Going for the Gold (Statuette)...

With the Winter Olympics a mere faint memory, at this point, it's time now to go for ANOTHER piece of gold hardware, and that's Oscar. It's the night before... and the celebratory parties began weeks ago, with a bulk of them happening last weekend into this week.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a couple of them in honor of Jeremy Renner and "The Hurt Locker." If you haven't seen this film yet, please do yourself a favor... It is riveting from start to finish, and features an actor who's been "at it" for 20 years, and is just now being considered a "breakout star"... He doesn't mind, in fact, Jeremy has told me "I'll be a breaking out til I'm 80, I hope" -- He's just that kind of guy... grateful, talented, and humble.

So we met at an after-party (in fact the very one described in the last blog entry -- and by the way, I have to blog more... this once a month, once every other month thing is not enough) for the Palm Springs Int'l Film Festival. A few days later, and very coincidentally, he was scheduled to come in to Extra for an interview, so I asked to do it. We had a great interview, and afterward, Jeremy invited me to his birthday party (39th) which was happening the next night. He didn't have to be that gracious. But he was.

Went to his party and had a blast! Gerard Butler, Jon Hamm were both there, but more than the celeb "factor" -- just a bunch of really nice people, at a divey Hollywood piano bar... Jeremy even got behind the piano and belted out "NY State of Mind" -- and the dude has pipes!

Then last weekend, my friend Jen and I were both invited to "The Hurt Locker" party at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood (the very same hotel where John Belushi, sadly, took his own life)... This was a party... in Bungalow 1... Stars galore (including Gerard Butler, yes they are friends), Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jason Bateman, to name a few... (I always feel like I am "dropping" names... don't mean it to sound that way... it's just very matter of fact... I am still always starstruck, but of course, don't show it -- but I very much appreciate the opportunities I have been given in my career)...

One night later, we find ourselves at Guy O'Seary's house in Beverly Hills... Guy, of course, being Madonna's manager, has a crazy big and beautiful home... spectacular! Bradley Cooper was there, Jon Hamm and his wife.. happy to run in to Mark McGrath and his girlfriend Corrin... Robin Wright Penn, and late in the evening, in comes Jessica Simpson and her friend, hair stylist Ken Paves... She couldn't have been sweeter, and Jeremy was cordial (it was a party in his honor, by the way) .. as a side note, I was shocked a couple days later to read on People.com that Jeremy was "flirting up a storm" with Jessica... man oh man.. that was just not the case... I don't know what lowlife who was invited to the party decided that they would sell that 'item' -- not only was I two feet away from them when they met, but it just didn't go down the way it was written on that gossip site. Unbelievable! I understand more and more why celebrities get so pissed off at what's taken out of context, and what's simply made up!!

The party was a huge part of such a wonderful pre-Oscar build-up for me. I even got Guy O'Seary (and I hope this happens) to agree that if he gets the American Idol judge job (he's apparently in the running to take Simon's place), he will do an interview with me.

I have to thank Jeremy Renner for being such a down-to-earth, nice guy... Parties like the two he made possible for me to attend, will make going to the Oscars almost anti-climactic... Ok, no, while the parties were great... the Oscars are still going to be the time of our lives!