It's Oscar time. Time for us all to reflect on celebrity and achievement and write pretentious social commentary about the juxtaposition of opulence and anorexia. Time for a young woman's fancy to turn to thoughts of Russell Crowe and how many FBI agents he had with him.

I'm psyched that he won, but that has less to do with his performance in Gladiator than it does with his getting ripped off for The Insider last year. He was good in Gladiator. He was astonishing in Insider. He lost to Kevin Spacey, though. Hard to argue with that one.

I should just fess up about the whole Russell Crowe thing. I mean, everyone knows about it anyway. But in defense of the shreds of my credibility, I feel compelled to point out that my first Crowe film was The Insider, in which he looked like this. I frankly prefer him looking like this, but you see my point, or hear it. It's his voice. His voice makes me wobbly. Meow.

He sounded amped but laid-back when he accepted the Oscar. Either he's very cool under pressure or he'd taken a couple of valium while the agents were fitting him with a homing device. ("Okay, you and you, get the LoJack on this guy.") The whole kidnapping plot mess must just suck for him. It's weird, it's scary, it's a hassle and it's embarrassing. It's especially strange considering how brawny he is. He looks like he could kick the shit out of almost anyone.

Maybe that's how he worked things out with Ridley Scott. Heh.

Crowe's another actor who has a band. He wanted to be a rock star and wound up an actor; go figure. His band, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts (TOFOG), has been playing together for fourteen years or so. Ever curious, I did some Napstering and downloaded a couple of their songs, fully expecting them to suck. And they don't. They're a little bluesy; they can lay down a serious groove when they get going, and Crowe sounds vaguely like Lou Reed.

This is not to say that Crowe should quit his day job. But TOFOG is great. I keep listening to the tracks I've downloaded. "What Do You Want Me To Forget" is just straight dry blues with a Stevie Ray sound in the slashing guitar strokes. "What's Her Name" puts down a sweet groove, and "Hold You" is mellow, crooning, mildly hypnotic. "Somebody Else's Princess" just flat-out rocks.

Crowe likes to chat with the audience, which is cool except that his accent is so thick that he might as well be speaking another language. At college, one of the guys I hung with was the school's Oxford Fellow, a recent Oxford grad who was brought in to teach classics for two years. When he got drunk, I couldn't understand a damn thing he said. A mutual friend served as my English-American translator. Crowe could use one proficient in Kiwi/Aussie.

He sounded clear enough tonight accepting his Oscar. Maybe he gets to go home soon, to hang out on his ranch and play with his dog.