Baby Z. update/Oscars

Alma has informed me that it's been too long since I gave any sort of update on Baby Z., who turned 16 months this week. So what's new? Lots, of course, but here's what comes to mind:


-A healthy obsession with Play-Doh
-An almost unhealthy obsession with keys and locks
-More and more words.
-More and more names, like her friends, whom she asks for.
-She can go up and down stairs (on her stomach)
-At the zoo today, she pointed to the leopard and said "meow."
-She's getting better feeding herself with utensils
-And best of all, to my mind, is the fact that she now says "yep" instead of "yeah." And sometimes "nope" instead of "no."

So, how 'bout those Oscars? Lowest rated broadcast ever, I heard. Nothing really memorable except for George Clooney's great early speech, and maybe Three 6 Mafia. If you look through Oscar's past, almost every Best Song win sucks, with few exceptions. "Shaft?" "Lose Yourself?" Prince's honorary "Purple Rain" Oscar?

Honestly, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" isn't very good, by any standard. Nor was "Hustle & Flow," for that matter. But both show more verve and spark than the enervated backslap "Crash," which ham-fistedly reminds you that, like, we're all the same on the inside, and that racism is still bad.

Bleh. It's ironic that "Crash" won the same year Robert Altman was honored, since he's the king of making intersecting storyline ensemble movies that don't hit you over the head didactically (usually). For that matter, at its best "Crash" is just a pale reminder of "Magnolia," which covered the same thematic ground without picking such a sanctimonious subject as race relations.

Anyway, in a year people will forget that “Crash” even won, just like they forget “Chicago” won. And “Brokeback Mountain” will forever be remembered as the one that got away.

[This just in: last night's Oscars were the *second* lowest ever, after the year "Chicago" won.]