How many people know the Oscar winners before the ceremony?

I love watching the Oscars. But I love watching the pre-ceremony arrivals even more. There’s just something so breathtaking about some of the beautiful gowns that waft down the red carpet. Like the gorgeous sparkly creations worn by Octavia Spencer (pictured) and Milla Jovovich today.

Then you get to the frock shockers, and I must confess this is actually my favourite bit. I mean these women have millions of dollars and access to the best stylists and designers and they STILL manage to get it so wrong. They’re almost begging for a public backhanding.

But while I unleashed my claws on Facebook earlier, I feel obliged to hold my tongue here, since I’m a big believer in karma. But let’s just say my least favourite gowns were all well acquainted with the category of Best Actress.

Anyway, on to the awards themselves, and I’ve always wondered if the winners’ names are really kept secret before those envelopes are opened. And the answer is, yes. Very much so! In fact only two people know their identities in advance.

They are non-household names Rick Rosas and Brad Oltmanns, who are accountants with Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the firm which has long been entrusted with counting the thousands of ballots lodged in 24 categories.

Among the measures they take to ensure absolute confidentiality are to count each ballot by hand, and in utter secrecy. As Oltmanns further reveals on the PWC website: “All of the counting is done in a secure, private, undisclosed location. No computers in the room and phones aren’t used. We are sequestered, just counting the results.”

Once they’re in, the names are kept locked up in a vault. Then, on the big day, the two men attend the show separately, travelling by secret routes and accompanied by police officers. They each carry a briefcase containing an identical set of winners envelopes and stand backstage during the entire ceremony, handing each envelope to the presenters as they walk onstage.

Here’s some other crunched numbers about PWC’s 78 years of Oscar balloting.

* 450,000-plus – the rough number of ballots counted.
* 2600-plus – the number of winners’ envelopes stuffed since the envelope system was introduced in 1941.
* 1700 – the approximate number of “person-hours” it takes each year to count and verify the ballots.
• 7 – the number of days it takes to count the ballots for nominations.
* 3 – the number of days it takes to count the final ballots.

And OK, you partly got me, I’ll come clean on my trio of worst ever Oscar frocks (Cher is ineligible as she gets a category of her own.) 3. Uma Thurman’s milkmaid. 2. Celine Dion’s back to front shiny white pantsuit. 1. Gywneth Paltrow for that black goth ensemble a few years back. But since she looked hotter than hot tonight, I think we can agree she’s more than made up for it.

Check out the red-carpet action here.

Who is Tabatha Coffey and why is she taking over?

If I owned a hairdressing studio in America, I would live in fear of Tabatha Coffey taking over. I mean the woman is shear genius (see what I did there?) but absolutely terrifying.

I’ve been ever so slightly addicted to her reality TV show, Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, for several years now. And when I say I’m addicted, there’s good reason. This is reality TV at its most engrossing (OK equal most engrossing as I also love Project Runway) as she takes on struggling salons, turns them and their staff upside down, and puts them back on the road to success.

But what gives her the right and the gumption to do it? I had to learn more about her background. And I’m glad I did as she’s just as fascinating off screen as on.

The biggest surprise came from something I already knew, which is that she is Australian. With all the black she wears I had her pegged as a Melburnian, but she actually hails from beach country – Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast.

It’s the land of sun, surf and sea, but clearly this held no real appeal or interest as career inspiration. Instead, it seems she was always destined to work in hair, as she details in this anecdote from Pink News.

“I can honestly never remember a time not doing hair,” she says. “I was the quintessential kid, playing with and chopping off dolls’ hair. I would play with the hair of anyone who would let me. My parents ran transsexual strip clubs in Australia, and I spent a lot of time in the back with the girls when they were getting ready. At a young age they put me to work setting their wigs for them, which I loved. I learned not only how to set wigs, but also how hair could transform someone. I would sit there and watch the drag queens get dressed and the last thing they did was put their wig on. They’d put on their make-up and costume, but it was only when they put on their wig that everything came together. That’s how I fell in love with hairdressing.”

Heading to London at an early age, Tabatha worked with the likes of Vidal Sassoon and Toni and Guy before America beckoned. She then ran her own salon in New Jersey, but her career really took off like a shot when she entered the reality TV show Shear Genius. Although not the winner of season one, she proved a fan favourite and was soon asked to headline her own show, the aforementioned Tabatha’s Salon Takeover.

It’s now had a slight tweak to Tabatha Takes Over, where she puts her skills to use helping a range of small businesses turn themselves around. Then, of course, there’s associated projects such as her book, The Honest Truth About Life, Love and the Business of Beauty, which reveals, among other things, how breast implants nearly killed her. It’s fascinating stuff. And for the record, she says she’s a natural blonde.

Check out some of her best moments from the show below…

How do you get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?

Every so often when I’m flicking through a tabloid magazine I come across photos of a ceremony to induct a celebrity into the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The most recent, just this month, was a ‘humbled’ and ‘grateful’ Jennifer Aniston, whose career only seems to be going from strength to strength. But some of the rolecall she joins are just puzzling. I mean, no disrespect, but who are Rod La Rocque and Klaus Landsberg?

Anyway, with about 24 induction ceremonies held annually, I wondered how stars got a guernsey. And the process is this.

Nominations are judged once a year in the categories of Motion Pictures, Television, Radio, Recording and Live Performance/Theatre. Once a star is chosen a fee of $30,000 is payable for the creation and installation of the star, as well as walk maintenance.

They then have five years to schedule their ceremony. Here’s some other facts I discovered…

• Anyone, including a fan, can nominate a celebrity for the walk, as long as their management agrees.
• Dead stars can’t be nominated for the posthumous award until five years after their passing.
• The stars themselves are made of terrazzo and brass.
* The idea for the walk came from EM Stuart, who was volunteer president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1953.

Find out more here.

Did the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs really hit the moon as well?

Jurassic Fight Club. Just the name alone was enough to draw me in. But this turned out not to be the documentary I expected.

The name, of course, suggested a program of celebrity death matches such as raptor versus T-Rex and allosaurus versus triceratops.

But it actually featured scientists, historians and other related experts recreating the last day on Earth before a meteor wiped out the dinosaurs (and pretty much all other life as well) some 65 million years ago.

Much of it I already knew. But what I did learn – having never really given it much thought before – was the origin of this Baptistina meteor. And turns out it tracks back to a collision between two massive rocks in the asteroid belt nearly 100 million years ago. It sent one of them towards Earth, where it struck Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula and wiped out life on earth as we knew it.

But that wasn’t the only victim. Turns out other fragments also struck the Moon, Venus and Mars, leaving them with massive craters. A fascinating glimpse into the history of the skies above. And you can read more here.

How do you make macarons (and what does this have to do with John Cleese)?

I live about an hour from my nearest capital city, so whenever the big name acts come to town – invariably on a weeknight – I find myself doing a mad dash after work to see them. And so it was this week when John Cleese’s tour arrived..

Now, he wasn’t on until 8pm, but I was blessed with the gene that spawns pathological lateness, so didn’t even arrive at the venue until 10 to. Which left me no time to get dinner, or even a snack.

Needless to say I was ready to eat my own arm – or that of the coughing machine sitting beside me – when the interval arrived. So I headed to the cafeteria with a determined look in my eyes.

Keen to ensure I ordered my essential daily intake of chocolate healthy and nutritious food, I carefully studied the display cabinet row by row, until suddenly, my eyes struck gold.

Macarons. Those tasty treats so popularised on MasterChef and so often eaten by me before I even get back to my car after grocery shopping.

Very unpredictably, good intentions won out, and I had something else. But I decided they would be a good thing to learn to bake so I could casually whip them out next time if ever I host a dinner party. But where to go for a recipe?

Well the MasterChef website naturally (ps, this is not a paid plug). Where I found a delicious looking pistachio and chocolate variety. In fairness, I should point out it is a Western Star recipe rather than an official one from the show.

But seriously, who cares? As long as they taste good. So here goes …

Pistachio and chocolate macarons
Makes 12 macarons

Ingredients
* 125g Western Star unsalted butter, chopped
* 100g dark cooking chocolate, chopped
* 125g pistachio nuts
* 1 1/4 cups icing sugar
* 1/3 cup egg whites
* Pinch salt
* 1/4 cup caster sugar

Method
To make chocolate ganache, combine butter and chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and melt on high for 1-2 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds until smooth. Refrigerate, stirring occasionally, until firm. Process nuts and icing sugar in a food processor until finely ground. Beat egg whites and salt until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in caster sugar, beating well between each addition, until stiff peaks form. Gently fold in pistachio mixture in two batches with a metal spoon until incorporated. Pipe 24 x 5cm diameter rounds of mixture on to paper-lined baking trays. Stand for 1 hour before baking, so macarons can form a ‘skin’. Bake at 170C for 10 minutes. Allow to cool completely before using a spatula to carefully remove from trays. To assemble macarons, sandwich two cool biscuits together with chocolate ganache.

So there you have it. Now wish me luck as I have a go. I personally suspect the whole thing will end in tears. But at least I can cheer myself up with this Monty Python clip featuring the Black Night. Remember, it’s just a flesh wound!

What inspired Cold Chisel’s hit Flame Trees?

I am lucky enough to be able to say that Icehouse was my very first concert and Jimmy Barnes was my second.

Now to some people, this would sound like the perfect introduction to live shows, and Aussie music at its best. But sadly, I can only report on one of them. And it’s not the Working Class Man. Here’s why …

In heartbroken-teenage circumstances best left undescribed, I had decided to make Jimmy’s concert my first real introduction to alcohol. And by the time we left for the gig, I had drunk the best part of half a bottle of vodka. Straight.

By the time we reached the venue, I had already begged (several times) to be left alone on a traffic island to sleep. So it’s no surprise the staff took one look at me and ferried me off to the sick bay. Where I remained until I made it out for the last two songs, although I could not hope to tell you what they were.

While the consequences at the time weren’t great, in the years since I’ve come to look back on the incident as a sort of homage to Barnesy, who was then a big fan of drinking himself. And I was reminded of it as I drove home from work tonight and the classic Cold Chisel tune Flame Trees came on the radio.

Though I can’t say it’s my favourite of the band’s songs – that honour goes to Khe Sanh and When The War Is Over – I have always loved its lyrics. So I decided to find out what inspired them.

And the answer, found in liner notes penned by music journalist Toby Cresswell, came from the band’s own website, which reveals the track was …

“Written about Grafton, where Don spent most of his formative years. The song was inspired by a girl whom Don had known in his youth and who “doesn’t live there anymore”. Grafton is actually known as the Jacaranda City but it had acquired flame trees as a result of a television program called The Flame Trees of Thaw, which starred Hayley Mills, an old flame of the lyricist’s dreams, and the flora stuck. It’s a song of lost love, of mortality and what’s left behind. Steve Prestwich’s melody and Don Walker’s words.” Their last hit before disbanding (although fortunately for us they eventually changed their mind).

I thought this was a great insight into the band. So I decided to look into the inspiration behind some of its other songs, And here’s what I found….

Rising Sun 
Jimmy’s vow of love for Jane, who was later to become his wife.

You Got Nothing I Want 
The response to a visit to America where their record label couldn’t have been less interested in the band or its East album.

But the most surprising of them all was Choir Girl. I had always assumed it was about a prissy schoolgirl discovering the joys of sex, but it’s actually about a girl facing an abortion. Powerful stuff and one of Don Walker’s few songs written from a female perspective.

But back to those Flame Trees …

Is it true no mummies were found in the Great Pyramid of Giza?

This blog is called What Can I Learn Today? But sometimes it should be called What Did I Learn Today, as I stumble across knowledge quite by accident.

And so it was today.

I was reading – of all things – Karl Pilkington’s book An Idiot Abroad, which details his travels through places such as Egypt and Brazil. And I came across a fact I found hard to believe, especially given the comedic tone of his writing.

Karl casually revealed no mummies have ever been found in the Great Pyramid of Giza and I couldn’t quite fathom it as I thought the structure was actually built as a giant tomb for the pharaoh Khufu.

But it’s true, as detailed at the site for the 7 Wonders, of which the pyramid is the only one still standing.

This is actually just one of the mysteries surrounding the pyramid, others including the scarcity of hieroglyphics, the use of ascending and descending passages, the presence of a Grand Gallery and mystery shafts extending from the Kings and Queens Chambers.

Even today, historians and archeologists are still working to unlock its secrets. But I suspect some of them will forever be left untold.

At least until we invent time travel . . .

In the meantime, have fun learning about more Egyptology mysteries here.

And for some fun, let’s cast our minds back to the heydays of The Bangles.

 

Who invented the pogo stick?

Once upon a time I gave my brother-in-law what I thought was the best Christmas present ever.

It was a pogo stick and as soon as I saw it in the window of a toy store I knew I had to buy it. I thought it would get massive kudos as an alternative to socks and jocks. But sadly I was mistaken. And to this day they will still ask me “Why?” As if my answer of “Because” isn’t reason enough.

Anyway, after springing/bouncing down the hallway a few times – and careening into the odd wall – my brother-in-law consigned the pogo stick to history and it was never seen again. But I was reminded of it today when I shared news of another planned purchase – this time a unicycle.

It belongs to a friend who plans to sell it and I intend to make it mine. But again, my family wanted to know “Why?”

To be fair, this question was prefaced by the knowledge I have not been on a bicycle in 10 years. But they’re missing the point entirely. Which is that you don’t own a unicycle to ride it, you own it because it’s cool.

Which brings us back to the pogo stick. Specifically, the question of who invented it. Turns out, as it so often does, that it was an American, by the name of George Hansburg.

While various incarnations of the toy – particularly in wood – had been pottering around previously, it was George who secured the patent for his all-metal version in 1919.

And while they’re a little passé today, in the 1920s particularly, they were much loved, featuring in everything from the Ziegfeld Follies to weddings and world record campaigns. But there was one difficulty with the early designs, the presence of only a single handle. So George solved this problem in 1957 with a patent on a two-handled pogo.

That’s a lot of years to spend thinking about a bouncy stick!

What were the first words spoken on the telephone?

I am going through a bit of an ABBA phase at the moment. And as I’ve been clocking up the kilometres for work of late, I’ve had plenty of time to play my way through their various greatest hits collections.

One of my favourite tracks is Ring, Ring, and as I let my mind roam free while listening to it today, I wondered idly about the first words ever said over a telephone line. I imagined they might have had some gravitas, along the lines of ‘one small step for man…’. But I was wrong.

They were actually much more mundane, and went like this: “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.” Pretty exciting stuff, no?

Anyway, the date was March 10, 1876, and the call was placed by inventor Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant, Thomas A Watson, who was standing in the next room. But considering how lost we would all be without his invention, I think we can forgive Bell for his lack of verbal creativity.

BTW, did you know he also invented the first crude metal detector in 1811? He did it to try and find the fatal bullet after American President James Garfield was shot by an assassin. But sadly, he failed.

What is the world’s biggest ocean? And more geographic facts . . .

After spending much of the afternoon helping a friend prepare stock for her new boutique, the last thing I felt like doing was embarking on a massive knowledge quest through the internet.

Plus, I had a new copy of the Horrible Bosses DVD to watch.

So I decided to go easy on myself and find out the answers to what I thought would be five pretty simple geography questions concerning the planet we call home. As predicted they took no time at all to investigate, but that doesn’t mean they’re not handy to know. So here goes . . .

Question: What is the world’s biggest ocean?
Answer: Pacific.

Question: What tectonic plate is Australia on?
Answer: The Indo-Australian plate.

Question: What is the world’s most active volcano?
Answer: Kilauea in Hawaii.

Question: What is the deepest point on the planet?
Answer: The Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.

Question: How long is the equator?
Answer: 44075.16km.

So there you go, don’t say I never teach you anything!