Gold-Flecked Soup? It's Oscar Time!

March 5, 2006 — -- Oscar season is a carpet-rolling, flashbulb-popping, flower-arranging, bomb-sniffing hive of hyperactivity beamed to 195 countries -- from Iceland to Kazakhstan to Germany, and other places with funny microphones.

More will be spent on this one night than was spent to make "Crash" and "Capote" combined. Even the celery broth is sprinkled with gold.

"Everyone's going to get soup like that, with 24-karat gold leaf on top," said Wolfgang Puck, who is in charge of catering the governor's ball.

Executive producer Gil Cates is in charge of the Oscars for a record 13th time. He has been able to convince best-song-nominated rappers to sanitize the lyrics of "It's Hard out here for a Pimp," and promised big things from Jon Stewart.

"I promise you: It's special, surprising," he said of Stewart's monologue. "We have seen nothing like it on the Oscars before -- with a cast of people in the opening that I think you will find amusing and quite tasty."

The set, however, remains top secret.

"Oh, you ever been to the Amazon Rainforest theme restaurant in Vegas?" Stewart said. "It's like that, but with more parrot noises."