Crushed

It's so weird. Some of my earliest memories involving my mother and myself together involve us both watching award shows and/or beauty contests. I would always have my list of picks. At six or seven I had not seen any of the movies up for awards so I just went on aesthetic impulses, like someone who goes to the racetrack for the first time and knows nothing about odds or jockey's and just picks the prettiest horse or the one with the most interesting name (which is what I still do when I have to pick something in the animated short or other minor awards like that). I always use to draw my favorite stars with a bubble caption saying "and the winner is..." This is way before they started saying "...and the Oscar goes to". It would usually be females like Tina Louise or Sophia Loren with some unidentified male; holding the statuette clad in a creation of my own smushed cleavage drappery.
In the years of VCR's I would tape every award show and then edit them onto a seperate favorite parts tape with my second VCR. I would buy every follow up magazine to scour pictures containing probably the one or two people I cared about who might posssibly be at the ceremony. Check out what they were wearing and all.
And then, about 4 years ago it all came to an abrupt end. I can recall being at a friends house and someone was watching it in the living room and I just breezed by a few times to see what award they might be up to and exit the room. It was not intentional, it just seems that I had something else to do. I guess the days of someone on the short list of favorites of mine winning seemed as long a shot as I have in procuring a rent stabalized apartment. MTV awards, Emmy's and my last hold out, The Golden Globes all went unwatched these past two years.
Yesterday I flew back from Florida, where I went for the weekend and had the option of doing a few things. I picked entering all my cd's that I brought back with me into my laptop for my iPod. I didn't want to watch Catherine Keener graciously clap for the other winner (Rachel Weisz) or see Dolly Parton lose out ala Aimee Mann to some asshole (too true: Dolly lost to some rappers from Hustle and Flow and Aimee to (gasp) Phil Fucking Collins).
I was listening to the BBC news last night as I fell asleep and I heard no mention of any of the winners until this morning when I heard a blurb of upcoming stories on 'All Things Considered'. I nearly blew the contact lens I was about to put into my eye when exclaiming a loud "Holy Shit" upon hearing "Crash" had won Best Picture.