Sorry for the prolonged absence, everyone, but I'm happy to report that this other writing project I'm working on has unhinged its jaws and swallowed me whole. I met with a few people about it, and the feedback has catalyzed me into a frenzy. So I'm going with it as best as I can, heading right for the PC most nights after the boys have zonked out. I'm also staying up way too late, so I'm gliding through my waking life a little goggle-eyed. A lot like Nicole Kidman at the Oscars last night.
[Oh, snap!]
I did take the night off from writing to catch the Oscars, but I thought I'd be a genius by DVRing it and then beginning the playback about an hour into the broadcast. But there was so little to see that I caught up to the live action awfully quick, and once you've been fast-forwarding a program for an hour or so, it's completely jarring when you can't anymore. For a brief while, you command ultimate power to bend time to your will. But then it fades, and like every other mortal you have to sit through dopey jokes and car commercials and Best Sound Editing. Really takes the wind out of your spinnaker.
I don't remember much about who looked like what, but I do recall how pinched and frail and miserable Nicole Kidman looked when she came out with 007. I also recall the Pilobolus dancers, Ellen DeGeneres's endless yammering, and the usual patter and bunk that sent the show almost an hour long, but it was worth staying up to see Scorsese get his standing-O. I met him once when I worked the Tribeca Film Festival, when his talk on how he selects music for his movies that was supposed to last 45 minutes went on for around 90. He shook hands warmly with all of us badge-and-lanyard types as we led him to and fro, and if the kids hadn't been asleep I probably would have whooped loudly when he won.
And while we're on the subject of movies, I took a big step with Robert on Sunday and watched "Star Wars" with him. It was the strangest thing, too, because we had planned to watch it earlier, but just as I was popping my dusty old tape into the VCR I noticed that HBO was airing the original trilogy back-to-back-to-back. TwoBert was also good enough to take a nice, long power-nap so we could watch all of Episode IV undisturbed. It was as if watching the film was ... our destiny.
Robert was enthralled throughout, and now when we sit down to Legos everything he makes is made for droids and Wookiees and stormtroopers and Grand Moff Tarkins. In other words, his nerd vocabulary just got a major boost.
