All night long, the jokes kept coming on the same subjects: Avatar this, George Clooney that. Sandra Bullock, accepting her award for Best Actress, acknowledged "all the people who didn't" help her, including "George Clooney, who threw me in a pool. I still hold a grudge." Ben Stiller showed up painted like a Na'vi to introduce the makeup category (for which Avatar wasn't nominated), and the Argentine winner of Best Foreign Language Film thanked the Academy "for not considering Na'vi a foreign language."

It's the classic comedy strategy of the have-nots making fun of the haves, and the hoary Oscar tradition of using famous movies and celebrities as the punch lines to jokes understandable to the mass of viewers -- most of whom haven't seen, and might not have heard of, the smaller films and actors, who tend to get the awards. Oooh, Avatar, $2.5 billion at the box office ... Heh heh, George Clooney, world's coolest movie star ... Rim shot.

Except that on Sunday night, the haves had not. Clooney did not win an Academy Award, and neither did the film he was nominated for, the early front runner (and utterly Oscar-worthy) Up in the Air, which even failed to cop its expected prize for Best Adapted Screenplay. Avatar won only three of the nine categories for which it was eligible -- the door prizes of Cinematography, Art Direction and Special Effects -- and its begetter, James Cameron, supped on the special gall of losing Best Picture and Best Director to The Hurt Locker and his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, respectively. The Hurt Locker was also up for nine Oscars. It won six, and the evening's bragging rights.