The Oscar Pool Party 2007

Every year, on Oscar night, my old buddy Spike (story below) and this beautiful and charming wife, Hope, and the equally beautiful and charming, Amanda, open their home to movie freaks and strange apparitions. It's the Oscar Pool Party, a night of nail-biting tension as the results roll in and the likes of Brad Parks, Norm Foster, Shawn Rogers, Ann LeBlanc and a host of other contenders vie for the honor of out-guessing the insanity of the Academy.

The voting is done online through a by-invitation-only website that has grown from a voting booth to an elaborate entertainment medium with games, articles and pointers on how to outsmart the Academy and pick the winners.

The party, as you can see ...

... is fun-filled and glamorous. The food, prepared by the beautiful and talented mother-daughter team of Hope and Amanda, is a feast of culinary splender. The wine, the beer, and the Champagne flow freely and profusely. After all, everybody wants to be first in line to thwart the Academy, but only one will prevail. This year, it was Antoinette Duplessis. She received many death threats from the other top nine contenders and is currently on vacation somewhere far away from telephones.

In an astonishing reversal of fortune, I didn't finish dead last. In a field of over a hundred voters, I ended in a four-way tie for 35th place. Not bad for someone who saw just two of the movies.