Or at least, it shouldn’t be if all the attendees follow the required protocol. Doing so, however, is rather complicated — achievable but complex. Which means that boomers and Baby Busters (born in the 1930s) will probably have trouble with the process unless, you know, they have a Zoomer or Millennial assistant doing it for them. Either way the line to get into the Dolby theatre will probably be horrendous.

“Last night’s W magazine party was held outdoors at hotspot Gigi’s. A consistent question heard throughout the night was, ‘Are we all getting COVID now?’ Guests nervously joked that Oscar weekend could be a ‘super spreader.’ Mask-wearing at W’s party and a Vanity Fair party earlier in the evening at Mother Wolf was a rare sighting.” — from “Ahead of Oscars, COVID Concerns Loom as Hollywood Parties Almost as Usual,” by Brent Lang & Marc Malkin.

From Wikipedia fragging page:

On the other hand there’s nothing “normal” about wearing a zebra-skin toga or bathrobe, a sartorial statement coordinated with a white bull terrier and a black panther-like dog in the doorway.

Six and a half weeks ago the 2022 Oscar nominations were announced, and to everyone’s surprise Parallel Mothers star Penelope Cruz, whom every handicapper had written off weeks earlier, landed a Best Actress nomination. And now, people are saying, she appears to be surging and may even win the Oscar come Sunday.

Maybe.

I’d love to see this happen, of course. As everyone knows (and as I reminded on 2.8.22) Hollywood Elsewhere stood by Cruz for weeks and weeks, alone and resolute against the stiff winds of seeming indifference…the only name-brand columnist who waved weekly flags for her deeply rooted performance.

All the other award-season Yodas were either Doubting Thomases or cautious fence-sitters…damp-finger-to-the-wind equivocators. If you want to make it in this business you have to have heart.

Penélope Cruz:

-Didn’t get a Golden Globe nod
-Didn’t get a Critics Choice nod
-Didn’t get a SAG nod
-Didn’t even make the BAFTA *LONGLIST*

And she STILL got the Oscar nom.

Legend behavior, your faves could never, etc etc etc. pic.twitter.com/hOMOx9LSra

— Zach Gilbert (@zachbgilbert) February 8, 2022

It’s not a secret that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is an arch-conservative, Trump-supporting wacko. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, therefore, that Thomas texted Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows numerous times on 1.6.21, calling Joe Biden’s election victory “the greatest heist of our history” and declaring that then-President Donald Trump “should not concede….this is a fight of good vs. evil.”

Obviously Mrs. Thomas should be subpeonaed to testify, as should Judge Thomas. Will this power couple be subpeonaed? It’s my personal opinion that the leaders of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6h on the U.S. Capitol are, no offense, slow-moving pussies so I guess we’ll see what happens.

A week ago I reported that I’d seen the first five episodes of Elizabeth Meriwether‘s The Dropout, and that as good as Amanda Seyfried‘s performance as the discredited tech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes was and is, “I kept asking myself ‘who would be stupid enough to go into business with this creepy character…a woman who, had she been born in the 1940s, could have played an alien on The Twilight Zone episode ‘To Serve Man’? Or Ray Walston‘s alien girlfriend in My Favorite Martian?”

“Meriwether’s dialogue is reasonably pro-level for the most part,” I said, “but I can only reiterate that I couldn’t believe in the story because I found it impossible to believe in Seyfried’s Holmes. She’s just too looney-tunes, too ‘off the planet.'”

I’ve since moved past that reaction. I saw episode #6 last night and now I’m mesmerized. I have to admit that the prospect of seeing this bizarre performance artist finally receive her just desserts over the final two episodes (“Heroes“, airing on 3.31 and “Lizzy“, 4.7) seems incredibly delicious. I can’t wait to see her go down, and yet five minutes ago I was afraid to admit this for fear of accused of being accused of harboring misogynist feelings. So just to be safe, I’m going to say…uhm, how should I put this?