Hello,

What do James Ingram, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, Kim Carnes, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Dylan have in common? They all sang on the same song that I heard on the radio last night on my way to work. It was We Are The World and I had forgotten how cheesy it was. Of course 21 years ago it was quite big and made a huge statement and, yes, I have the album somewhere (well, not the album but the cd anyway).

Oscar video pick of the week: It's Sweet Bird Of Youth, the movie based on the Tennessee Williams play. I've never been a big fan of Williams's plays (even though he was family). He was talented and wrote some powerful plays and I'm even less of a fan of the movies from those plays. I didn't particularly enjoy the film Sweet Bird Of Youth, not for the story anyway. The performances were good but I think what I enjoyed most was seeing a very young Rip Torn (yes, Larry Sanders's boss from The Larry Sanders Show) who I didn't even recognize for the first half of the movie. Once I looked up the character he played I started seeing the resemblance of the older Torn (if that makes any sense). Most shocking is Shirley Knight who plays one of the love interests of Paul Newman. At the ripe age of 26 she was quite glamorous and not bad to look at and she was very svelte just as Shelly Winters was at one time. Ed Begley (yes, Begley Jr's dad) won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Geraldine Page (who was married to Torn at the time and would not win her own Oscar for another 23 years) plays the aging movie star; still glamorous and svelte but over the hill (in the movie anyway). I kept staring at Shirley Knight though, thinking, "she will be playing Marcia Cross's mother-in-law in 43 years, looking frumpy and bloaty."

Enjoy your day,

paul