■ Jennifer Tilly ups the stakes
Jennifer Tilly knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em and on Sunday night the one-time Oscar nominee was shunning Hollywood's Academy Awards for a high-stakes poker game in Las Vegas. ``This is the first time in 15 years I haven't attended the Oscar parties or gotten swept up in Oscar fever,'' Tilly said. ``I haven't even seen Brokeback Mountain. I don't even know who's nominated.'' The actress, who was nominated for an Oscar for the 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway, skipped the Oscars this year to compete in the National Heads Up Poker Championship on the Las Vegas Strip. She was eliminated in Saturday's first round, but said Sunday she had no regrets. After all, she won last year's World Series of Poker ladies event.
■ Richard Neely is the ultimate extra
Superstar violinist Itzhak Perlman owned the Oscar stage for a few minutes with a moving medley of the year's nominated film scores. But it was air violist extraordinaire Richard Neely who had a rehearsal audience buzzing at the Kodak Theatre on Saturday. Neely is an old hand at playing the stand-in, having accepted hundreds of fake Oscars at rehearsal ceremonies over the years. So has actor Ron Waldron, who sat in this year for George Clooney, Tom Hanks and composer John Williams. He's also played Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, Jon Voight and Michael Caine in a 22-year career. Unlike so many real people, Waldron had no trouble keeping his acceptance speech brief. ``I'd like to thank Steven Spielberg,'' he said. ``And I'd like to thank the Academy.'' Uh-oh, he forgot to mention his mother.
■ Three 6 Mafia nab award for pimpin'
The Oscar people showed they were ready to embrace a song called It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp, and the hip-hop group Three 6 Mafia couldn't have been happier -- or more surprised. When Three 6 Mafia's name was called as the winner of the Oscar for best original song, its members bounded joyfully onto the stage, where they offered shout-outs to friends. ``I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't stand still,'' Jordan ``Juicy J'' Houston said backstage. ``I had to run somewhere. I started to run somewhere. People thought the police was probably chasing me somewhere.''
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