Hitting on the Academy

A reader asked why I failed to write any significant commentary on the Oscar nominations announced yesterday. She insinuated that perhaps I was miffed at LOTR's sweep of 11 nominations. Of course the answer is no. One can't really get miffed at the Academy; after all, they are doing what they're doing to members of their own gang, and the rest of us, unscathed, watch for the sheer entertainment of it all.

I must also admit that I never saw LOTR. One could say that I have an aversion to battles that take place somewhere in "middle earth", and so I view no movies that promise long sequences of fictionalized but nonetheless realistic gore. True, one friend of a friend used the same excuse for avoiding the film "Monster." He said he refused to pay money to see movies where a serial killer takes out human life, one by one. Though I agree that the entertainment value of that is pretty low, at least in the case of serial killers, I feel a social responsibility to occasionally witness what we, as a society, have allowed to grow and fester. I do not believe that there is anything on middle earth that deserves my attention in the same way.

Still, I agree with another reader that doting on an obscure Czech film when the rest of the world is commenting on Diane Keaton is a bit pretentious, and so I will return to my rightful place and say my two words. And the two words are, in fact, about Diane Keaton (hereafter DK): her gloves. When I commented on the gloves she wore to the Globes, someone noted that it is rumored that she has a germ thing. Meaning the gloves are always there as a result of a compulsive aversion to germs. DK has recently denied this, but when you deny rumors of this nature, one suspects there to be a grain of possible truth wedged in there somewhere.

Being human and therefore cruel, the glove thing made me snicker, though in kind deference to DK's mental health issues, I did not immediately rush to post this piece of news on the blog. But today I read in the Times something that made me believe that DK may not be so off the track. It's one of those instances where the rest of us are mindlessly destroying ourselves while the object of our ridicule stands protected. The article is all about the prevalence of germs, and it blatantly states that THE CLEANER YOU ARE,THE MORE GERMS THERE'LL BE IN YOUR KITCHEN!! It goes on to stereotype somewhat, and throw out the possibility that bachelor-slobs actually have a better, germ-free environment with their stacked dishes in the sink and unwiped counter tops, than do we, the compulsive neurotic counter-cleaners.

So hats off to you, DK, for being so visionary, if not altogether my favorite acting personality. If you win an Oscar, wave the gloved hand with pride.