oscar luncheon?

i love the academy awards.

i have been devotedly following the oscars since i was eleven- that year forrest gump swept the broadcast, jessica lange won best actress before she destroyed her face with cosmetic surgery, and robert zemeckis's son alex was sitting on his lap when he won best director. i was allow to stay up until the very end of the show and watched, transfixed, on the living room carpet, eating an iced tea popsicle (my father had just discovered bulk shopping in a major way and our freezer had begun its life as a supplier of odd and sometimes questionable frozen treats). i loved the ceremony, the speeches, the eversobrief flash of the crestfallen across gary sinese's face. the winning costume designer (for priscilla, queen of the desert) was wearing a dress made of american express cards. life simply did not get any better than this.

i was officially obsessed. i used to hungrily follow the process from the first stirrings of buzz generated in entertainment weekly in june or july through the "for you consideration..." ads in variety right up through to whoopi goldberg wearing a sample of the costumes from each of tonight's five nominated films (i doubt that her whiteface queen elizabeth scenario would have gone over quite as well had ellen slathered on blackface and a bustier gown for last year's dreamgirls). i kept track of all of the prognostications, measured my odds, and would select my final predictions moments before the show- i treated this with a zeal and fervor that most reserve for an extremist religion or a hatred of teri hatcher. i made my sister and the camacho sisters who lived next door play oscars with me- coke bottles and soccer trophies were the coveted statuettes and i would spend hours making up ballots and carefully selecting who would be which presenter and which british nominee would regretfully be unable to attend since there were only four of us. my friend jennifer and i had an annual oscar party at her house- one year i made a cake with gold icing. jenn and i used to have to take naps so that we could stay up until the end. i'm not lying- i was obsessed.

still am to a certain degree. i have less time to see movies and must admit to only having seen three of the best picture candidates this year. since i have seen fewer of the movies i am slightly less invested and a little less outraged when my favourites don't even get nominated (as i was when joan allen was egregiously overlooked for the ice storm or lisa kudrow bypassed for her stellar work in the opposite of sex- after she won the new york film critics award and all!). but i still love the oscars. i love the couture and the positioning, the glamour and the emotion, the opulence and the global pull of an awards show. i love the moments of unexpected hilarity, the touching raising of the statue to a heavens in honour of a loved one lost, the hair and the harry winston jewels, the split second of anything can happen right before the envelope opens. i love the oscars.

the ceremony starts in ten minutes. i won't get to see the show until 8:30 my time tonight after wolfgang puck has served up the governor's ball feast and tara reid has unsuccessfully tried to gain entrance to elton john's famed soiree. right now joan rives is probably mistaking jennifer hudson for mo'nique and maria menounos is butchering the pronunciation of saoirse ronan. and though i cannot believe it is happening without me, i must accept it as one of the many things that happen out of sync with my life here. and so i will eat my lunch under the australian sky and wait patiently until 8:30.