A rush, a crush and...a par-tay?

As many awards shows as a hardened Kudos Crasher like myself has been through, there is still a rush of adrenaline each time I approach the carpet. And no show knows how to generate that rush better than the Papa Bear of them all, the Academy Awards, year 79.

Knowing full well that build up is all, there is a whole yellow brick road one must traipse down before getting anywhere near the carpet itself, an off-camera pre-show to the pre-show if you will.

The road to Kodak (is Kodak even a company anymore?) starts about a mile away from the theater itself, where after pushing my very unlimo-ly Scion through Oscar-adjacent traffic on Sunset Boulevard, I am waved through the police cordon at Wilcox and permitted to drive like conquering royalty down a closed off Hollywood Boulevard.

Hundreds of people line the street, their faces peering expectantly into mine as I drive past. When they see that I am a nobody, those faces turn blank or wince in annoyance. We careen through an obstacle course of barricades, our car zig-zagging back and forth across the road, through an inspection stop or two then finally hand the car over to the valets.

Step into the lights Arriving guests are X-rayed and magnatomitized in a dimly lit white tent, where it feels a bit like we are inside a cloud, suggesting we're about to pass through the gates to heaven. I step out into the sudden rush of a zillion flashes popping at once, cameras lining the carpets, fans clicking away from bleachers and sniper-like on the roofs of neighboring buildings.

All red carpet is not made equal, however; a fact underlined by the velvet rope down the middle of this one – celebs on one side, mere "Academy guests" on the other. Academy guests loiter and gape at the celebs across the rope – making it clear that on this half of the carpet, we're pretty much just like the masses up in the bleachers, albeit slightly better dressed.

My colleague, Rachel Abramowitz, and I hit the carpet just as Rachel Weisz does, and she gets to experience hundreds of voices screaming "Rachel!", a rush for half a second until you realize this fuss has nothing to do with you.

Split personality Near the carpet's end, our walk suddenly turns ugly. A security man asks us to move on. Wanting to prolong our pre-show, we move three feet ahead. Another asks us to move again, and we shuffle three feet more.

When I scribble in my notebook, we are pounced on by the security guard and an escort, who accuse of us being autograph seekers. When I say, I'm something much worse, I'm a journalist, we are frog-marched - guards before and after us - to a security station just outside out the Kodak's entrance.

The detail on duty examines our tickets and ID's and asks, "Are you a guest or are you a reporter?" I answer, "Both." Our interrogator shakes his head sternly. "You can't be both. You have to decide, are you a reporter or a guest? There are no reporters inside."

I persist in insisting on my dual identity until, for reasons, unexplained, we are suddenly frog-marched forward again, clearly bound for Guantanamo Bay it would seem, but instead deposited at the door of the Kodak. Guests and journalists alike still.

In Crowd adjacent In the ground floor lobby, people pace nervously as an announcer intones the least-scary warning ever over the P.A.: "Please take your seats, the Academy Awards will begin in 45 minutes."

The combined or overlapping posses of Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz valiantly hold the room's physical and moral center – clearly the cool kids.

To a knot of young women, Cameron performs a fairly biting parody of herself, talking at a thousand words a second, gesticulating wildly. "I gotta get the ---- out of this dress, that's all I know," she says at one point.

At the other end of the shared entourage, Leo plays the confident, quiet BMOC, nodding and grimacing as people whisper in his ear.