Oscar coverage to heed time of peril

This year’s Academy Awards will be unlike any other. The unfolding international situation has changed the mood for what has become a favorite weekend routine for the host of E! Entertainment’s pre-Oscars show and the channel’s post-mortem program, “Fashion Police.”

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Different times

I’ll be running around trying to exchange my gold and sequined Scaasi dress for a simple black Pamela Dennis. It’s war and you just don’t want to dress up while our boys are fighting. Everything will be more subdued and for once this crowd will not be talking about themselves.

They’re pulling the red carpet and replacing it with sisal, but we’ll still have our live show. I’ll just have to walk a very thin line between humor and respect for the international crisis -- I’ll have to wear toe shoes.

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Mommy nearest

This is what usually happens on my favorite weekend -- the weekend of the Academy Awards. It combines everything -- seeing my daughter and my grandson, getting to see a million friends while I’m looking good and go to the Academy Awards and get a check at the end.

Friday I go to Melissa’s house and I get to remake friends with my grandson Cooper and have some mother-daughter time with Melissa. Then I get into bed and I run a little bit of all of the movies that are up for awards. Because you’d better know who’s who and who’s up for what award.

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Work study

Saturday we get up and go over to E! in a limo. It’s all about limos and you don’t feel guilty because someone else is paying. We do a major rehearsal so that we remember that Nicole Kidman has two children and Renee Zellweger, last time, wore vintage.

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It’s fitting

Next we go for our final fitting. And, of course, you absolutely hate your dress. And, of course, you hate your body, and I stand there and think: “Why didn’t you go on that diet?”

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Dine time

That night, we usually meet friends for dinner. We usually go to the Ivy -- the Ivy in town, not at the shore. They make me a chopped salad with everything in it and I think I’m dieting and I have the most fattening dressing in America. And I always have a champagne cocktail.

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The big event

This year, Melissa and I are just going to have to play it by ear. We purposely don’t go to the pre-Oscar parties for two reasons: (1) I don’t want to meet the people ahead of time. You want to save your questions and have the freshness for when you see them going in to the awards. (2) We’re not invited. Then the limo comes. We look like gypsies. We’re carrying one dress and a second dress in case the first doesn’t work out. You’re carrying extra stockings; you’re carrying the push-up bra. We get a suite in a hotel. Then from 3 to 5 we are live.

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The big letdown

Then there’s a tremendous letdown. They all go into the show and our show is over.

We walk to the hotel in our dresses and we watch the Academy Awards from there and we write the “Fashion Police” show.

Then we get dressed all over again, and we go to the parties. By now we’ve been up since 7:30 a.m. After the parties we get back into the limo and they always have a pair of scissors in the limo so I can cut myself out of my dress. And my shoes come off and that’s the happiest moment of the day. “Home, James!”