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I sure miss the days when I hosted legitimate
Oscar Parties. There was a period there, years ago—specifically, between 2005 and 2010—when I sent out legitimate evites, had a pretty good number of people come over (averaging 6 or 7 people in those years; peaking at 11 in 2007), and even gave out prizes for "Best Gown" and "Best Dish."
Somewhat ironically, there was a real shift when Shobhit moved away in 2010—the same year that Barbara also moved away (they moved within about a month of each other), and they were critical elements of my annual Oscar Parties up until then. Between 2011 and 2014, I was one of only two people watching together, only half of those years actually being with Shobhit.
In 2015, Gabriel and Kornelija came over to watch the Oscars with me at my place. We got up to three people! (Shobhit was still in L.A. at that time.)
Back down to two in 2016, when my then-roommate Tommy watched the Oscars with me.
2017 and 2018 brought what I thought might become a new tradition: both those years, Shobhit and I got tickets to watch the Oscars at Central Cinema. I might not mind doing that again one of these years, actually. Maybe one of these days Laney, who used to come to those Oscar Parties in those early years, might join again.
Gabriel and Lea came over to watch with us in 2019, taking the number up to a whopping
four—the most I had for an Oscar watch in fully nine years.
Then of course, the pandemic happened. Nothing special happened in 2020 (although, to be fair, they aired that year in early February, before the pandemic even truly hit) or in 2021 when stay-home orders were largely still in effect.
There has been a definitive shift as of 2022, where my "Oscar Parties" have become sort of hybrid-virtual affairs. This was more the case than ever in 2023, when I was in Louisville, Kentucky, and had Barbara over to my hotel room to watch the Oscars with me. At different times, I connected with Shobhit as well as with Gabriel and Lea over FaceTime, so I basically counted "six people" for that "Oscar Party," even though there was
never any more than two people in the actual room at the same time. Barbara even got to say hi to Shobhit's mom over FaceTime that day, which was pretty cool.
Last year, it was just Shobhit and me at home, and I connected frequently with Gabriel, and sometimes with Lea, over FaceTime during commercial breaks. That took the number to four. I'm only counting three this year because I never really saw or spoke to Lea over FaceTime yesterday, even though she was there—just Gabriel.
Shobhit did suggest I invite Laney to join us for watching the Oscars yesterday, and under other circumstances, I might have. We got together for our second-Saturday Happy Hour on Saturday, and it was truly the first time I had seen her
in three weeks. We had last hung out for our double feature of
The Lobster and
Poor Things on Saturday, February 17. We had been scheduled to get together again in the Braeburn Condos theater the next weekend, on Sunday February 25—and that was the day she tested positive for covid. Of course she canceled that, and later even the post-work double feature we initially had planned for Monday March 4, when she was still too tired and had still tested positive the previous Saturday.
When we got together on Saturday, it was
her first time going out to socialize at all since she had been sick. By then she was finally testing negative, and had as of last Tuesday or Wednesday, I forget which, but she was still feeling slightly fatigued. She told me her plan was to rest and do nothing all day on Sunday, which was totally understandable, and that was when I knew not to take Shobhit's suggestion of inviting her over to watch the Oscars.
We hung out for two hours on Saturday, and we went to Poquitos again—a last-minute pivot from our original plan, which was to go to the outdoor seating at Olympia Pizza on 15th. She was going to meet me at my place at 2:45 and we were going to walk the rest of the way together. But, she called me at like 2:40 to ask if we could do Poquitos instead, as she had just gone to the store and was soaked from the sporadic heavy rainfall that happened through much of the day on Saturday. Having been sick recently, she didn't feel up for a mile-long walk in that, which I also very much understood. Poquitos is less than two blocks from her apartment, and five and a half blocks from mine.
We knew it wouldn't be very busy at Poquitos at 3:00 on a Saturday either, so she felt comfortable eating inside—in fact, at the very same table we sat at for our midmonth Happy Hour in January, two high-booth tables to the right from the front entrance. I had one appetizer ("jalepeno queso" with chips) and one margarita; Laney had two beers and an order of nachos.
And: we
both brought a list of conversatio topics on our phones. We burned through both our lists over about two hours. Two hours is actually a bit short for our typical happy hour get-togethers, but given her recent illness, it did not surprise me that she was ready to go after that amount of time.
Probably the most notable thing I learned, as we caught up on the previous three weeks (what we did not already cover in the interim over frequent emails and texts, anyway), was that her van got impounded! She doesn't drive it very often, and she can keep it parked in the same spot for up to 72 hours. The mistake she made was parking it in front of an apartment building where people were to move in, and she did not see the temporary no-parking signs put up to accommodate that. She said there was even a note on her windshield, left maybe half an hour before the van was towed, saying she needed to move it or it was going to get towed. She estimates she got to the shockingly empty parking space less than hour after the van was taken away.
And, of course, Laney having covid really complicated this whole thing. If she could have, she would have waited it out—but, when she called them to ask what that would cost, she said it was a additional $30 a day. So, on the Tuesday after the Sunday she tested positive, she very conscientiously wore gloves and double-masked up, and had to take the bus out to where she needed to pick up the van and bail it out of impound, for like $200. I felt bad for her when hearing that, as that's not an easy thing on her retirement budget—but, thankfully, she sets money aside even on her earnings, so she could take the hit. More importantly, she took the bus at a time of day when she said it was almost completely empty, just one other rider far at the other end of the bus from her, so it wasn't as anxiety-inducing a bus ride as she had feared it might be. And after that, she stayed home until she tested negative again.
She told me about chatting with other residents of her building as she was heading out on Saturday, and they said things like, "Laney's alive!" They were delighted to see her out and about again. As was I.
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— पांच हजार पांच सौ इक्यासी —
Given the Happy Hour on Saturday and the Academy Awards yesterday, Friday was the only day I had available to go see a movie, and even the pickings were slim—I walked home from work, then bussed back down to Lower Queen Anne and SIFF Cinema at the Uptown, to see the documentary
Anselm, which
literally sedated me. On the upside, tomorrow I go back to SIFF Cinema Downtown (Cinerama) for my
third viewing of
Dune Part Two, this time with Shobhit and Laney, and I know for certain that one, at least, will keep me awake.
As for yesterday, before the Oscars came along, Shobhit wanted to go for a long walk, and I opted to join him. It was rainy for much of that time as well, and we both brought umbrellas.
We walked north on 15th to Harrison, turned right and walked over to 19th, walked north on that street to Galer, then zigzagged a bit on our way back over to 15th, up to Louisa Boren Lookout, then back toward Volunteer Park, where we walked around a fair bit.
Shobhit actually wanted to do three rotations of a loop around Volunteer Park. We were near three miles of walking by then, and I knew we had another mile back, and I was already getting tired. I told him I did not have two more rotations in me, so he agreed to head back home after just that one loop—albeit via Broadway, where we stopped to buy a couple of things at QFC.
We walked home from there, and I practically felt like collapsing. Checking my Health app on my phone, I had walked 13,558 steps and 5.4 miles on that walk. Shobhit has been doing this a lot so he's more used to it, but damn I was tired.
So I made us both some spiked hot chocolate.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ इक्यासी —
And that brings us back around, of course, to the actual Oscars ceremony. Overall, I thought the telecast was . . . fine. Some pretty great moments, some very funny moments. I was genuinely shocked, given that Lily Gladstone had very deservedly won the Best Actress SAG Award for
Killers of the Flower Moon, to see Emma Stone win the Best Actress Oscar instead for
Poor Things—even though GoldDerby.com had her as the front runner, albeit in a very tight race, all along. And, as I noted over text to Gabriel, I felt very ambivalent about it: I so wanted Lily Gladstone to win, but Emma Stone really did give an astonishing performance in
Poor Things.
It is an awkward scenario, though, given Emma Stone also recently gave an incredible performance in a TV show,
The Curse, which was very much about White people taking things from Indigenous people. And Emma Stone had been so visibly stoked for Lily Gladstone's win at the SAG Awards, she clearly did not come to the Oscars thinking she had it in the bag. In spite of her front runner status, when her name was called, there was a flash on her face that indicated she was a bit thrown. And of course, Lily Gladstone was very gracious.
Shobhit had been
absolutely convinced Lily Gladstone had it in the bag, for no other reason than his contention that Academy voters knew how historic a win for a Native American actor would be. I told him all along it wasn't a guarantee, even though I was also predicting Gladstone to win—we were both wrong.
It did only just occur to me that the Academy's voting body becoming much more international could have been a factor here. Is it possible that, somewhat ironically, Gladstone would have had a better chance, say, if
Killers of the Flower Moon had come out five years ago? It does seem possible to me. International voters would obviously have a general understanding of the import of this kind of win, but would still not feel the gravity of it in the same way that a lot of American Academy voters would. And
Poor Things is an incredible movie with an iconic performance elicited by a Greek director. In retrospect, it makes sense to me that
Poor Things would have more love spread throughout the voting body, at least between these two particular films.
Anyway. Jimmy Kimmel was a good host. I hear talk of people wanting to see John Mulaney host, which I do think would be a nice pivot and a treat. As I already noted, maybe three times Gabriel and I connected over FaceTime during commercial breaks. We both agreed that the way they presented the acting awards, with five different previous winners in the category giving a tribute to one of the five nominees, was pretty cool—especially with three of the four acting awards having been a done deal months ago, this have all the other nominees a nice moment. I worried a little bit about how it might affect the overall run time of the telecast, but they really zipped through the other categories, and without giving anyone short shrift, really.
Gabriel predicted 20 winners correctly out of the 23 categories. I got 19 right. So, he won that one, but not by a wide margin!
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[posted 12:28 pm]
