I never would have guessed...

The reason we love the Oscars (just bare with me, I realize not everyone loves the Oscars) is that in the end, they are unpredictable. Imagine if they were like political elections: polls indicate that X is the clear frontrunner; exit interviews indicate that Y is leading, the NYT endorses Z. That would be far less interesting.

But the fact is, we really don’t know who the winners will be.

We can weigh the merits of a performance (though even here we typically do not have a consensus), we can factor in such things as “the Academy owes her one” or “he wont get it – he never shows up anyway.” But these factors are rather random. Depending on whom you talk to, you may get bizarrely skewed answers. For example, here’s a little conversation that I bet no one is paying attention to (appearing in some side story in the Times):

"A week ago I would've said it was Sean Penn," said Tony Angellotti, an Oscar campaign expert working for Universal this season. "But at my table at the S.A.G. Awards," he said, referring to the guild ceremony, "we all looked at each other and realized we'd voted for Johnny" for the Oscar. "I'm not sure Johnny Depp is going to win, but he's getting a lot more votes than I suspected," he added.

How seriously are we to consider this? Are there other table-side conversations taking place? Do they offer another intervening force or factor? EVERYONE this year is predicting that Charlize Theron will win ‘Best Actress.’ But is this in itself reason enough to suspect that, therefore, maybe she wont win?

I have not missed an Oscar show since I moved permanently to the States in 1972. Most years I will not have even seen all the movies nominated for best picture. One fancy dress looks the same as the next (though I will try to pick out the DK gloves this year). My memory for names is laughable (and many do seize the opportunity to laugh), and if asked right now, I could not tell you off the top, which film won best picture three years ago. But I am fascinated by this fact of unpredictability. Post-Oscar analyses will offer the missing factors that we all will have neglected to consider. In the mean time, we can but guess and entertain each other with our own foolishness for never being 100% right. Enjoyable? Very much so.

Marrying Omar Sharif

The first time I was seriously considered for marriage was when I was 6 years old. My equally young Polish friend Janek announced, after a momentary critical evaluation: “when I grow up, I will marry Nina.”

You might say that this verged on being an arranged marriage, as his parents were cordially friendly with my parents. The only reason my path crossed Janek’s was because my parents made me spend time with him. Eventually I didn’t much mind, which is how arranged marriages have also been described to me – eventually you may even start liking your spouse.

But Janek and I were never meant to be. My travel to the States pretty much cut him out of my life.
Still, Janek kept in touch with my sister (who lives in Warsaw), and the last time I traveled to Poland, she asked me if I would agree to see him again, just to catch up. She would sit in on the meeting, as would Janek’s wife (idle curiosity, I’m sure).

Before agreeing, I asked my sister how I would find Janek. After all, it’s been 44 years since marriage was suggested, and I haven’t seen (nor thought much about) him since. She looked conspiratorially at me and said: “he looks terrific: 100% like Omar Sharif.”

I was reminded of this exchange today as I listened to NPR on the way home: there was a story on the return of Sharif to the movie scene. Of course, the real Omar Sharif is much older (72), while my “Omar” is my age (see earlier post for an analysis of how YOUNG that is).

Janek-Omar and I did meet over coffee. We eyed each other, his wife eyed me, my sister eyed the entire situation. It wasn’t awkward at all. But one has to wonder, what would have happened had I not left for New York? Would I now be helping him launch a mountain bed and breakfast in southern Poland? Would we eventually have even liked each other? Probably not. I can’t help but see Janek not as Omar but as the little boy in a cowboy suit, with a gleam that spelled trouble. But I did take a photo of us, just to show interested parties back home how close I came to marrying someone who looks now exactly like Omar Sharif.

The politics of age

If the NYTimes told you (through an editorial endorsement) to vote for Kerry but you had been leaning toward Edwards, would you switch? No, probably not. But if the Times told you to vote for Kerry acknowledging that Edwards is a wonderful candidate – perfect for 4 – 8 years from now, would you then switch? Still maybe not? And if the Times admitted that in the past, presidents have come to the White House with pretty empty political resumes, but that was before September 11, would you perhaps give Kerry another glance? Especially if in the same breath the Times portrayed Kerry as a mature, balanced candidate with experience in foreign affairs, while noting that Edwards lacked decisiveness and great depth?

Newspaper endorsements are an odd thing. Most of us would never admit to following a paper’s pointing finger except in instances where we don’t know a thing about the candidate, as for example, in races for county register of deeds. But an endorsement portends of things to come: in Wisconsin it preceded the rush toward Edwards. Or maybe it legitimized it. And that legitimacy influences one’s thought process, doesn’t it? “Well okay, if EVERYONE is going to be voting for him, I might as well too.”

It seems that the loaded term that emerges from the Times endorsement is “experience,” and that the paper has determined that this lies at the base of “electability.” Edwards is given little credit for positions he takes, except that the paper admits that he has populist appeal. It’s fascinating that in the end, age is seen as such a virtue: either political age (meaning number of years on the political scene) or real age. Come to think of it, I don’t remember when this country last elected a president who had not a whole lot of one or the other (though many have squeaked by with only “real age” in their favor). But hey, Edwards only LOOKS young. He’s MY age after all (less than two months younger). Not good enough?

In pursuit of trunks and memorable writing, part 3

For those who read the posts on trunks (yesterday), here is a reprint of the elusive New Yorker article, dated February 13, 1978. I had clipped it and tucked it into the envelope with the note from the author:

(Talk of the Town) Notes and Comment

A letter from a friend home in bed with a cold [nc: authorship stated below]:
This bed is a real mess—mountains of Kleenex, mountains of newspapers. You might say that on an extremely small scale I am fighting for survival, striving to keep from sneezing my precious life away, but between seizures I glance at the papers—especially at stories about Cosmos 954, the Soviet nuclear-reactor satellite that blew a gasket and finally came to rest in the icy reaches of the Canadian north, spreading radioactive contamination over miles and miles—and I wonder if it is worthwhile to shake this cold. I mean, I’ll get over the cold, with aspirins, fluids, bed rest, and the holding of many beautiful thoughts, but I am gripped by the fact that the Soviet Union has at least ten nuclear powered orbs dancing around our skies and that the United States has nine. The newspapers are rather cozy about the matter, some stories saying that it will take six hundred years for one of the orbs to reenter the earth’s atmosphere, and only adding sotto voce that even then the enriched uranium would be extremely radioactive. Another story says that there is nothing to worry about for four hundred years. And another joyously speaks of four thousand years of grace. But aren’t all these figures—six hundred, four hundred, four thousand—mere blinks in the long history of the human race? If so, I’m wondering who gave anybody permission, either orally or in writing, to tamper with the existence of Man, much less set a theoretical cutoff date for worldwide contamination. One of the few things that have sustained me, through happy years and through sad ones, has been the thought that somewhere, sometime, a vigorous, intelligent, progressive, decent, perhaps freckled great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild would put his or her shoulder to the wheel and roll the heavy stone one inch further up the hill. Have to stop now. Aspirin time.

The writer of this little piece (Philip Hamburger) went on (in the year 2000) to publish a book, about which the following is said:

Philip Hamburger joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1939 and hasn't stopped writing since. He has made something of a specialty of writing about presidential inaugurations, and in his new book, Matters of State: A Political Excursion, he collects ten of those pieces, covering the inaugural celebrations of presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon (both elections), Carter, Reagan (both elections), Bush, and Clinton. Published just as the nation's capital geared up for the first inauguration of the 21st century, Matters of State provided the perfect opportunity to revisit a perceptive observer's half century of quadrennial dispatches from inside the Beltway.