And the winner is ... you

ON Sunday evening, if the recent past is any indicator of the future, somewhere around 40 million people in the United States will tune in for the Oscars. Legend has it that 1 billion people worldwide will watch -- though good luck getting PricewaterhouseCoopers to vouch for that.

Suffice it to say, though, that plenty of folks will be occupied -- partying in front of the tube, checking in with their online bookie, or both -- as the entertainment industry pauses to behold its own incredible fabulousness. And that can mean only one thing to those of us who are already Oscared out and planning to skip the so-called Super Bowl of Hollywood: opportunity.

If you know where to look, you can brunch in peace at a usually packed celebrity hangout, calmly catch a film -- Oscar-nominated or otherwise -- at the most popular theaters in the area, head to a club or concert and snag the occasional freebie -- without being Jennifer Hudson.

Some entertainers have even agreed to perform for the non-famous among us, at someplace other than the Kodak Theatre complex at Hollywood & Highland.

“If you’re sick of Oscar, and people pushing their own agenda during Oscar season, we have an alternative,” says Mike Timpson, whose Fake Gallery on Melrose Avenue is staging an award show parody this weekend. “We’re taking everything that has been crammed down your throat and throwing it back out there.”

Reclaiming the

stars’ hangouts

First the bad news: Do not bother approaching the Hollywood & Highland center on Oscar night for some Sunday shopping. The place will be closed from midnight Saturday through 10 a.m. Monday to accommodate the limousines and the red carpet and the screaming. No Gap denim spree for you. But that’s also good news, if you’ve been dying to try celebrity haunts located in lots of other places around town.

Just keep your wits about you. Shopping on Rodeo Drive may sound appealing -- all the celebrities are too busy primping, right? -- but remember: Stylists and hotel concierges tend to blow through there on Oscar day in a sweaty blur, snatching up beaded clutch bags and silky ties for indecisive nominees. And plebeians wandering in West Hollywood are likely to get stampeded, if not glowered into submission by security goons, because Oscar Sunday transforms the trendy area around Melrose Avenue and Robertson Boulevard into “Oscar Row,” home of parties, including the Vanity Fair bash at Morton’s and Elton John’s post-show fete at the Pacific Design Center. Best to stay far away.

And yet, in certain pockets of this besieged land, peace and normality still prevail.

For example: brunch at the Viceroy, the Santa Monica boutique beach hotel and Sunday morning hangout of the rich and powerful. In the last few weeks, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Olivia Newton-John and Anjelica Huston have helped pack the hotel’s Whist restaurant to enjoy the “endless” Perrier Jouet Champagne (as part of a $49-per-person package) and bask in each other’s glamour beams. But Oscar Sunday is expected to be quieter.

“Brunch will be less busy,” executive chef Warren Schwartz says, “purely because anytime people are planning on going to other events or hosting parties, they tend not to go out the same day or tend to eat less.”

Then there’s dinner at Sushi Roku on 3rd Street in Hollywood, a place so celebrity-choked that paparazzi stuff themselves behind two painted sidewalk lines on either side of the entrance, looking for the money shot. If $9 tofu is your thing, this Sunday is the night to go; regulars such as Tori Spelling and Brett Ratner will most likely have other things to do.

“Oscar nights are normally slow at the restaurant, with people taking food home to go,” says Lee Maen, a partner in IDG, the company that owns Sushi Roku and other Hollywood hot spots Boa and Katana. “So it’s a great opportunity to come and score your perfect table.”

After snarfing up the tofu, head over to the Dragonfly on Santa Monica Boulevard. An ‘80s cover band called the Spazmatics reigns every Sunday night. Doors open at 10 p.m., and the place is usually choked by 11 with the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal and Andy Dick. Oscar Sunday will probably sell out too, Dragonfly owner Anthony Belanger says, but not so quickly.

“Oscar night’ll be a smart night to come,” Belanger adds. “It’ll get packed a little later.”

People preferring to spend Oscar night in relative, albeit slightly twisted, peace might even consider a jaunt to the original Spago just off Sunset Boulevard. The restaurant is gone, but here lie the ghosts of Oscars past: Go ahead and hold a seance; try channeling the late super-agent Swifty Lazar.

For that matter, try cackling outside the recently closed restaurant L’Orangerie on La Cienega Boulevard. This occasional awards-night party scene was also the place where Ryan Seacrest paraded around Teri Hatcher on that much-ballyhooed date.

A double dose of Oscar night lite

All that may not be enough to channel the frustration that goes with your D-list status. This isn’t like that other Super Bowl, the footbally one, in which you stand a chance of shorter lines at Disneyland or a last-minute cancellation at the Getty Villa in Malibu.

Even nursing frustrations over a drink can seem impossible in some places: Try heading to the Four Seasons hotel bar in Beverly Hills and you’ll learn that it too is closed to the public this Sunday. So is the whole lobby, in fact. Thanks a lot, little gold man.

Enter the anti-Oscar saviors, entertainers eager to nurture those nagging hard feelings.

Consider Friday night at the Fake Gallery, an alternative comedy space/art gallery, and its “2nd Annual 67th Annual Fake Awards.” Comedic actors pose as such Hollywood heavyweights as Lindsay Lohan, Forest Whitaker and Keira Knightley and ham it up. (Don’t miss the part when the faux Lohan runs over an ersatz Michael Richards in a car.) Last year’s inaugural show went over so surprisingly well that the gallery’s Timpson said he was “shocked, but, you know, people in Hollywood, they just get it.”

This year, expect a thorough lampooning, complete with ersatz red-carpet arrivals, covered by a faux Huell Howser, and bogus commercials.

“This is absurd parody,” adds Timpson, a.k.a. Fake President in Charge of Particular Things, who co-produces the show with partner Andrew Hoagland. “We’re not really trying to say anything.”

For the $10 admission, Timpson promises, “there’s also a gift bag.”

“The thing is, they’re sandwich bags,” Timpson explains. “I think there’s lip balm, cologne samples and a trailer for the movie ‘White Chicks.’ You get the trailer but not the movie.”

On Saturday night, there are also the Razzies, of course, a.k.a. the 27th Annual Golden Raspberry Awards, that thorn in the academy’s thoroughly liposuctioned side. “Head Razberry” John Wilson scouts the year’s worst films and then produces a very un-Oscar-like ceremony lauding their dubious achievements.

“It’s the self-congratulatory pomp of the Oscars that makes the Razzies fun,” Wilson says. “We’ve been riding the academy’s coattails for years.”

Stars occasionally show up to accept the deliberately shoddy trophies -- Halle Berry attended the 2005 Razzies to accept an award for her disastrous “Catwoman” -- but this year’s guests are still being locked down. (Wilson seemed hopeful for an appearance by the Wayans brothers, whose stinker “Little Man” scored seven Razzie nods.)

The Razzies will take place at Hollywood’s 300-seat Ivar Theatre, and it’s nearly sold out -- about three dozen seats remained late last week. But at least scoring those last tickets won’t require an agent at CAA. Try for them by signing up for a $25 membership to the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation (www.razzies.com). Wilson says there’ll be a standby list for folks hoping to get seats left behind by no-shows.

Rock out, for grins

Avoiding the Oscars could also mean going to a live performance. Beyonce will be busy that night, what with her singing at the Kodak and all. But ‘80s superband Styx will appear at the House of Blues in Anaheim, which is almost the same thing, sort of.

Speaking of low standards, a fresh Echo Park-based band called the Low Standards will be playing Sunday at Tangier on Hillhurst Avenue. Tickets are $10 -- or about $10 more than the value of the official gift baskets Oscar presenters will get. (The academy recently ended the swag-slinging practice after the $100,000 grab bags garnered unwanted attention from the Internal Revenue Service.)

But perhaps the most anti-Oscar of all options will be at the Hotel Cafe on Cahuenga Boulevard. Get this: It’s so un-Oscar that co-owner Marko Shafer isn’t even calling it that. In fact, the Oscars are not mentioned at all, not once, on the Hotel Cafe’s acoustic-rock lineup for Sunday night. Now that’s hard-core.

Look for Arrica Rose and the Dot Dot Dots to begin the show at 8 p.m., followed by Ashleigh Haney, Chrissy Depauw and Scott Kinnebrew. The night is expected to be so low-key, so familial, so darned hospitable -- as Shafer puts it, “local artists, no glitz, no glam, just good music” -- that even the cover charge is mellow: around 5 to 10 bucks. Shafer says he isn’t sure.

A more energetic anti-Oscar buzz is expected at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Sunday is traditionally the company’s free improv night, or, as the theater puts it, “Asssscat.” Look for former “Daily Show” correspondent and UCB co-founder Matt Walsh, along with other machine-gun-quick performers, to skewer everything, including, most likely, the Academy Awards. During last year’s show, comedian Horatio Sanz called buddy Jimmy Fallon, who was attending an Oscar party, and put him on speakerphone for the audience to hear.

“There will be scenes that have to do with the Oscars, probably,” artistic director Seth Morris says, “but that’s not how we’re billing it.”

See a movie (Yes, really)

One of the industry’s favorite theaters, the ArcLight -- a mere two minutes from the Kodak -- is expecting light traffic on Sunday, a spokeswoman says. So are the usually packed Pacific Theatres at the Grove shopping center.

Other than at the googleplexes, though, don’t look for many movie houses offering cool stuff. One exception: The brave Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax Avenue. To celebrate Black History Month, theater co-owner Dan Harkham has assembled a night of early African American film, including “Body and Soul,” a Paul Robeson film from 1925, and shorts starring Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith and Lena Horne.

“It’s pretty dumb of us” to put together a show on Oscar night, Harkham admits, “but we’re not really Oscar people. There probably won’t be much of a crowd.”

Another exception: the New Beverly Cinema, which has a Woody Allen bill of “What’s New Pussycat?” and “Casino Royale” -- both, oddly enough, with Oscar-nominated songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

Lastly, for people eager to honor any film but an Oscar movie, there’s Sunday night at the Bigfoot Lodge on Los Feliz Boulevard. Spencer Lee, “the Movie Guy,” breaks open his massive collection of 8- and 16-millimeter films and plays them all night, starting at 10.

“He has everything from people’s private porn movies -- nothing too bad -- to old Bill Cosby footage,” manager Mark DeSalvo says. “It’s also bingo night here.”

Bingo winners get free beer or liquor shots, surrounded by log cabin walls and antler decor.

“We’re thinking of having the bingo caller maybe shout out random Oscar trivia questions,” DeSalvo says. “But this is almost a neighborhood bar on Sundays. That’s as ‘Oscar night’ as it’s going to get.”

weekend@latimes.com

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Oscar alternatives

A select guide to getting away from -- and quite possibly taking advantage of -- Oscarmania.

Celebrity hangs

Whist at Viceroy

1819 Ocean Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 260-7511, www.viceroysantamonica.com/dining/brunch.html

The brunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday is expected to be less A-list-heavy than usual. $49 per person.

Sushi Roku

8445 W. 3rd St., Hollywood, (323) 655-6767, www.sushiroku.com

Sushi here often comes along with a side of paparazzi, but maybe not Sunday night.

The Dragonfly

6510 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 466-6111, www.thedragonfly.comThe Spazmatics’ covers of ‘80s tunes have their own celeb following. Doors open at 10 p.m. Sunday, show at 11. $10.

Ghosts of parties past

Spago Hollywood

1114 Horn Ave., West Hollywood

The original Spago once held the quintessential post-Oscar bash, but it’s been closed since 2001.

L’Orangerie

903 N. La Cienega Blvd., L.A.

Another former party place that is guaranteed to be quiet after closing this year.

The anti-Oscars

The 2nd Annual 67th Annual Fake Awards

The Fake Gallery, 4319 Melrose Ave., L.A., (323) 644-4946, www.fakedotcom.com

Fake stars, fake awards, sort of real gift bags. At 9 p.m. Friday. $10

The 27th Annual Golden Raspberry Awards

Ivar Theatre, 1605 Ivar Ave., L.A., tickets via www.razzies.com

The show aims to honor the year’s worst movies. 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Pay $25 for a Golden Raspberry Award Foundation membership, and the ticket is included. (Seating limited.)

Music and more

Hotel Cafe

1623 1/2 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. 11 p.m. (323) 461-2040, www.hotelcafe.com

The indie-music hangout offers a low-key acoustic-rock night. 8 p.m. $5 to $10.

Tangier

2138 Hillhurst Ave., L.A. (323) 666-8666, www.tangierrestaurant.net

The Low Standards are a new band from Echo Park in the indie-folk vein. 7 p.m. $10.

House of Blues Anaheim

1530 S. Disneyland Drive, Anaheim. (714) 778-2583, www.hob.com

Styx -- yeah, Styx! -- prog-rocks the house. $65 to $70.

Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre

5919 Franklin Ave., Hollywood, (323) 908-8702, www.ucbtheatre.com/la

The “Asssscat” night of improvised sketches has a history of poking fun at you know what. 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Free.

Movies

Spencer the Movie Guy (and Bingo Night)

The Bigfoot Lodge, 3172 Los Feliz Blvd., L.A., (323) 662-9227, www.bigfootlodge.com

Spencer Lee presents a delightfully random collection of 8- and 16-millimeter movies at the bar/club. 10 p.m. Sunday. Free.

ArcLight Cinemas

6360 W. Sunset Blvd., L.A., (323) 464-4226, www.arclightcinemas.com

Many Hollywood types spend their favorite weekend here, but probably not Sunday.

Pacific Theatres at the Grove

189 The Grove Drive, L.A., (323) 692-0829, www.pacifictheatres.com

Ditto above.