course, it doesn't help our moods much that Memento didn't score an award for either its screenplay or its editing, Monsters, Inc. lost out to Shrek (which we loved, but we still thought Monsters was the better film), and Amélie got passed over completely. Not to mention the fact that, once again, the AtAT staff wasn't even nominated-- and if the Academy is going to keep harping on the fact that we haven't actually done any work in the movies every time we call and complain, you'd think the least they could do is swing us a couple of tickets to the shindig to shut us up. All in all, it was one disappointing year.

It wasn't all bad, though, at least from an Apple fan's perspective; as promised, Apple managed to squeeze thirty seconds' worth of commercial time into that three-whoops-I-mean-four-and-a-half-hour time slot, though it was just the same "Window" ad we all know and love. And at least Pixar didn't come away empty-handed, since "For the Birds" rightfully snagged the "Best Animated Short Film" award. Better still, Mac fans may have gotten a little thrill when, as faithful viewer Dave Martin pointed out, director Ralph Eggleston actually acknowledged the Big Kahuna himself in his acceptance speech: "I would like to thank Steve Jobs and Sarah McArthur for encouraging the short films at Pixar." Woo-hoo!! Every little bit of Steve helps dull the pain of yet another academy snub.

Unfortunately, by that point in the evening, we were already far too glazed over to have noticed Steve's alleged on-camera appearance. Faithful viewer Paul Johnson claims (and who are we to say otherwise?) that when ol' Ralphie got up to pick up his shiny little gold dude, His Steveness briefly appeared from a couple of rows back to shake the man's hand. We'd ask how we could ever have missed such a thing, but by that time we were already drowning our sorrows in copious amounts of Cookie Avalanche and our faculties had clearly started to fail. Good thing we've still got the night's festivities on TiVo, so we can take a closer look once the sugar rush wears off.

For those of you without recordings available, fear not-- faithful viewer davenic has secured photographic evidence of Oscar-Action Steve with Kung Fu Grip (note that this was strictly a white-turtleneck affair) as he worked the red carpet before the big do. The only catch is, you're going to have to look past Gwyneth's see-through top to spot him. Good luck.