And to my wife Julie, I wrote it to you in a note in 8th grade and now I can say it in front of a billion people: I love you.

What I really like the most about The Oscars is seeing speaches by the people who never get to be up on stage, in the public eye. I guess it's kind of cool to see Charlize Theron get teary eyed and be ultra proud of her achievement, but the guy who did the sound or designed the costumes also just got recognized and is up there on the same stage. Most of them don't give good speaches, but the ones that do are really special.

Aside from that, my thoughts in brief:

I love The Lord of the Rings but no way does it deserve all 11 of those awards. The weakest were for editing and song. But also on shaky ground were score and screenplay.

Jack Black and Will Farrel were hilarious, but I thought Adrien Brody's mouth spray bit was the funniest moment of the night.

Everyone made fun of Titanic for winning tons of Oscars with no acting awards, yet somehow I don't see LOTR getting the same criticisms.

By the title of the award The Passion of the Christ would be eligible for next year's Foreign Language film (there is not one word of English in it) but it was produced in the US, so it doesn't meet the other primary criteria. Can anyone think of another major movie made in the US all in a foreign language? I can't.

I respect Sean Penn, but I would have loved to see Bill Murray or Johnny Depp get a best actor award this year.

I'm scared for the cheesy headlines in papers tomorrow. "The Lord of the Oscars" and "The Year of the Rings" seem like likely candidates. I figure the "my precious" jokes will be saved for bad editorials and gossip columns, since everyone who accepted an award for LOTR was quite gracious.

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