Golden moments
7:41 p.m. That nice young woman from ABC just asked Matt Dillon what it was like to play a prejudiced cop. Prejudiced? Prejudiced is, ''I won't date a guy who wears sandals." Say it with us, sweetie: ''That cop was a racist."
8:03 The podium makes Jon Stewart seem as if he's delivering the State of the Union address. Or judging from the awkward laughter during the monologue, he actually seems like he's running to be elected host.
8:07 With that bow on her shoulder, Charlize Theron looks like something that showed up under a very expensive Christian Dior Christmas tree. Dillon gets the lump of coal: He's the guy who has to sit behind the bow.
8:16 Best supporting actor George Clooney, your cellphone is ringing. It's Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean. He has a favor to ask. The party is tanking, and he finds your charisma just what the party needs to gain some traction for 2008.
8:21 Ben Stiller (above), in that tight green getup, demonstrates that his endowments might not only be comedic.
8:34 Dolly Parton is such a disorientingly powerful performer that no one watching her sing can clap in time with the music. This year nobody wins the Oscar for best sense of rhythm.
8:53 Look, ma! No ham. Will Ferrell and Steve Carell play their makeup gag straight, because, really, Carell looks like someone beat him up and made him up to look like Liza Minnelli.
9:22 Thank goodness! Tastelessness is in the house! Kathleen ''Bird" York sings her nominated song from ''Crash," while black, Asian, and Hispanic extras sleepwalk in front of a burning car. They look like homeless zombies from ''Night of the Living Dead."
10:01 Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep are trying to re-create the experience of watching a Robert Altman movie by talking over each other. If anybody has any sense, these two will be allowed to give away all honorary Oscars from here to eternity.
10:16 I was just thinking, ''These Oscars are missing something. A certain je ne sais ghetto." The producers are psychic when Three 6 Mafia comes out to perform ''It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." Someone has turned the junkyard from ''Sanford and Son" into a Lionel Richie video. When Taraji P. Henson steps into the spotlight and belts the word ''pimp" like a skid row Whitney Houston, this performance becomes the ghettoest Oscar moment ever . . .
10:22 . . . Until right now. Three 6 Mafia wins for best song. Even Parton cheers. She knows what's up: That Oscar is going to make an amazing set of grills.
10:23 Jennifer Garner on her way to the microphone almost has a Sasha Cohen spill. According to the new scoring system for presenters who trip, she'll lose fewer points by laughing it off.
11:06 Larry McMurtry (above, with Diana Ossana) accepts his best-adapted screenplay award in dungarees. The man is hard-core old school.
11:21 ''Crash" wins best picture! Sorry: ''Crash" for best picture? The memo from Hollywood seems clear enough. Better to reward the movie about people who clean our closets than the one about the men who live in them.
