OSCAR, OSCAR, OSCAR

Here, where I live in Westchester,  after getting bitch slapped by a Nor’Easter, thousands remain without power.

Just like Hollywood.  

So right now, again, just like Hollywood,  we are waiting for men, in this case, Con Edison, to make all the decisions and get us up an running again.

One thing that the Academy Awards provided for us last night was an outlet: an emotional one.

There were many things that were right about last night’s show.  Stunningly President Voldemortrump’s name was not mentioned once.   Pence got one homophobic shout out.  But the show came with captions provided by all the women and people of color who were in attendance and their message was out and clear.

No one played the victim.  Jimmy Kimmel made fun of Harvey Weinstein by mocking the Oscar statue the way Bob Hope used to make fun of Hitler.

If this was Day One of the awards season, I think we would have heard endless rounds of vitriol and rancor.   

But the Oscars are the finish line and at this point, I think we’re all pretty tapped out.   Get Out, a personal favorite, like all the other nominees are toddlers now and not newborns of a year or so ago and yet I feel like these films and their stars have been in my face for ten years.  I love Frances and Gary and Sam and Allison.  Now please, I’m begging you, just go away.

The Academy Awards is like going to a wedding that has been planned within an inch or itself for a year and within an hour of the show, it feels like the end of the reception and we are all passed out at our tables.

The Golden Globes which mean absolutely nothing is the kegger of Awards shows.  It’s a chance to be stupid and drunk and the award itself is on the same level as winning the floral centerpiece.

I can’t even keep track of all the award shows that I’ve sat through from the SAG awards (which always sounds like an awards show for plastic surgeons) to the MTV movie awards and on and on and on.

I feel like all these actors are my children and you can only drag dad to so many school events.  I mean I love my kids but eventually, I’m either sleeping through the performance of Fiddler like a hibernating bear or yeah, daddy has a headache and has to stay home and watch a Yankee game.

So when we finally haul ass to watch the Oscars, which feels like it sucks up the next 24 hours of your life, I find that I have the same spark of life as a CPR mannequin whose chances of being revived are at best, slim.

Everyone at these shows is understandably chuffed and love peacocking around, celebrating theirs against all odds successes.  I get it.  They are all in shock. 

Mike Nichols called successful films, “happy accidents.”   

We in America are the single biggest suppliers and consumers of miracles in the world.  We just don’t want them.  We dream about them when we’re sleeping and we crave them like teenage weed during the day.   We enter sweepstakes.  Buy lottery tickets.  Go on one match.com date after another (which I believe is the number one cause of impulse suicides within an hour of yet another encounter where you discover that the person sitting across you looks nothing like her pictures and sadly. could easily be mistaken for Founding Father John Adams).

Out of sheer frustration, having long lost count of all our failures, both big and colossal,  in order to feel better about ourselves, we co-opt the miracles of other people, which is why we root madly for our home sports franchises,  project ourselves onto Shawn White’s snowboard or lose ourselves in movies, shows, and books.  The operative words are “Lose yourself.”

To me, the Oscars represent that kind of escape.  But it’s not a deep, nourishing meal.   It’s made out of the very same concession candy that the stars dished out to the fan audience during a mid-show pit stop that felt like a typical late night talk show bit on the level of “Jay Walking.”

We tune in to disappear.  To play different roles.  We can be fashion gods/Roman Emperors, blithely approving or dismissing the parade of gowns, jewels, and hair-dos.  We can be their interviewers, chatting up the stars.  We can be the stars, all dressed up for the ball, posing and pouting for the mamas and paparazzi.

We can be critics, giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to the entertainment.  We can be judges, deciding what is appropriate and what is not.  Thumbs up or down to the set? 

We can say and do whatever we want without fear of censure.

We telepathically hack into the voting system consciousness of the Hollywood Players, like Russians trying to influence the election.

We are all on the metaphorical track, trying to handicap the Hollywood Derby as if picking right the trifecta will make us feel smarter than anyone else.

And then, by the end of the evening, which always goes way past the Cinderella hour, that is when we already begin to forget who won what.

We have to dig deep into the sleep dumpster of our brains to see if you can root out, for example, who won best supporting actress.

Because the reality is it doesn’t matter.  

It never mattered.  

The Oscars are impossible to ignore McDonald's Fries that, minutes after you suck down a bag, you have nothing but regrets about your participation.

We have all been played, suckered in by the P.T. Barnum of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, who has been plying us with free samples of mass consumption opioids in return for our viewing their endless parade of commercials, like Kim Jung Un, whose brands you will remember even less than the Oscar winners.

And the oasis illusion continues.

Nothing was free.  

You were not on the swag bag list.  In fact, this evening cost you.

The bill for services provided, include your electricity, cable, food and drink.  

Everyone who was directly involved got rich but you.

And now, here I am, the morning after and man do I ever feel dumped.  

I have a Hollywood Hangover and feel like I must have blacked out and some point and I’m fretting about what I did and said.

The circus flew into town and overnight it simply disappeared.  

It’s a one-way deal of utter abandonment.

 You see, circuses never run away to join a person.

The opposite is the story of most of our lives.  Told in the past tents.

We have no choice but to return to the regularly scheduled programs of our reality which includes our manic obsession with the news, where I, as audience, find myself screaming like a tortured banshee caught in a bear trap every time I see or hear Trump or even catch a glimpse of the current press secretary, who to me, looks like Charles Laughton after hours.

We desperately need our miracles and distractions because that is what we Americans stuff our emotional baggage with, which, on most days,  goes unpacked and virtually empty. 

Without them, we are helpless and hopeless having no recourse but to seek solace in a carton of Chunky Monkey, pound the Amazon buy now button repeatedly like an Autistic child or buy yet another AR-15 to display in The  Museum of Me.

(To me The Second Amendment should be called The Everyone Should Have A Second Thought Amendment)

In order to survive, dreams get rationed out in America, just like during any other time of war.   

They are dispensed to us by the handful, in the form of empty sugar pill false promises by our most deceitful mis-leaders who hail Mary hurl them at us like rolls of useless paper towels.

Through the Heavenly Sunday sermons that are served up to us like all you can hoover ihop silver dollar hotcakes. 

Or live, from the stage of the Dolby Theater.

#Oscars
#Academy Awards
#Winners