american girl in italy

this blog is shutting down

I am moving to a new blog site. I will no longer be writing here. Please visit me at my new site:
sara in italy blog

i loved the oscars!

OK, Once again, I stayed up all night to watch the Oscars, and I am so tired. But, it was so worth it. I just loved it.

Not since Billy Crystal has an opening number been so good. Hugh Jackman was just great.

The set was beautiful, I loved everything about it, including the Swaravski curtain, the raised orchestra, and the different set backgrounds.

I thought the five past winners introducing and personalizing the nominees was so touching, and MUCH more interesting and meaningful than how they are normally done. I loved it.

The musical number Hugh did, with Beyonce, and the High School Musical kids was great. The nominated songs performance was great.

No boring speeches by accountants or presidents. And the acceptance speeches were less annoying this year.

There were some really funny presenters and skits, including Natalie Portman and Ben Stiller. Ben was funny, and could Natalie Portman BE any more beautiful?

There were many beautiful dresses, but I think Natalie and Anne Hathaway and Taraji Hensen were my favorite. Jessica Biel is beautiful but I did not like her dress. At all.

Sorry, I am too tired to go into any detail. I just wanted to say, Bravo!

I loved it. (can you tell?)

Update: I have been reading reviews of the show, and can not believe that people are saying it was boring or not suprising, or that the introductions were bad. These people are not fans. They don't know what they are talking about. I thought it was spectacular! The winners weren't surprising, but when you have 10 award shows leading up to the Oscars, you can't blame the Oscars.

Don't believe the miserable media, Hugh Jackman did fabulous, and the whole show was great.

sanremo festival 2009

It's that time of year again. Tomorrow night is the finale. These are my favorites. This first one, Arisa, singin *Sincerita*, is so cute. She is so nervous! I love the song. Adorable. She is in the *young, unknown artist* category.

The others, Dolcenera, singing *Il mio amore unico*, and Francesco Renga, singing *l'uomo senza età* who are two of my all time favs!

And this third one I like, by Povia, who won last year. There was a lot of controversy surounding his song, before the festival, because the title of his song is Luca era gay (Luca was gay). It is about a guy who used to be in a gay relationship, but is now married to a woman.

All the other artist videos are here.

Hugh Hefner was there, for I believe the launch of Italian Playboy and the anniversary of Playboy. He was on stage, with his three girlfriends, and the current Bunny, and some lady ran up on the stage naked. She yelled something, but you couldn't hear her. I thought maybe she was from Peta, but couldn't get the connection to Hugh Hefner.... haha

Turns out she is a porno star, Laura Perego, so she, I guess, was trying to get Hugh's attention. I don't think it worked... afterwards he asked, "was the a joke? was that for real?" haha

UPDATE: Yeah! Arisa won for her category, new artists!!

But, I am very bummed that Dolcenera didn't make it through the cut last night. I don't know HOW that happened. grrr

But, yeah for Arisa!

more koala kuteness

Kristi sent me some more koala pics. The poor little things must just be scared to death, and so thirsty!

And here's that video of the firefighter giving the koala some water, if you haven't seen it yet.

There is some information here, about donating, and different organizations to contact.

koala cuteness

Not only is Australia on fire, they are enduring a heatwave, with temperatures hovering around 44*C, 113*F.

My friend Kristi forwarded an email sent from a Microsoft employee down under. The pictures are just so unbelievably cute!

"Power is failing; trains have stopped running because tracks are buckling under the heat. It's just scorching, and it seems that the people are not the only ones suffering. Check out these photos of a little Koala which just walked onto a back porch looking for a bit of heat relief. The woman filled up a bucket for it and this is what happened!”

And here are some other little koala's that were rescued. These two both have minor burns. There is a video of the little koala drinking water, but my youtube is not working at the moment.