2012

Best Picture: the artist

In honor of this year's Hawaii-set nominee "The Descendants" it occurs to me that nothing would be more appropriate than for us to throw a luau and serve our guests a delicious whole roast pig. The thought of serving any kind of food with its head still attached is met with some fairly strong resistance by a certain spouse (cough), so I throw the matter open to the crowd and poll our guests as to whether they would enjoy munching away on Babe or not. The "ayes" have it, so Chase and I strike off into the wilds of Blooming Glen, PA for our quarry just prior to the party. We bring 'im back alive (so to speak) and the juicy, crunchy-skinned beast is enjoyed by all. As a concession to said spouse, though, I refrain from adorning the pig with sunglasses, hat, cigar or any one of numerous other hilarious decorations. Booo!

We also tried implementing an idea that we'd talked about for some years but, until this year, hadn't figured out how to pull off. A chat room is set up where our out-of-town friends could log in and share their thoughts on the Oscar proceedings throughout the evening, which we could then pass along to our guests. All of one person logs on to the chat room that night. Guess what isn't offered at the party the following year?

The Oscar Party website and accompanying ballot get spruced up considerably; it was my project for a web design course that I was taking at the University of the Arts. I actually added several new bells and whistles for a second course which weren't seen until the site for the following year's party was launched. (P.S. I got an "A" for both courses. Huzzah...validation!)