2004

Best Picture: the lord of the rings: return of the king

This was the year that the Academy moved the Oscar ceremony up to February from March, in order to pull in front of the crush of all of the other movie award shows. (Of course, they simply followed suit by moving their award shows earlier, too, negating the desired effect.) Gee, you'd think this might make it more likely that we'd get snowed out...wouldn't you?

This was also the year that I cried "Uncle!" and asked that people start sending in their Oscar Pool scores before the day of the party, so that I could have everything all set up in the Excel database and not spend hours at the party hunched over the keyboard entering data. Hey, what do you know...there was a party going on around me all this time!

Some years there's a film up for an Oscar which just naturally lends itself to an idea for a party theme, and this year it was "Seabiscuit". We made up horse-racing tickets for our guests and played recordings of Kentucky Derby broadcasts from years past to determine who'd win prizes this year. The Oscar Gift Basket even included a genuine ticket which was bet on one of the horses in the upcoming Derby. (It lost.) Gwen whipped up a tasty "Burgoo" stew (a Kentucky delicacy), and I served up some mighty potent mint juleps which were a little too powerful for some of our guests (although they were made from one of the milder recipes I found online, alcohol-wise.) Unfortunately, "Seabiscuit" did not turn out to be the winning film this year.

(P.S. Of all of the Best Picture winners that have come out since we started hosting these parties, this year's is the only one which I've never bothered to see.)