"Welcome to New York, pal — now go to jail."

"An Italian tourist spent his second night in the city behind bars after staff at an upscale East Side steakhouse called cops when he claimed he left his wallet at a friend’s place."

Graziano Graziussi, a 43-year-old lawyer from Naples, is a regular at Smith & Wollensky....

“I was going to leave my iPhone,” he said. “I suggested they bring a bus boy with me... It would have been an easy trip.”

One police veteran told the Daily News he wasn’t surprised to hear that the restaurant wouldn’t take the phone as collateral.

“How do they know that iPhone was his? It could have come from anywhere,” the cop said.

The restaurant is getting some horrible press, but I'm sure people rip off restaurants all the time with the old forgot-my-wallet routine. If you let the guy leave, 9 times out of 10, you never see him again. I made up that statistic for rhetorical purposes. What do you think the statistic is? How much money do you think restaurants lose every year? They'll have to compensate by charging more to the people who do pay. But now they're stuck with the bad PR, because they called the cops on a photogenic lawyer, which means: 1. Focused outrage, 2. Ability to contact and talk to the press, 3. Big newspaper willing to run the story.

***

Readers of this blog might be thinking: Smith & Wollensky, where were we just talking about Smith & Wollensky? Was it in "The Great Gatsby"? It sounds like the name of the place that's been around long enough to have figured in "Gatsby," which takes place in 1922, but it opened in 1977. It adopted an old-fashioned image way back then. It was founded by Alan Stillman, the man who invented T.G.I. Friday's.

According to Stillman, there was never a Mr. Smith or a Mr. Wollensky involved. He opened the Manhattan phone book twice and randomly pulled out two names, Smith and Wollensky. The announcements for the opening, however, carried the names Charlie Smith and Ralph Wollensky. Stillman later admitted that Charlie and Ralph were the names of his dogs.

What's the deal with Stillman and Friday's? T.G.I. Friday's started back in 1965. Stillman — Wikipedia says — was a "bachelor perfume salesman [who] lived in a neighborhood with many airline stewardesses, fashion models, secretaries, and other single people on the East Side of Manhattan near the Queensboro Bridge, and hoped that opening a bar would help him meet women."

At the time, Stillman's choices for socializing were non-public cocktail parties, or "guys' beer-drinking hangout" bars that women usually did not visit; he recalled that "there was no public place for people between, say, twenty-three to thirty-seven years old, to meet." He sought to recreate the comfortable cocktail-party atmosphere in public despite having no experience in the restaurant business.

So he kind of invented the singles bar?

With $5,000 of his own money and $5,000 borrowed from his mother, Stillman purchased a bar he often visited, The Good Tavern at the corner of 63rd Street and First Avenue, and renamed it T.G.I. Friday's after the expression "Thank God! It's Friday!" from his years at Bucknell University....

Aw. I'm rooting for this guy, who made his mom happy, by facilitating a million fucks, some of which were his. Ah! Here's a whole interview with him, complete with photos:

NCR: Did your strategy work? Did you meet good-looking girls?

Stillman: Have you seen the movie Cocktail? Tom Cruise played me! I was lucky enough to do it for three years — he only did it to make a movie. Even today, the advantage of being the guy behind the bar is huge. Why do girls want to date the bartender? To this day, I’m not sure that I get it.

Ha ha. But, Althouse, get back to where you were going: that time we were talking about Smith & Wollensky on this blog. Yes. It was 9 days ago, and the story was about some job applicant who was presented in the press as a young guy who used what I called "the old honesty-modesty routine." Posting, I accepted the media cue that he was a gutsy, charming underdog, but — using Smith & Wollensky as my clue — I got suspicious in the comments:

A key line in the letter, as reprinted in the Daily Mail is: "I met you the summer before last at Smith & Wollensky's in New York when I was touring the east coast with my uncle, ***** ******"

Why put the name of your uncle in the letter unless it's intended to influence the hiring? Perhaps this person's seemingly refreshing attitude is just the cheeky confidence of a young person from a privileged background.

Would a guy working his way up from a working-class background ever write a letter like this?

Which guy most nearly won your heart?
	Graziano Graziussi
	Alan Stillman
	The guy that wrote the cover letter
pollcode.com free polls

"Along with her new Catholic school, the 6-year-old daughter of Katie and ex-husband Tom Cruise will have a uniform..."

"... when she's in school, and 'normal kid' clothes when she's out and about."

This is the 6-year-old "fashionista" with $3.2 million worth of designer clothes and custom-made shoes.

Previously, the child was home-schooled within a Scientology milieu.

"Nothing of importance happened today."

Wrote King George III in his diary, July 4, 1776. Not. He didn't even keep a diary.

From a list of "10 Things You Didn't Know About the Fourth of July."

Happy 4th!

Also, a Meadhouse dialogue:

MEADE (singing): We carried you in our arms...

ME: Why are you singing "Tears of Rage"?

MEADE (talk singing): ... on Independence Day...

ME: Oh....

And here I was thinking he was reading about the Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise divorce, within which there's the topic of Suri getting carried everywhere. I'd just read: "Kids as young as five can be sent to the military like Sea Org. I’m guessing she can’t bring her child-heels or get carried everywhere, which is something Katie would not approve of."

Oh what dear daughter ’neath the sun
Would treat a father so
To wait upon him hand and foot
And always tell him, “No?”

That's what Bob asked, mysteriously. Who is this daughter who always says "no," but waits upon him hand and foot? She sounds pretty devoted. The opposite of a daughter who says "yes," but does nothing. I'm assuming the official Bob Dylan website erroneously placed the question mark inside the quotation mark.

Perhaps the song really is about Independence Day, and the daughter is the United States, carried in the arms of England....

What we learn about Scientology from the Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise divorce.

Holmes seeks sole custody of the couple's 6-year-old child Suri, who has supposedly been raised under principles of Scientology:

Suri is apparently treated as an adult, free to make decisions on her clothes, make-up and diet.

Scientology expert Rick Ross explained to the Daily Mail's Alison Boshoff last year: 'Scientologists treat kids as if they are individuals capable of making their own decisions.'

Indeed, Tom echoed this approach in an interview in 2010.

'I say to Suri, "I really want you to eat this protein if you’re going to have that sugar,"' he said.

'She looks at me and she goes: "Dad, I don’t think you should try to force me to do something I don’t want to do."'...

Just last week, an evening of pizza and ice-cream with her mother ended in tears when Katie took her daughter's cone away.

If we assume, for the purposes of discussion, that Cruise follows a religion-based approach to child rearing, involving maximum autonomy, and Holmes now objects to that and wants to raise the child according to more conventional decision-making and discipline by the parent, how much of a factor should that play in determining custody? Should Cruise's ideas about child-rearing have more weight or less weight because they are premised on religion?

That is, imagine Cruise2, a man with the same approach to child-rearing, arrived at through religion-free thought processes — philosophy, common sense, personal experience.... While you're at it, imagine Cruise3, with the same notions of child-rearing, premised on religious beliefs, with a much more conventional religion. Let's make Cruise3 a mainstream Protestant who has come to a serious conclusion about children, individual autonomy, and free choice based on a deep commitment to the teachings of Jesus.

ADDED: USF lawprof Paul L. McKaskle emails:

My course materials on Comparative Civil Liberties (a comparison of European and American law about freedom of expression, association and privacy) discuss this issue. A European Court of Human Rights held that religion cannot be a factor in deciding custody (Hoffmann v. Austria, [1994] 17 E.H.R.R. 293) where the mother and father were married in the Catholic Church but the mother converted to Jehovah's Witness and the Austrian Courts denied her custody for that reason. As to what would happen in the United States (at least as of 2009, the date of the course materials) the course materials summarize as follows:

“On the issue of whether the religion of one parent can be dispositive of the issue of custody, there is little law in the United States. The issue has never reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In California, two older intermediate appellate court cases involving a Jehovah's Witness parent come to opposite results. In Wilson v. Wilson, 137 P.2d 700 (1943) the religious issue appeared to be the dominant factor in the trial court's decision to give custody to the father, who was not a Jehovah's Witness. The appellate court affirmed. In Cory v. Cory, 161 P.2d 385 (1945), the appellate court (without mentioning Wilson, supra) reversed the trial court which had awarded the father custody in preference to the mother, primarily on the basis that the mother was a Jehovah's Witness. (The trial court's reasons were mostly directed at whether the children should be allowed to pledge allegiance to the flag at school, which the father wanted and the mother did not.... Neither case was reviewed by the California Supreme Court, so, technically, a trial court in California could follow either case. There was a third California case, Quiner v. Quiner, 59 Cal.Rptr. 503 (1967), in which the trial court refused to give custody to the mother who belonged to a religious sect (the Exclusive Brethren) in which voluntary association with non-members of the sect or any activities outside the family were strictly forbidden. This meant, according to the trial court, that the child, inter alia, could not attend movies, have school friends outside the sect, engage in school athletics or even have a record player. The Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, reversed and awarded custody to the mother on the grounds that her religion should not be a factor in awarding custody (citing Cory, supra, but not mentioning Wilson, supra.). The California Supreme Court granted a hearing on the case on its own motion. This is an extremely rare occurrence in California, but it had the effect of vacating the Court of Appeals opinion so that it [is no longer] precedent. According to the attorney for the mother, after the hearing was granted the Clerk of the Supreme Court contacted both him and opposing counsel on several occasions and said the Chief Justice (Roger Traynor at the time) “wanted the case settled.” The parties did settle shortly thereafter and the further review in the Supreme Court was dismissed. (That did not restore the Court of Appeals opinion, however. Once it had been vacated it was no longer precedent.)”

[The Quiner case has been cited in law review articles on the topic–written by non-California judges, lawyers or students–under the erroneous assumption that the case is good law because it is published with a citation in the West Publishing Company's California Reporter. West publishes Court of Appeal cases in the California Reporter when they are first filed and they remain there even if they have subsequently been vacated. But such a case does not appear in the Official Reporter and, even though there is an "unofficial" citation available for such a case (as is set out above) it can no longer be cited as authority.]

On a related issue, the power of a divorced parent to raise children in his or her religion, the courts have reached conflicting results. Some courts have held this power is vested exclusively in the custodial parent. See, e.g., Marjorie G. v. Stephen G., 592 N.Y.S.2d 209 (1992). More courts have held that even the non-custodial parent has the right to expose the children to his or her own religion. See, e.g., Felton v. Felton, 418 N.E.2d 606 (Mass. 1981); Mentry v. Mentry, 142 Cal. App. 3d 260 (1983).

I realize this doesn't answer your question of what should the law be. I think it can be an allowable a factor, analogous to Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944) which held that the state may intervene in protecting the health or safety of a minor despite parental religious beliefs. In my opinion the oddball grant of "autonomy" has a bearing on the child's health. And, of course, if there is joint custody, the mother certainly has an equal right to impose her child-rearing approaches (as long as they were not dangerous) while she has custody.

(In the now vacated Quiner case, when the appellate court reversed and gave the mother custody, it did grant the father some visiting rights which, presumably, would allow the son to associate with others not a member of The Exclusive Brethren during such time-including, of course, his father-and engage in non sect-related activities-including going to movies with his father, for example. All of this, of course, would be completely contrary to the teachings of the sect.)

"Disappointment for Katie Holmes over axed Jackie Kennedy series."

1. First, of all: "axed." Should we be saying "axed"? There hasn't be a high-profile ax murder in a while, and now if there is one, The Daily Mail will have to answer for it.

2. Katie Holmes looks a little like Jackie in that get-up, but something's missing — something in the legs and arms proportionality. And that expression! Why is Katie always so sad?!

3. "JFK's niece Maria Shriver, and his daughter, Caroline Kennedy, are reported to have lobbied hard for the History Channel to pull the plug on the series." Katie and Tom less powerful than Maria and Caroline? Noooo!

4. A History Channel spokesperson said: "While the film is produced and acted with the highest quality, after viewing the final product in its totality we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not fit for the History brand... We recognise historical fiction is an important medium for storytelling and commend all the hard work and passion that has gone into the making of the series, but ultimately deem this as the right programming decision for our network." Find the lies in that statement. Why'd they approve of the production in the first place if that sort of thing isn't "right" for them?

5. Sorry about the "Schwarzenegger" tag. I don't feel like making a separate tag for Maria Shriver.

The Golden Globe nominees are announced...

Here. I've seen few of these things -- and not just because many of the best movies don't play until the end of the year. It's also that I don't enjoy going to the movies these days -- for about 6 reasons.

But I did see "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," which is up for best comedy/musical. And it's got a best comedy/musical actor, Javier Bardem, and supporting actress, Penélope Cruz. I haven't seen the competition, so it's not my place to say who ought to win, but they were excellent, especially Penélope Cruz. She's in competition with Kate Winslet -- a favorite actress chez Althouse -- who is nominated for "The Reader," but Kate also has an actress in a drama nomination, for "Revolutionary Road," so both Kate and Penélope can win.

There's some interesting competition, too, in the supporting actor category:

Tom Cruise for Tropic Thunder (2008)
Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder (2008)
Ralph Fiennes for The Duchess (2008)
Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt (2008)
Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008)

All I can say is, if you're going to give anyone extra points for drugs, give them -- the points, not the drugs -- to Robert Downey Jr. for living, not to Heath Ledger for dying.

Tom Cruise roasts Matt Lauer.

So Matt Lauer got one of those Friars Club roasts, and you wouldn't care -- would you? -- but Tom Cruise showed his adorable face, and he was hysterically funny:

"You know, I was just taking his advice. He told me, 'Nobody wants to hear about your dopey movie. Go crazy. People will love you for it.'

"Matt's great at giving advice. When Katie asked him if she should leave the 'Today' show for CBS, he said, 'Absolutely, you should definitely do that. People will love you for it.'

"Jay Leno was No. 1, but Matt told [NBC exec] Jeff Zucker to cut his contract. 'You'll be ahead of the curve before his ratings go down and you'll look like a genius. People will love you for it.' Leno's ratings never went down.

"A few months ago, he was talking to O.J. Simpson and he said, 'Juice, those guys in Vegas have all your stuff. Don't be a p---y, just go there and take it. Trust me, Juice. People will love you for it.'"...

"Matt and I are so close now, that if we can't be together, we talk on the phone three, four times a day. I'll call him up and ask, 'Are you watching this?' And he'll just say 'yeah,' and we'll watch the whole show together on the phone."

More here:

Cruise ended with a toast: "To our friend who we wake up to every morning only because we had the channel on NBC before we fell asleep." He then told Lauer, "Lose my number, you glib putz." And then signed off by finally saying, "Cruise out!" which was kind of unspeakably awesome. Lauer jumped up to the mike: "Tom, can you stay? We can get a booster seat."

Later, Lauer explained that he'd never been prepared for what a sensation the infamous 2005 interview would be, until he went home, "and someone told me what the word glib actually means. That burned my fucking ass!" Lauer also announced that he and Cruise have an interview scheduled for December. "So officially we have now buried the hatchet," he said. "But just between us, if he pulls that shit again, I will fuck him up. The guy is, like, five-foot-three. I will drop a building on his ass."

Do you love it when Lauer talks dirty to Tom?

This needs to be on YouTube, but it's not, so let's go back to Tom's wonderful old performance on "The Today Show" -- which will help you if you've lost track of the "glib" reference:



Ah! That never gets old.

8 rules for writing a short story.

Found in this Wikipedia article about Kurt Vonnegut, whom I was thinking about because my commenter Bissage linked to a book of his here and because — also this morning — I was in a long IM conversation that ended up — though it started being about the New Hampshire primary — being about the number 57, Tom Cruise and Scientology, whether humans are the most rational or the most irrational animals, why we love our ideas so much, religion, and "Cat's Cradle."

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I like the way somebody put in Wikipedia links for "sadist," "pneumonia," and "cockroaches." It seems to mean something. Perhaps you could write a short story in which it does and which follows the 8 rules.

ADDED: Here's a nice NPR interview with Vonnegut in which he talks about these rules, some other things about writing and reading (it's meditation), and laughs about the time Nazis wanted very much to surrender to him.

When Germans think they're being anti-Nazi by singling out one religion to discriminate against.

How bizarre. Tom Cruise is filming a movie called "Valkyrie" -- the story of the man who nearly assassinated Hitler -- in Germany. But some Germans are upset about it, because they don't like Cruise's religion, Scientology.

The German press has given blanket coverage to the film but some officials have baulked at the choice of Cruise to play the Nazi officer Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who was executed by firing squad after the failed bomb attack of July 20, 1944.

They cite the actor's ties to the Church of Scientology, which is viewed here as a commercial outfit that exploits vulnerable people, as making him unfit to play a German martyr.

"Stauffenberg stood for the most noble motives a person can have," Frank Henkel, the general secretary of the Berlin chapter of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, told rolling news channel NTV.

"I consider Tom Cruise as a self-proclaimed ambassador of Scientology inappropriate for the role."

The remarks came after sharp criticism from a number of politicians and even Stauffenberg's eldest son Berthold, 72, who has told the press that Cruise "should keep his hands off my father."

So, in your mind, the adherents of one religion are ignoble? What an absurd attitude to take exactly at the point when you're contemplating your Nazi history.

Simulblogging the Oscars!

I've got to get home first. The flight to Madison is boarding, so let me get going. Start without me!

ADDED #1: Hey, I made it home. No flight delays, but you should have seen how buried my car was. Well, you will see, because I took pictures. Anyway, I can see you're way ahead of me talking about this. 29 comments as I start. But the TiVo is running, and I've seen the really charming Errol Morris film that kicked things off. A sweet, self-effacing attitude. And now, here's Ellen DeGeneres, continuing the sweet, charming, self-effacing tone. She's wearing a dark red velvet tuxedo -- with white shoes -- and looks very sharp. Her first joke makes me laugh. She has a nice joke about Americans not voting for Jennifer Hudson (on "American Idol") and then how they did vote for Al Gore. For no apparent reason, a gospel choir comes out and Ellen dances and plays tambourine. Now, for the first award, for Art Direction, and it's Nicole Kidman, looking very Barbie-like, all plastic-y and shiny. She's wearing an impossibly tall, thin red dress, with a knot at the side of the neck. The award goes to "Pan's Labyrinth."

ADDED #2: They didn't start with a supporting acting award. Good! Now, there's a comedy song, and I'm using it as a chance to try to catch up with you guys. On to the next award: makeup! Again, with the "Pan's Labyrinth." The makeup did look pretty cool. Ooh, now it's Abigail Breslin and Jaden Smith. Kids. They're short, so they do the nominees for shorts. Sorry, it's another fast-forward opportunity.

ADDED #3: Wow, you guys are up to 43 comments. I'm desperately trying to catch up with you. Ooh, it's Rachel Weisz. She looks just great in a strapless beige dress that has a nice jeweled swirl across the chest. I like her dark red lipstick and piece-y dark brown hair. She's doing the Supporting Actor award. Aw, Eddie Murphy looks like he really wants to win. It's Alan Arkin. My favorite. I love this guy. He puts the Oscar down on the floor so he can pull out his speech. The film -- "Little Miss Sunshine" -- can help us in our "fragmented times." It's a choice not to act out the speech. Surely, he could have memorized it. Maybe he was acting the part of a guy reading a speech.

ADDED #4: Melissa Etheridge performs the song from "An Inconvenient Truth," and then out come Leonardo DiCaprio and Vice President Al Gore. Al looks happy (and carries his great weight well). Leo asks him if he's got anything he'd like to announce. He says he's "just here for the movies." He thanks Leo for being "such a great ally" in his anti-global-warming efforts. Leo's all "thank you, sir," and the camera -- pretty randomly -- goes to Jerry Seinfeld, who's caught looking like this:



Cameron Diaz, who also has piece-y dark brown hair, gives the award for animation to "Happy Feet," and she's unbearable cutesy and phony. Nice clip show about movies about writers. At the end, we see Jack Nicholson -- who was featured in the clips for both "The Shining" and "As Good As It Gets" -- and he's shaved totally bald. (A tribute to Britney Spears?)

ADDED #5: "The Departed" wins Best Original Screenplay. Hey, you guys are up to 75 comments. I'm still not reading them, because I'm trying to catch up. I'm sure it's all clever and stuff. There's a great commercial for American Express -- must be a Jerry Seinfeld thing, explaining the "random" shot noted above. And a beautiful ad for iPhone... of lots of hellos from movies. (No need to convince me to buy one of those things when they are available, so the commercial seems to just be about getting me more excited about it.) They're doing the costumes award now. "Marie Antoinette" wins. Tom Cruise presents the Jean Hersholt "humanitarian" award to Sherry Lansing. We're in the depressing "dead" center of the show now, so let me regale you with pix of my car, as I encountered it after my long trip home. It was in this deep:



And here's how it looked after digging just enough of a space to back it out:



How did I get it dug out? Am I the kind of person who keeps a shovel in the trunk? No, but as I was walking to the car, dreading seeing how locked in it was, I ran across a woman with a shovel, and she loaned it to me. Then, carrying a shovel, I attracted a man who helped me because he needed a shovel and a second man who had his own shovel. These two guys dug out the snow while I scraped the windows and lights. (I do keep a scraper!) And I was out in no time. And don't just say: Guys! Because there was also that woman with the shovel. I asked her, "Do you work here?" And she said no, she just drove over with a shovel because a friend called her up, and she trusted me to return the shovel to a spot in the snow that we agreed on. I left that trust with Guy #1 and I'm sure he kept it.

ADDED #6: Speaking of movies, I got my little movie up at last in the previous post. You can hear me and my long-time ex-husband RLC talking about things seen in a record store window. Whoa! You guys are up to 119 comments! Okay, I've gotta rush. Visual Effects. Doesn't Naomi Watts look lovely in that yellow-gold, strapless dress with a thick black band under the breasts? "Pirates of the Caribbean" wins. Now, we see Catherine Deneuve for... what the hell is this? Ah! There's Sacha Baron Cohen in the audience. He's so adorable! "Best Foreign Language Film. "The Lives of Others." Oooh! It's George Clooney. He's handsome! Best Supporting Actress!!! Jennifer Hudson!!!!! She says: "Look what God can do!"

ADDED #7: It's Jerry Seinfeld. He's doing the Documentary award. Oh, so they showed him before when Al was on stage because later he was going to present the award for which Al is nominated. Seems too fix-y to me. And Al wins the Oscar!!!!! Closeup of the oh-so-pleased Steven Spielberg. Why did they make the film? Because of the problem of global warming??? Oh, no: "We were moved to act by this man." So says the director, reaching over to touch the hem of Al Gore's garment. He's gasping with awe. It's kinda embarrassing. He pumps the Oscar weirdly twice in Al's direction and he says "We share this with you." The camera goes to Larry David, clapping righteously. Now, Gore speaks: global warming is "not a political issue, it's a moral issue." I like Al. He makes his wooden squareness hip and cool.

ADDED #8: Kirsten Dunst is wearing a beautiful, witty dress. It's gray and has a see-through section at the top with a collar that seems to belong on a prim blouse. It's intelligent. And the dress makes me love Kirsten! The award is Original Screenplay, and it goes to "Little Miss Sunshine." Now, we see Jennifer Hudson sing a song, which must be fun for her, having already won the Oscar. I try to imagine how Simon Cowell would detect deficiency. Beyonce joins her, and -- isn't it true? -- Beyonce is the better singer. Does Beyonce feel she needs to prove her superiority?

ADDED #9: There's a Michael Mann montage about "America." We're racist war mongers, you know. Then the elegant Thelma Schoonmaker wins the editing award for "The Departed." Now, we see Jodie Foster, dragging excess yards of slate-blue fabric along with her. But she's introducing my favorite segment, In Memoriam. I'll impolitely name the ones that had the most effect on me: Don Knotts, Sven Nykvist, Robert Altman.

ADDED #10: Phillip Seymour Hoffman arrives to give the Best Actress award. It's no surprise that the wonderful Helen Mirren wins. I love the array of actresses as the award is announced. They all do a perfect performance of the thought: Indeed, Helen Mirren is grand! I love the way Mirren "salutes" Elizabeth Windsor.

ADDED #11: It's Reese Witherspoon, here to give the award for Best Actor. She's got major hair extensions and a simple black strapless gown. Oh, don't you want Peter O'Toole to win? Yikes, what is that incredibly smarmy look Jada Pinkett Smith gives Will? Does she hate him + is a terrible actress? And it goes, as expected, to Forest Whitaker. The look on Peter O'Toole's face says: And now, it's impossible. He's very old. Whitaker raves -- touchingly -- about how acting is the belief that we can connect to others and create a new reality.

ADDED #12: Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg gang up to deliver the long-awaited Oscar to Martin Scorsese, and the Oscar really does go to Marty. Li'l Marty hugs C, L, and S. He stammers and just thanks a lot of people. "So many people over the years have been wishin' this thing for me."

ADDED #13: Damn! I never caught up! I've been struggling and fast-forwarding, but I never could make it. I hope you accept my belated scribblings! Well, Best Picture now. Presenting: Diane Keaton (swathed in black) and Jack Nicholson (gloriously bald). I'm just thinking about how nobody made a political statement tonight. They kept it clean and elegant. And the winner is... "The Departed." Excellent!

ADDED #14: I turn off the lights and collect my bags to trudge upstairs after a long day. I peer out the front door and see the people came to shovel my walks as I was watching the Oscars. I'd parked my car in the street and stalked through foot high snow when I got home tonight. So I put on my big down coat and went outside to pull my car into the driveway. Let me leave you with one last shot of my car at the airport. Actually, this one is so abstract, I'm not positive it is my car:

"At the nearby Trattoria del Castello, guests could order a 'Tom e Kat' - a basket of parmesan cheese with truffles and mushrooms."

So who's the truffle and who's the mushroom? I don't know, but I'm so relieved that now -- finally -- when the mushroomy/truffly Tom Cruise snuggles up in his baskety bed with his truffly/mushroomy Katie Holmes, that it will be with blessing of matrimony, sprinkled over them like Parmesan cheese. They traveled to Italy for this wedding, which didn't particularly tap into Italian tradition, since it was a Scientology wedding, where, I'm further relieved to see, the couple takes a vow "never to go to bed without communicating about any differences." I do hope this vow can be met with brief statements, otherwise every night becomes a talk fest, and what if you're really tired?

But here's the part about the Scientology wedding -- and having it in Italy -- that really gets me:

A spokesman for the Church of Scientology for Rome, Fabrizio D'Agostino, said an exchange of vows with a Scientology rite was not legally recognized in Italy, and would have to be preceded or followed by a civil union.

[Bracciano Mayor Patrizia] Riccioni said her office had not received a request to celebrate a civil wedding as of midday Friday.

Oh, for the love of... Hubbard! They aren't even getting married!!!

Can these two characters get off the public stage... perhaps by burrowing under a huge pile of shredded cheese?

UPDATE: According to the last line of this report of the wedding: "the couple had a legal civil ceremony before they left L.A., their publicists said."

Okay, I'm watching the Katie Couric show.

It's so annoying to feel forced into it! She's standing up and wearing a weird white jacket buttoned conspicuously at the waist as if to argue with those who said she'd been photoshopped into semi-svelteness. Now, she's sitting down, but in kind of a half standing position in front of a low desk, to give us more of a view of her torso. She's got a special white microphone to blend in with that white lapel. The first few stories are military, as if they need to drive it home that a woman can cover the manly topics.

Now she's interviewing Tom Friedman, who seems to really be trying to help by speaking extra quickly and smiling, beaming at Katie. They've got two armchairs angled together, with just enough room for Katie's bare, sinewy crossed legs.

The teaser going into the break is about gas prices, and we see the image of a gas pump nozzle, slowly rising, rather lewdly, I have to say, as if CBS felt the need to provide -- albeit symbolically -- the missing phallus.

After the break, there's an aggressively edited segment on oil. Lots of color and graphics and moving cameras and Shell logos gliding through space and guys yammering about hurricanes and whatnot.

Next, there's a segment called "freeSpeech." Not "free speech" or "Free Speech" or "freespeech" or Freespeech." "freeSpeech." Get it right. And it's Morgan Spurlock, fast talking, wearing a purple striped shirt and a purple paisley tie, and he's saying civil discourse, it's important. Okay, Mr. Spurlock, if you could, please don't wear that shirt and tie again.

Now the show veers into the female territory we were so worried about. That "freeSpeech" thing seemed to be the bridge. They're showing the Vanity Fair cover with the photo of the spawn of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. The baby's name is Suri, and Katie -- Couric -- does the pun "Yes, sirree."

After the break, Couric introduces a "picture perfect idea" that combines travel scenery, kids -- orphans! -- and art. You have got to be kidding me. The artist is from Madison, Wisconsin, so I should be soft on this, but I'm not. Wait, this guy doesn't paint the portraits for the orphans. He gets American school kids to paint pictures of photographs of orphans. We're told the painters form a real connection as they stare at the photos, as is necessary in order to do the paintings. We're informed that staring into the eyes has a very special effect. What glop! And the privileged painter and the orphan paintee sometimes even become penpals. Arrgggghhhhh... I'm in pain from this one.

Now, Katie tells us coyly that she just can't figure out what her sign-off line should be. She shows clips of various real and fictional newsguys signing off and then tries to enlist us in the fun of suggesting sign-off lines. "Log on to our website," she says. Log on. When you go to a website, are you "logging on"? See, I'm ready to be irked by anything! Well, let's go over there -- log on over there -- and see whether people are suggesting insulting sign-offs, which is what I would expect, which is one reason it's such a bad idea.

But why did they think it was a good idea? It's like a schoolteacher's "hands-on" assignment. Ooh, she wants to include us. It's so feminine to want everyone to feel included. But how about having an identity instead of asking us to supply one or offering to please us with whatever we want? You couldn't even write a sign-off line or, more aptly, you had to use the sign-off gimmick to make it seem as though this is some new interactive version of the news? What a grand step forward for women!

Checking the website, I see the suggestions aren't openly displayed, and you've got to provide lots of info to make the suggestion. So there won't be any fun and games there.

IN THE COMMENTS: Among other things, readers are suggesting sign-off lines. My favorite, by johnstodderinexile, is "This is Katie Couric, and I can't wait to read what you blogged about me."

"I thought that would be good. Very nutritious."

Said Tom Cruise, about his baby's placenta. (Is the placenta the baby's or the mother's? And which way troubles you more?) It seems now that he was just joking, though some folks really do believe in eating the placenta.

I want to say that I wish the new baby well. It's a little girl, named Suri. Let's be nice!

But first, I want to say that in the interim before the only-joking word came out, Christopher Althouse Cohen emailed:

My question is: if you're going to eat the placenta after childbirth, why not eat the foreskin after circumcision?

There's more to that email, but out of respect for little Suri, I won't reprint it (though it was quite hilarious).

My response:

Why isn't placenta-eating cannibalism? The way biting your cuticles is cannibalism... Or should I say, biting someone else's cuticles?

"Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies."

Such is the statement to Daily Variety, signed "Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu," addressing the mysterious substitution of an old episode of "South Park" for the scheduled "Trapped in the Closet" episode (the one that shreds Scientology):

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"

Variety reports the rumor that Comedy Central was catering to Tom Cruise, who threatened not to promote "Mission: Impossible 3," Paramount's big summer movie. Paramount and Comedy Central have the same parent company, Viacom.

Andrew Sullivan is urging readers to email Viacom at press@viacom.com and demand that they show the episode.

Comedy Central has already yanked one South Park episode, under pressure from the Catholic League. Now they're caving in to the Scientologists. Can you see them allowing another South Park episode which includes Muhammad? South Park has portrayed Muhammad before, but that was before the Islamist bullies took to the streets. You think Viacom cares about freedom of expression?

Sullivan recommends "Support Freedom of Speech" as the title of your message, so you should do that, if the spirit moves you.

Comedy Central's official excuse, by the way, is that they wanted to show "Chef's Salty Balls" as a tribute to Isaac Hayes, who just quit the show because of the way it mocked Scientology. We were just talking about Hayes's quitting, and, in the comments to that post, the subject of the episode swap comes up, and I offer the explanation that they were paying tribute to Hayes. I note that "Chef's Salty Balls" really is a prime Hayes episode, and it has the added timeliness of making fun of artsy movies about gay cowboys (eating pudding). Hey, is Comedy Central reading my blog in search of feeble excuses?

Isaac Hayes quits "South Park."

He's upset about they way it disrespects religion. His religion? Scientology.

"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins."

The response from Matt Stone:

"This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology... He has no problem — and he's cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians."...

Stone told The AP he and co-creator Trey Parker "never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin."

Well, Stone got the better of that exchange! Who has a better ear for hypocrisy than Stone?

Link via Memeorandum, so let's see who else is talking about the Hayes-Stone face-off. (Invocation of John Travolta unintended!)

Captain Ed: "It seems that Chef can't take what he dishes out."

Patterico: "Look to see Chef die a particularly bloody, horrible, and painful death."

Does Chef have to go? I don't think he's been an important character in recent years, but since Stone and Parker have been blithely doing so many voices, why not do his too? In fact, why weren't they doing that voice themselves all along? Here's Stone's answer, from a transcript of "Fresh Air" (date: 10/24/04, no link available):

[A]ctually with Chef--Trey and I were doing all the voices, and we actually--me or Trey wanted to do that voice. We were going to be like, 'Hey, what's going on, children?' and just kind of do that voice ourselves. And we were going to pitch it down, so it was really, really low, like an older black man's voice, how they can just be really, really low. And we wanted to do it ourselves. At the time Comedy Central was like, 'You can't do that.' And it's kind of true in a lot of Disney cartoons and a lot of other cartoons, they won't let their gender--Their gender?--race specific with the voiceover; they won't allow a white person to do a black person's voiceover. They probably don't care the other way. But at the time they were like, 'You know, you need to have a black person do this.' And we were like, `Well, you know, we have this character who sings all these soul songs.' I was like, 'Why don't we get ...(unintelligible)?'

So we had a really short list. It was--Isaac Hayes was our first choice. Then I think we had Lou Rawls on there. And what's the other guy? Barry White. And so we sent out tapes to them to them. I don't think we ever heard from Lou Rawls. Barry White respectfully declined because he's a very Christian man, and he thought it didn't reach his standards. We sent out 'The Spirit of Christmas.' And Isaac Hayes called back and said, 'Sure, I'll do it.'

So Trey and I flew to New York to record Isaac Hayes. We were so freaked out. You know, we'd never even worked with anybody except for our own friends in Colorado, and here we are doing Isaac Hayes. So then Isaac Hayes--he shows up, and he has no idea what he's going to do. So now we're sitting in the studio. He goes, 'All right, what's going on?' And his agent had basically just said, 'Yeah, you know, he's into it. He wants to do it.' But Isaac really was, like, just going to a gig to do a voiceover. And so we had to sit there and explain to him, 'Well, you're this big, fat black guy that lives in this little town in Colorado. You're the only black person there, and you sing soul songs.' And he was, like, 'OK. That sounds good.' So we were, like, 'All right.'

Think "Comedy Central" would let them do the voice now? Think Stone and Parker will have some more fun with Scientology over this? I hope so!

By the way, the episode that mocked Scientology was "Trapped in the Closet," and it was quite brilliant and hilarious. The press paid most of its attention to the material about Tom Cruise being "in the closet" (which he was, literally). I wrote at the time:

[CNN has a] segment on the new episode of "South Park" that mocked Scientology and Tom Cruise. CNN jumbles a lot of things together and titles the segment "Did 'South Park' go too far in mocking Tom Cruise?" Why not ask whether "South Park" went to far in mocking Scientology? That was what most of the episode was about.

Not shown in the CNN clip is the show's hilarious animated depiction of the deep secrets of Scientology. Instead, CNN reruns rumors about Cruise's sexual orientation, replete with the usual clip of him jumping on Oprah's couch. It's true the "South Park" episode repeatedly used the phrase "Tom Cruise come out of the closet." (Cruise literally hides in a closet for a reason that has nothing to do with his sexual orientation.) CNN shows many of those repetitions and informs us that they counted 39 of them. It's very funny.

But religion is the real target of "South Park's" mockery, and CNN opted for the easy approach of tweaking Cruise one more time about the rumors. In a lame attempt to appear journalistic, CNN presented the rumors as a report on how other people are spreading rumors. (Isn't that usually how one spreads rumors?) Can you picture CNN actually going after Scientology the way "South Park" did?

Thank God somebody's willing to mock religion!

"American Idol" -- paring it down to 12 girls and 12 guys.

There wasn't much singing on tonight's show, though there was a lot of riding up and down a tiny elevator. There was a camera in the elevator, so we saw various contestants spewing emotion from a cramped little space, where each was all alone, except for us millions of Americans who were watching them and occasionally even feeling some real some real emotion. Let's list a few high spots (which don't include the news, which we already knew, that the Brittenum twins have problems that took them out of the competition).

1. Katharine McPhee cracks her knuckles cutely as she waits nervously. She makes it and kisses all three judges on the lips (even though at a later point in the show a contestant reminds herself of the rule that they cannot approach the judges).

2. Ace Young is the new and improved Constantine. We see him singing. He's cute but why must he slur his words like that? There's something smarmy and deficient about him. But he is cute. He makes it.

3. Eugenia Littlejohn. I'm sorry but I'm completely distracted by her reverse French manicure: the tips are painted black. Anyway, she doesn't make it.

4. Robert Bennett, Jr. freaks out in the elevator. He's made it and he's all manic. He reminds me of a comedian that I just can't quite remember. Oh, it's Gene Wilder! Yeah. I remember now. He's not very attractive, but when he gets all emotive like that in his small space, you've just got to love him.

5. Mandisa Hundley, the new and improved Frenchie. She's a large woman, and Simon has insulted her. She says: "I figured that if Jesus could die so that all of my wrongs could be forgiven, I can certainly extend that same grace to you." That moves Simon to say: "I'm just so appalling, aren't I?" She makes it, and as she walks back to the elevator, she says: "Y'all are looking at my bottom while I'm walking out, aren't you?" And, yeah, we are. But we love her. And, damn it, we still love Frenchie, the great lost hope of the show. Remember when we said we'd never watch the show again, because of how they treated Frenchie? But somehow we went back...

6. Lisa Tucker. They're concerned that she's only 16. But so what?

7. David Radford. He's got a bit of a Tom Cruise vibe. He makes it.

8. Sway makes it. Elliot Yamin makes it. Brenna blabs and makes it. Gedeon McKinney is a little arrogant -- "I'm ready for America to see what God has done" -- but he makes it.

9. A new favorite of mine, Stephanie Scott, makes it. She's tall and sweet and classically trained. "I love opera!"

10. Ayla Brown, the basketballer, makes it. Patrick Hall, who's not pretty, but is good, makes it. Kevin Corvais, who's heart-rendingly nerdy, makes it.

11. Paris Bennett, who was so good in the audition, but not all that great in Hollywood -- and knows it! -- makes it.

12. Kelley Pickler, who's good and innocent -- a bit Carrie Underwoodish -- makes it. She might be a bit dumb, because when she's told she made it, she seems as though she can't understand, and then she blabs inanely about her mascara.

13. Taylor Hicks, the guy with the gray hair, pours it on, walking in playing the harmonica. He makes it. Great!

14. They end with two pairs, two women and then two men. In each case, we know there is only one slot. One of the guys is William Makar. You know, my new favorite. Phew! He makes it.

Truthiness and heart-feeling.

The most useful word of the year is "podcast," says the panel of linguist, but they still pick, for word of the year: "truthiness."

Also in contention were "whale tail" and "muffin top," both of which have to do with the way young women mis-wear their pants.

The linked CNN article -- which shoehorns in every possible thing about Tom Cruise it can -- fails to credit Stephen Colbert for truthiness, so go here for more, including the original Colbert quote:

And on this show, on this show your voice will be heard... in the form of my voice. 'Cause you're looking at a straight-shooter, America. I tell it like it is. I calls 'em like I sees 'em. I will speak to you in plain simple English.

And that brings us to tonight's word: truthiness.

Now I'm sure some of the Word Police, the wordanistas over at Webster's, are gonna say, "Hey, that's not a word." Well, anybody who knows me knows that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, or what did or didn't happen. Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, that's my right. I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart.

Watch the clip here, which goes on to talk about Bush and "feeling the truth about Harriet Miers," the Iraq war, and so forth. Colbert says that the real division in this country isn't between liberals and conservatives but between those who think with their head and those who feel with their heart. All the examples of heart-feelers he gives are from conservatives (which fits his character on the show, who promotes both heart-feeling and conservatism). In real life, there are folks playing the heart-feeling card in both parties.

(Some are Senators on the Judiciary Committee who, I predict, will do some serious heart-talking next week at the Alito hearings.)

Jacob gives an A+.

He writes:

You know that part of Magnolia, or Jerry Maguire, or Oprah, where Tom Cruise starts singing "Save Me" or "Free Falling" or "Psycho Killer, Qu'est-Ce Que C'est?" or whatever, and you get so, so embarrassed and you have to look away? Times one hundred. For almost every second of the episode. I have hysterical blindness in my ears now. It's like the opposite of how Daredevil can hear really super-well, except the sense that's being compensated for is my sense of self.

He's describing the last episode of "The Apprentice"! Ha!

Too far in mocking Tom Cruise? What about too far in mocking religion?

Here's a CNN segment on the new episode of "South Park" that mocked Scientology and Tom Cruise. CNN jumbles a lot of things together and titles the segment "Did 'South Park' go too far in mocking Tom Cruise?" Why not ask whether "South Park" went to far in mocking Scientology? That was what most of the episode was about.

Not shown in the CNN clip is the show's hilarious animated depiction of the deep secrets of Scientology. Instead, CNN reruns rumors about Cruise's sexual orientation, replete with the usual clip of him jumping on Oprah's couch. It's true the "South Park" episode repeatedly used the phrase "Tom Cruise come out of the closet." (Cruise literally hides in a closet for a reason that has nothing to do with his sexual orientation.) CNN shows many of those repetitions and informs us that they counted 39 of them. It's very funny.

But religion is the real target of "South Park's" mockery, and CNN opted for the easy approach of tweaking Cruise one more time about the rumors. In a lame attempt to appear journalistic, CNN presented the rumors as a report on how other people are spreading rumors. (Isn't that usually how one spreads rumors?) Can you picture CNN actually going after Scientology the way "South Park" did?

Side note: I love "South Park's" crude imitation of John Travolta's voice, which you can hear in the CNN clip.

Religion and mental illness.

The NYT has a long piece on the mentally ill Romanian nun who was killed in a botched attempt at exorcism.

"You can't take the Devil out of people with pills," the 29-year-old priest, Daniel Petre Corogeanu, told a Romanian television station during a four-hour interview taped just before he and the nuns were arrested in June.

Isn't that disturbingly similar to Tom Cruise on the "Today Show"?

All it does is mask the problem, Matt. And if you understand the history of it, it masks the problem. That's what it does. That's all it does. You're not getting to the reason why. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.