Anderson/Hatgidakis/Nelson/Metcalf: Oscars 2006

Oscar results -- March, 2006
Best Picture: "Crash"
Winners: Donna and Lindsey

Repeating their performance of 2004 (and a three-peat for Lindsey!), this year's winners Donna and Lindsey triumphed in what was a neck-and-neck race up to the very end between just a handful of contenders; the rest of us were left in the dust early and stayed there....

For the first 7 envelopes, it was Marsha in the lead with a perfect score: She nailed all 7. Donna was close behind with 6, and Lindsey was leading the 17-and-under crowd with 3. But with the 8th envelope, Marsha's streak was over when she missed the pick for Best Supporting Actress and Donna caught up; and the tie held for the next two categories.

One category later, Donna pulled ahead by 1; and two categories later, Marsha caught up, for another tie with 10 each out of 13.

But when "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" won Best Original Song, Donna had a new theme song and went ahead of the pack where she stayed for the rest of the night. Lindsey by this time was maintaining a 1-point lead over Samantha.

Three categories later, Donna had widened her lead over Marsha by 2. Sam caught up with Lindsey with 7 each, and with the next envelope she briefly passed Lindsey, 8 to 7. But two envelopes later, Lindsey went ahead and stayed there. Marsha and John were only 1 and 2 points respectively behind Donna, and Sam and Anna were each only 1 point behind Lindsey, but nobody would catch the front-runners now.

Best performance in the top six categories was a four-way tie: Donna and Lindsey share the honors here with Gary and Marsha all of whom picked four of the six. A special nod goes to Olivia, who was the ONLY ONE to predict Best Picture. That has never happened before in our Oscar voting. Be sure to congratulate her, because she had fallen asleep by this time, and never really got to appreciate her victory!

Thanks to everybody who played along this year. See you next year!

(Number of correct picks out of 24 categories)
17  Donna
15  Marsha
14  John
12  Amanda
12  Karen
11  Lindsey
10  Gary
10  Grandma
10  Samantha
 9  Anna
 7  Paul
 6  Lori
 6  Olivia
 6  Tristen
 5  Emily
 5  Erika
And totalling all the results of the past nine years, here are the standings, in order of percentage of correct picks:
56%   Gary       110 right out of 196
55%   Donna      106 right out of 196
50%   Sean        12 right out of  24
49%   Marsha      96 right out of 196
49%   John        96 right out of 196
47%   Amanda      92 right out of 196
46%   Grandma     90 right out of 196
42%   Zachary     36 right out of  86
39%   Paul        76 right out of 196
38%   Karen       75 right out of 196
38%   Lori        56 right out of 148
37%   Ryan        64 right out of 172
35%   Anna        55 right out of 158
34%   Lindsey     67 right out of 196
34%   Samantha    66 right out of 196
31%   Brent       22 right out of  71
29%   Emily       57 right out of 196
24%   Erika       43 right out of 181
23%   Olivia      22 right out of  95
22%   Tristen     26 right out of 118
 8%   Teghan       2 right out of  24