Internet tradition holds that any users who say the word “Oscars” more than three times during the months of January or February are required either to prognosticate the winners or to divulge who’d get their votes if they were eligible to exercise that power. This year, the evening before the 86th Academy Awards go live on ABC, I must uphold that custom or else the makers of the Paranormal Activity series win.
If I were a card-carrying member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the following list would represent my hypothetical ballot selections, no less subjective and arbitrary than the average AMPAS member’s official ballot. These are not my predictions as to who will win, because that’s not my forte. Betting on me will bring you misery and cost you your life savings. I’m aware of many of my deficiencies, and Oscar-guessing is one of them. If more than one-third of these match the actual results, it’s because my fifty-year-old self acquired the technology and the bitterness to travel back in time and sabotage the sacred PricewaterhouseCoopers envelopes.
For those just catching up on the week in headline news: Republican politician Chris Christie, currently governor of New Jersey but intermittently mentioned in hushed tones among optimistic rank-‘n’-file as a possible party savior in the 2016 Presidential race, has been accused of directing his subordinates to pull transportation strings and create a four-day traffic snarl where the George Washington Bridge connects Manhattan to the New Jersey town of Fort Lee, allegedly because its mayor hadn’t fallen in lockstep with his party colleagues and publicly endorsed Christie’s future endeavors.
At age 16 the thought of a part-time after-school job never occurred to me until I received a letter one day from a man named David Sleppy, owner/operator of the McDonald’s down the street from my high school. His store had launched a new recruitment program that offered a higher starting wage to applicants who were on the school’s honor roll — $3.85/hour at a time when minimum wage was $3.35/hour. As an introverted, insular kid with no self-awareness and minimal exposure to social worlds beyond my own limited boundaries, it wasn’t tempting until I did the math and realized that $3.85/hour was greater than my $5/week allowance. I figured why not. And hey, the letter guaranteed the job. Back in those days, silver platters were my favorite way of receiving things.
A fake reader lurking within my subconscious writes:
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 