Fueled by the red carpet experience, the mood inside is positively giddy with excitement. The question, "Can you believe we're here?" seems to be on everyone's lips, and only a few feign disinterest in the excitement.

People mill around feverishly. The sound of Roger Ebert interviewing Terrence Howard is piped into the bathroom. The crowd parts as Rachel Weisz shimmers by. A violin trio plays "The Way You Look Tonight." Over the intercom, an announcer pleads, "Please take your seats. The 78th annual Academy Awards will start in 15 minutes." No one heeds his call.

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I take my seat in the distant peaks of Mt. Kodak. Around me, women have squeezed their gowns into the movie theater-sized chairs. Perhaps the funniest part of being at the Oscars is the sight of people trying to do normal things in elaborate gowns and tuxes — trying to eat a salad while standing up, moving sets around onstage, and squeezing into little seats.

As the final countdown begins, on the main floor a flood of gowns rush to their seats in the final seconds, and throughout the opening montage people stumble toward their seats in the dark theater.

As Jon Stewart takes the stage, looking from our vantage point like a lone stick figure on a giant skating rink, the attention is rapt and the laughter muted but appreciative. But as it is with watching Oscars at home, attention soon drifts. By the first break, people are freely chatting in the seats.

The big question posed to me by every friend who learned I was attending was about what happens in the theater during the commercial breaks. Does the host entertain the crowd with insider off-color jokes? Does George Clooney dance in the aisles? Does Jack Nicholson get into fistfights with ushers?

Well, the answers to these questions are no, no and no. What happens during the break is precisely nothing. Some loud orchestral music continues from the cutaway and the ABC commercials are shown on the giant screen. Otherwise, everyone just sits quietly or makes a run for the bar.

The real show
As at any good Oscar party, there's only so much watching of the show that people can take before the party's center of gravity moves to the buffet. Or, if you are at the show itself, to the basement lobby bar, where a midsized party flows and ebbs throughout the evening.

I step into the fairly packed George Eastman room about half an hour into the show. In one corner, the shockingly tall Maggie Gyllenhaal and Dame Judi Dench wait for what seems to be the VIP ladies room with fur-clad controversy-stoking NYC publicist Peggy Siegel. (There is no line however for the general public's ladies room, so why they are waiting for this one is a matter of concern.) A man asks to borrow my pen and justifies his request by saying, "I just won an Oscar with my sister." (Turns out he's John Canemaker, winner for best animated short).

Later in the show, a young researcher for the academy tells me she just enjoyed a brush with the man of the hour, George Clooney. As they both waited to get back into the theater, she approached him and, noticing his Oscar trophy, asked if she could hold it. "You can have it!' he answered, and allowed her a prolonged encounter with the statuette.

As the night wears on, the room fills with people carrying trophies. A crowd soon forms in the lobby bar around the group of Frenchmen carrying stuffed animals, the "March of the Penguins" crew, who after winning their award, party in the bar for the rest of the night.

In contrast to the stunned and dizzy smiles the rest of the winners wear, the Gallic corner whoops with abandon. "Look, we put our ties on the Penguins!" one of them points out to me, showing the bow ties now bound around the stuffed dolls' throats.

He goes on about the penguins: "We had four," he says, "but I was so happy I gave Lauren Bacall one backstage."