I suffered so you don't have to.

So, originally I was going to blog the Oscars as well as the pre-show on E!, but that started at 5:30 and there was no way I was going to get my act together by then. So, right now, it's 7:34. I'm watching the official ABC preshow and absolutely nothing is happening. Except for a montage, because you can't spell "self-important awards show" without M-O-N-T-A-G-E! We'll use this opportunity to catch up on all that you need to know from the preshow.

1. Ludacris is short. He stood next to Ryan Seacrest and was basically the same height as Seacrest, a member of the Lollipop Guild. Surprisingly, that wasn't a gay joke. This time.

2. In a display of his unyielding power, Seacrest promises that E! will write a $10,000 check to the charity Clothes off our Back. It's the entertainment equivalent of a guy running over a hobo because he has diplomatic immunity. He's Seacrest. He'll do what he wants.

3. Isaac Mizrahi meets Dolly Parton and his head surprisingly does not explode from thinking about all of the ways he can "see how her dress is constructed."

4. Seacrest tries to prove he's straight for the first time tonight by literally going "goo-goo ga-ga" over Keira Knightly. Later, Isaac tells him to stop "throwing himself" at Jessica Alba. The force of the collective eye-roll of every gay man in every bar in Chelsea is enough to register on the Richter scale.

5. Helena Bonham Carter has finally lost it. She's wearing an insane Bouffant that is so big and crazy, even Dolly Parton is like, "Girl, maybe you should tone it down."

Alright, it's seven minutes to show time and I can only hope that what Eric Bana said when asked what he hopes will happen tonight will come true: "I'm looking for a lot of blood to be spilled." My fingers are crossed.

8:01- The opening looks a little like War of the Worlds, if the end of the world features Forrest Gump and John Travolta. Which I think it will.

8:02- This is the first opening to the Oscars that has actually made me laugh. Mel Gibson and a bunch of Mayans getting chased by a grizzly and Jon Stewart and George Clooney in bed together. This may actually turn out to be a good show. We'll see how I feel halfway through hour five.

8:07- A lame Angelina adoption joke. Come on Jon, step it up.

8:09- Why is Keira Knightley sitting next to Jack Nicholson? No! Get away! You're already famous, don't do it! Although, do you kind of get the feeling nowadays that Nicholson doesn't even know where he is? His assistant just tapes those sunglasses to his head, pins his Valium to his coat and points him out the door.

8:12- It's not quite Brokeback to the Future, but the montage of "gay" Hollywood Westerns marks the first Brokeback joke.

8:16- First award of the night for Best Supporting Actor. Presented by an almost-lifelike Nicole Kidman. George Clooney, Matt Dillon, Paul Giamatti, Jake Gyllenhaal, and William Hurt. And the Oscar goes to...George Clooney. No big surprise there. First nomination, first Oscar. Not too bad, Booker. His speech is nice, heartfelt and relatively boring. At least there's no lame Abramoff joke this time.

8:27- Ben Stiller presents Excellence in Visual Effects dressed in a green screen suit--but no green screen. Stiller: "This is Blowing Spielberg’s mind." Spielberg: "No it isn't." Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong, and War of the Worlds. King Kong wins. Sure Peter Jackson doesn't get this award, but I still half expected him to storm the stage anyway. It only seems right

8:30- America's Treasure Reese Witherspoon presents Best Animated Feature. Howl's Moving Castle, Corpse Bride, Wallace & Grommit. Wallace and Grommit takes it. And the guys are wearing clown bowties. And have mini clown bowties for their Oscars. See people? This is why "British" and "Retarded" are often considered synonymous.

8:35- Naomi Watts is introducing Dolly Parton's performance and can barely keep her shit together. Dolly's performing "Travelin' Thru" from Transamerica . Her singing wig is different from her preshow wig. This one makes her look like a Bassett Hound. A Bassett Hound with a liposuction machine permanently parked in her bedroom. Whatever. She's trashy and fantastic. I love her.

8:43- Luke and Owen Wilson are presenting Best Live Action Short. They're both looking a little bloated (halfway down), but I still love them. Anyway, up for the award are Ausreisser, Cashback, The Last Farm, Our Time is Up, and Six Shooter. Surprise! It's a film you haven't seen! Six Shooter takes the award.

8:46- Why? With the animated characters on Awards shows? I'm sure it has nothing to do with Disney-owned ABC. Nothing at all. Up for Best Animated Short: Badgered, The Moon and the Son, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, 9, and One Man Band. The Moon and the Son wins. There's a lot of blah blah, and I always feel so badly for the people who get up here and nobody cares, but it's still so importa----ooh, it's Jennifer Aniston!

8:49 Jennifer Aniston presents Best Costume Design. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Memoirs of a Geisha, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Pride & Prejudice, and Walk the Line. Memoirs of a Geisha wins. See Sony, it wasn't a total loss, you won Best Costume Design. So...there's that. Aw, the people of Japan got a thank you. People of Japan: "Suck it."

8:52- Russell Crowe is so serious that I think he's introducing the montage for the dead folks, but it's the montage for the folks who...played other people? Really?

8:58- Will Ferrell and Steve Carell introduce Best Makeup in crazy makeup of their own. Yay for these guys! Up for the award: Chronicles of Narnia, Cinderella Man, Star Wars Ep. 3. The Oscar goes to The Chronic-What? Cles of Narnia. Also, Steve Carell would make a surprisingly good drag-queen. I did not see that one coming. And the first person gets played off by the music.

9:04- Morgan Freeman introduces Best Supporting Actress and cannot say, "demonstrative." Up for it are Amy Adams, Catherine Keener, Francis McDormand, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams. I'm thinking it'll be newcomer Amy Adams. And I'm wrong. Rachel Weisz gets it and is unfortunately introduced by mentioning her starring roles in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. I don't remember any of her speech, even as she is giving it. I think I heard "brave" and "giving their lives." And I wish that they had kept the open bar, because zzzzzzzz.

9:10- Lauren Baccall is Candice Bergen in 20 years--or would be if either of the two had aged in the past 20 years. She's talking about Film Noir and appears to be drunk. This would be a perfect time for--another montage!

9:15- Jon Stewart enlists Stephen Colbert for fake attack ads for Best Actress. They're pretty decent, but Felicity doesn't get one.

9:16- Terrence Howard introduces Best Documentary Short. The Death of Kevin Carter, God Sleeps in Rwanda, The Mushroom Club, A Note of Triumph. In tonight's first big shake up, A Note of Triumph snags it. I don't know. I'm just trying to make it interesting.

9:22- Charlize Theron's dress is eating her shoulder. In addition, she is presenting Best Documentary. Darwin's Nightmare, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, March of the Penguins, Murderball, Street Fight. Surprising absolutely no one, the penguins win it. Also surprising no one after the bowtie display from earlier, the filmmakers bring giant stuffed penguins up on stage. Seriously. Morgan Freeman is offstage looking confused as to whether or not he should be up there. The answer is no. You do not want to be associated with this right now.

9:24- JLo is wearing a bald cap! Actually, her hair just sucks. She introduces the song from Crash. The stage is on fire as the chick sings and I still don't care.

9:33- Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Sandra looks tired and is rumored to be pregnant. Also? Shut up, Keanu. Best Art Direction: Good Night and Good Luck, Harry Potter, King Kong, Memoirs of a Geisha, Pride & Prejudice. Well look at that. Memoirs got another one. Someone at Sony still has a job!

9:37- Samuel L. Jackson is still cool. Despite his new movie. Which sucked. Hard. Holy crap. It's ANOTHER MONTAGE. This one's about...politics? Doing what's right? I don't know anymore.

9:42- President of the Academy. That is all.

9:45- Salma Hayak's boobs keep getting bigger. She introduces the maestro. Or something.

9:50- Salma Hayak sexily reminds us of the sexy Best Score Nominees. Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardener, Memoirs of a Geisha, Munich, Pride and Prejudice. She sexily struts to the podium and sexily tells us that Brokeback Mountain sexily snags their first award of the evening.

9:57- Jake Gyllenhaal introduces ANOTHER MONTAGE about watching movies on the big screen. Poor Jake gets saddled (Heh. Saddled. You know, gay cowboys? No? Okay.) with a stinker of a joke about portable DVD players. He looks like a kid at his parent's dinner party and his mom is all, "Jakey, show everybody the dance you did in the school play! It's so adorable." "Mo-oom. Nooooo."

10:00- Hee! Jon Stewart just made fun of the number of montages.

10:01- Jessica Alba and Eric Bana present Best Sound Mixing. Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong, Memoirs of a Geisha, Walk the Line, War of the Worlds. And the Oscar goes to...King Kong. Who said it performed way below expectations?

10:04- Lilly Tomlin and Meryl Streep. Meryl looks amazing. They're introducing Robert Altman who is receiving the "we know you're awesome and we're sorry for not letting you win an Oscar" Oscar. This is of course followed by a montage.

10:19- Ludacris is making Oscar-winning songs sound dirty. The Three-Six Mafia is performing and have already gotten bleeped. Apparently "witches" are jumping ship, which is not the way it was originally going to be.

10:23- Queen Latifah looks better than she's looked in a while and introduces Best Original Song. The nominees are Crash, Hustle and Flow, Transamerica. Hustle and Flow wins. Holy shit. The Three-Six Mafia just won an Oscar. Take that, Eminem.

10:26- Jon Stewart can't stop giggling. "It just got a little bit easier for a pimp."

10:27- More fake lobbying spots for Sound Editing.

10:28- Jennifer Garner trips and nearly busts her face on the stage. She also looks like she's wearing Will Ferrell's makeup. For Best Sound Editing: King Kong, Memoirs of a Geisha, War of the Worlds. King Kong wins it. Yay! Peter Jackson will work again.

10:31- Clooney gets to be the buzz kill and introduce the dead folks. Who's going to get the most applause? It's everybody's favorite game, "Whose death is the biggest loss?"

10:34- And the winner is...Anne Bancroft. Sorry Chris Penn.

10:38- Will Smith presents Best Foreign Language Film. Don't Tell, Joyeux Noel, Paradise Now, Sophie Scholl, Tsotsi. Tsotsi wins. Lots of stuff about how we're all the same, etc. etc.

10:42- Ziyi Zhang looks delightful and is presenting Best Film Editing. Up for it are, Cinderella Man, The Constant Gardener, Crash, Munich, Walk the Line. Crash wins, which makes sense. Editing ensemble pieces is tough.

10:43- Hillary Swank looks better than she did last year and is presenting Best Actor. Finally, something we care about. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Terrence Howard, Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, and David Strathairn. I'd like it to be Joaquin, but I think Phil Hoffman is going to get it, which is fine, because he's amazing. Although, David Strathairn could pull an Adrian Brody and take it. Or it could be Phil Hoffman, which everybody expected. He was supposed to bark his acceptance speech but didn't. You suck, Hoffman.

10:56- John Travolta presents Best Cinematography. Batman Begins, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, Memoirs of a Geisha, The New World are nominated. Memoirs wins, which surprises me. I thought it would either be Brokeback or Good Night. Sony must have done a lot of lobbying.

10:58- Jaime Foxx (the extra "x" is for "x-tra sexy!") presents Best Actress. We've got Dame Judy Dench, Charlize Theron, Felicity Huffman, Keira Knightly and Reese Witherspoon. I think Felicity's going to get it, but I won't be surprised if it goes to Miss 29 million dollars a picture, Reese Witherspoon. And she gets it, which...no. She was good, but Joaquin owned that movie. Yes Reese, we know you grew up in Tennessee. You're from the South. WE GET IT! Also, where is Ryan? He's so subdued, not like the Globes. Dammit the Oscars need more alcohol!

11:09- Dustin Hoffman, who is looking rather wee tonight, is presenting Best Adapted Screenplay. He almost opened the ballot before he read the nominations and gave a shout-out to all of the losers. Anyway, we've got Brokeback Mountain, Capote, The Constant Gardener, A History of Violence, Munich. Brokeback wins again, to no one's surprise. Jesus, I hope this dude doesn't thank his typewriter again.

11:13- Holy crap. Uma looks fierce. She's introducing Best Original Screenplay. Crash, Goodnight and Good Luck, Match Point, The Squid and the Whale, Syriana. Crash wins and I'm sure the boys over at Defamer are puking right about now.

11:20- Tom Hanks, the Jesus of Hollywood is presenting Best Director. We've got Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich. Brokeback wins, again, to the surprise of NO ONE. Oh, Ang. Don't open up with, "I wish I knew how to quit you." Not only are Brokeback jokes pretty much over, but it doesn't even fit. Haven't you learned from James Cameron? Come on!

11:23- Jack Nicholson, having dipped into the Valium pinned to his sleeve, is announcing Best Picture. Like it matters, we've got Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich. Hmm, who's going to win? Who? HOLY SHIT. IT WAS CRASH. CRASH WON. NOT BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. Even the Crash folks are like, "Wait, haven't you guys seen Brokeback?" Wow, there was actually an upset. I honestly don't believe it. This is nuts.

11:28. My back hurts and my vision is getting blurry. All in all, Jon Stewart did a great job as host, but really, there's only so much he can do. Lord, the Oscars are boring. Aside from the three seconds of shock after Crash won, everything was pretty predictable. I'm going to start my Globes countdown now. Awards shows need free-flowing alcohol!