The former Kodak now Hollywood & Highland Center is like a pal. We often stayed in a nearby hotel on Highland, got coffee at Starbucks across the street, and frequented the little local market for snacks.  The Center’s lobby has rows of Easter Island-like movieolas, those refrigerator-size pre-digital editing machines from the silent era.  “The Moviola allowed editors to study individual shots in their cutting rooms, thus to determine more precisely where the best cut-point might be. The vertically-oriented Moviolas were the standard for film editing in the United States until the 1970s when horizontal flatbed editor systems became more common.” The whole area used to house editing rooms and maybe still does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moviola    Grauman’s Chinese theater is around the corner west and Mel’s Burgers is across Hollywood Blvd. Musso and Frank’s,  a grand traditional eatery with OK food, is down the street east. It’s all very Old Hollywood.

There are shops and restaurants in the Center. It’s a mall, actually, with a very, very large theater seating about 3,000 people.  Kind of creepy in its empty hugeness. A not-that-interesting locale except for a few hours in February when it’s the backdrop for the Academy Awards. I read that the company which owns H&H doesn’t want the Oscars back next year. So that makes their pricey property an outsized collection of boring shops with no frisson whatsoever. Maybe it will be replaced by a high-rise condo.

It’s Wednesday morning and I’m wondering whether the Academy Awards hoopla is worth writing about. Maybe real estate is more interesting, though certainly the production Sunday evening was a hoot. I enjoyed it, anyway. My only suggestion is that perhaps Billy’s hairdresser not go with the black. Black’s flat and deadening when not natural and makes the skin look pasty. Also, Brian Grazer (whose hair is so Wow) must always produce the Oscars. He and Billy are the A-Team.