For the past few years, it's become a bit of a tradition for me to have an Oscar party but it requires early planning and the sending out of e-invites in January. Unfortunately, you may recall that in January, the writer's were on strike and there was talk that the Oscars might be all-together canceled. I made the decision to not have a party and instead, looked for some other way to make the event more enjoyable (I find some bits of the show nearly unbearable).

I talked with the fellow Row Three contributors and passed on the idea of live blogging the Oscars and everyone was pretty keen about it. I'd never live blogged before but I knew that I didn't much like the idea of having to update the same post 400 times throughout the 3 hour show while keeping track of the discussion in the comment section of the site. This left me in a conundrum - how on earth am I going to manage this?

I looked around on-line for a solution and stumbled on Cover It Live. Looking over the site, it seemed too good to be true but lo-and-behold, it wasn't. You may have seen my live coverage of NV, mostly as a testing platform, and the event last night went off without a hitch. I had read that there had been problems with the CIL service during Macworld but that may have something to do with the fact that that sort of conference is full of tech savvy folks who probably knew what they were doing. I didn't expect the same problems with the Oscars but I did devised a backup plan just in case of disaster.

The event turned from a 'live blog' to nearly a 'live chat' but either way you cut it, it went very, very smoothly and all because of a little Canadian company. I think it's particularly notable to note that our coverage was indeed live and instantly interactive whereas most of the other big sites 'live blogging' the event resorted to traditional methods and therefore lacked true audience interaction.

I think this is a positive notch in my belt.

Update: I think it's worth noting that the Film Junk crew used my back-up plan.

As anyone who comes by here with any frequency knows, I'm a bit of a movie nut so it's not a huge surprise that I'm having an Oscar party to celebrate the big event. Now, this isn't our first party but it's certainly our biggest so far and because of the size of our place, D and I have had to do some readjusting to try to fit in all 12 guests.

The place looks like a bit of a mess but we've got it all set up and wow, it's a sweeeeeeet set-up. Check it out:


This is our TV for the night and yes, that's the wall.

So I bet you're wondering how big the sucker is right? Funny you should ask...here's a picture of it in contrast to our window. We all know how high standard windows are:


That's 83" of TV screen goodness. Wow. if only we could keep this set-up all the time. Who'd need a movie theater?

And the little tool which is key to this wonderful set-up.


And because we have about a dozen people coming by and we don't really have tons of room, we've turned our regular living room into the "overflow" room and moved things around to add an extra chair. I have a feeling this may turn into the make out room, especially after I add the door decoration....


I'll be back tomorrow with a recap of the Oscars and LOTS more pictures from the event! I wish you all good luck with your Oscar pools and can't wait to hear what everyone thought of the event!

And don't forget to check out this post's totally awesome and appropriate track. It was quite the find!