Oscar's 78th

As I mentioned here last February, “each year I host an Oscar party. A select group of close friends gathers at my house for an evening of snacking, chatting, betting, and catching-up. For some of us, getting together during the year is difficult, so the Academy decides for us the one night a year that we are duty-bound to meet. This year, we are not meeting. Because I'm not there.

In truth, I'm the only one who really cares about the awards. Because (sorry, guys) I'm the only one who consistently wins the pot. The others come to humor me and enjoy what has become a tradition.”

Well, it happened again. I was not there, so there was no annual duty-bound meeting. Apologies to Chris and Kenny for failing to pop up the corn, invite the wings, and steal a buck from your pockets. I thought of you both and wished I was there.

Here, though, I took both my 11th win and 2nd loss in 12 years. How? For the first time, I was in two pools.

Like last year, I had what is, for me, a poor showing – 15 of 24 correct -- but it was enough to eke out a win in the Boy Gets Girl cast pool. It was not, however, enough to beat my father in the family pool. The only other loss I’ve suffered was to him, in what was, ironically, the year of Titanic.

Usually I take the time to create my own ballot for the Oscar party; but without an official party to host – and suffering paper burnout from creating props for the play – I skipped that step this year. Seems now, I should have kept the tradition alive. Dad pulled away with 17 correct after choosing to change his vote for Documentary Short before turning in his IMDB ballot.

He’d noticed a trend. In all the other “small” documentary and short film categories, he’d randomly selected the movies with the longest names. So, in keeping with the trend, he changed his vote from “The Life of Kevin Carter” to “A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin,” ten words/41 characters which won the gold. But had he had the Oscar.com ballot, his vote would have been different. IMDB gave an incorrect and incomplete title for the Kevin Carter doc. Had it read correctly, my father would have chosen “The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club,” (my pick, by the way) for its 11 words/ 47 characters. As it was, we did not cast similar votes and Dad took the win in that category (I need to speak to the folks over at IMDB about that). It’s an odd strategy, picking the longest name, but in a race where most of us can do little better than throw a dart at the ballot and vote for what’s hit, one strategy is as good as another.

But next year, you can be sure we’ll all be aiming at the same ballot.