MY OSCAR GOES TO...

First of all, I love the Oscars. With all of the self congratulatory, overblown elements that come with them, they do really attempt to (and largely suceed) in honoring some of the best work of the year. Sure, it's an imperfect, subjective, apples to oranges horse race, but if you care about good movies getting attention (as opposed to popular movies getting attention) It's a very satisfying enterprise.

(I will refrain for now, from addressing the Academy's blind spot for comedy and the very valid point that by nature of having five nominees that there are grievous oversights yearly)

My favorite element, while most derided by many, are the speeches. All of them in fact, because you are truly witnessing the peak moment of someone's life and that is unbeatble drama. I love watching the dweeb from Iceland accepting his Best Documentary Short Award as much as I love the human drama of the team from Iceland unexpectedly winning Olympic gold in the eluge.

And I love the "stars" speeches most of all, because no matter how big they've gotten or how warped by a career in Hollywood, they all began the same way, watching those Oscars as a kid and thinking about what they'd say if they won one. That is who walks up to get that trophy.

Of course, some of my fondness for that stems from having my speech written since I was fourteen. The categories have changed, the "thank you's" are constantly being revised, but the year my name is called at the Oscars, (or the Emmys or Tony's for that matter) I'll have a speech as tight as a drum.

And that is what life in Hollywood is like when all is said and done. "High school with money" is still the definitive quote but I'd like to add "Community theater on steroids."

My Oscar picks to follow.

HOW TIM ROBBINS ALMOST CONVERTED ME TO THE DEATH PENALTY

Michael Morales' now delayed execution has made me examine the death penatly anew. Are the three drugs used to adminster the lethal injection "cruel and unusual" punishment as has been recently ruled?

Well, gee, isn't killing anyone for anything cruel and unusual punishment?

To be clear, I am against the death penalty. It is morally repugnant. Does anyone honestly believe it serves as a deterrent to anything? Does anyone believe that it exists for any other purpose besides "An eye for an eye"? That is a morally unacceptable position for the country we purport to be to hold.

If we have to live with the death penalty, the glacially lengthy appeal process is absolutely essential. I'd champion the cliche that one unjust execution is too many but that ship has long sailed.

But since the moral argument against the death penalty gets no traction, let's look at another fundamental argument of the death penalty proponents. It gives the victim's families and society closure.

I'd submit that the families and society would have closure at the end of a trial in seeing the convict locked away and the key being tossed and not sitting through 25 years of appeals and the torture of seeing the man who killed their child live longer on death row than that child was allowed to walk freely on the earth.

And think of the millions of dollars spent by the government to fund the appeals process.

Cutting the appeals process is morally unacceptable. Killing the "Guilty"is morally unacceptable. Torturing the survivors' families by subjecting them to decades of appeals is unaccptable. Millions of dollars thown down the toilet to kill is unacceptble. The only solution is abolishing the death penalty and replacing it with life sentences, no possibility of parole.

And yet, seeing the film Dead Man Walking almost changed my mind. Sean Penn's character's pending execution for a horrific crime that he continues to deny brings Sister Mary Prejean, anti death penalty advocate, to the prison. Through her interaction with Penn's character, he admits him crime and feels remorse. At the end of the movie, we are to be moved by this redeemed soul walking to his execution.

Now at the end of the movie, I found myself wondering if this "redeemed soul" ever would have reached that point if not confronted with his own mortality . If sentenced to life in prison would his horrific act become, in time, a fuzzy anecdote that he'd share around the yard when asked by a newbie "What are you in for?"

Gee, I walked out of that movie thinking there might be something to this death penalty thing. Hardly the conclusion Mr. Robbins intended me to reach.

Then that morality thing kicked in. Pain in the ass, that. Still makes it all a more complex issue than either side would like to believe.

THIS WRITING LIFE (and how to avoid it)

It occurs to me that even as I begin this entry, ostensibly about some overview about my life as a writer, here in Hollywood and more to the point, here inside my head, that this actually servers as a deviously clever procrastination device. I can write about writing for an hour and publish this on my blog which no one reads yet, or I can get to today's pages.

...And the results are in. The pages win, at least for now. Consider this your first lesson.

MUSINGS ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Welccome to today. Crisp and cold in Studio City CA. Feels more like a fall day in Boston. I think to jump start this little enterprise further, I'm going to regale you with a classic newspaper colmun premise of a string of random thoughts.

(Not that any of those columns ever fooled us into thinking anything other than the writer is blocked and this is just a way to fill a page and keep their jobs.)

Whoever says "There's nothing good on television" isn't watching it.

Not that 1) There isn't a lot of crap and 2) I'd ever tell someone to watch more TV...There are a lot of better ways to spend your time.

But when you can watch, "Deadwood", "Rescue Me" ,"The Shield", "Law and Order", "Lost", "The Office"," Veronica Mars", "The Daily Show", "Reno 911" and "Drake and Josh" - and that is barely scratching the surface, don't use uniformed elitism to justify not indulging in a habit you're better off without, anyway.

Or, in fewer words, don't be a fucking snob.

Continuing on TV...

If your head is still spinning with the "Drake and Josh" reference, try this experiment. Watch two episodes of "D&J" vs any two episodes of "Yes, Dear""Still Standing" or the "George Lopez Show" and tell me what makes you laugh more.

And feel better, Drake Bell, by the way.

Daytime TV --

My "guilty" pleasures? Court shows. (See what I did there?)

Judge Judy - The Queen

Judge Joe Brown? - I rememeber when he used to care.

Judge Marilyn from The People's Court? - I admit it, she and I may be involved in a restraining order in the not so distant future. Funny, tough and... well, I'll say it, hot.

I may need to discuss the last item with my therapist.

How does Maury Povich sleep at night? Besides with Connie Chung, which isn't nearly enough compensation for watching his soul get sucked away by his work on that show, I mean,

Brokeback Mountain - Loved it, believed it when they got together. Although watching two men have sex makes me think of a naked guy shoving a desk through a doorway. Does nothing for me.

And yet, two women making love? A work of art. Go figure.

My best time in a movie theater this year? Chronicles of Naria with my eight year old daughter, Talia.

Biggest disappoinment? Rent.

Loved "Good Night and Good Luck". "Capote".

Most overrated Oscar contender? "Crash". A lot to like, a lot we have seen many times before - "Short Cuts" "Grand Canyon", "Magnolia". And the gears of the storytelling machinery ground a little too loudly, too often. ( "Who's pulling me out of this car accident? Why the RACIST SCARY COP from the other day! Darn the bad luck of this crash!")

Doesn't anyone get the fact that the big deal is not that Cheney shot that guy, it's that this Administration thinks it's such a pain in the butt to inform the public that the second in command of the most powerful nation in the world shot someone.

Maybe red states wouldn't be so sanctimonius if the realized that all of the quality education as well as the tax income that paves their roads came from blue states.

Hey, this was fun...I think I'm going to do this again sometime.

I wrote this 2/2 because I needed to and, I guess it was the first time I felt "the call of the blog". I'll be funny another time.

MY FRIEND TOM

Last Saturday,my friend Tom died suddenly. Between the time I received the news and now, millions of people have lost someone they loved. But somehow, among the many feelings I have swirling around me is one I had when my daughters were born,

I remember looking at them in a way I still do and wondering, “How has anyone ever experienced this before?” Something so powerful, strange and completely singular? I knew children were born everyday, but to create a life! And those two particular lives! Wow.

And now, my friend Tom is dead. And it is equally hard for me to imagine anyone sharing, understanding or even conceiving the sense of loss and pain that I feel.

Some of it is due to my inexperience with this kind of loss. My father died about three years ago, but I had very little contact with him for a long time. When he passed, and I saw him in the end, it was with a profound sadness I looked at the man with tubes running out of him, laying on a hospital bed. I felt the same way when we moved him into a nursing home, once illness debilitated him beyond the point where my mother could handle him. I cried when I realized his life now fit into the cardboard box we slid under his bed the day we checked him in. But when he passed we knew it was time. Did I miss him on a day-to-day basis? It pains me to realize that I didn’t and I don’t.

When I was a child, I lost both sets of grandparents. I was never close to them. I remember each event as hushed conversations in the kitchen while we kids played upstairs, Again, the sense of loss was minimal.

Sometimes I wonder if the fault is mine. Was I somehow wired incorrectly? Do I compartmentalize so completely so as to be able to stuff these events into a box and shove them into a dark and dusty corner of my brain and lock them away? Me, who cries at the drop of a hat at any movie, TV show or piece of music for reasons I can barely articulate? How can I have so little connection with the passing of my blood?

Then my friend Tom died. I met him through my church choir, though I learned we both wrote for television, and had a deep love for musical theater, sports, cigars and scotch. He was a passionate, tirelessly witty guy, who told stories like no I ever knew, had a big heart, a wonderful wife and a terrific 13-year-old son. Our families had the good fortune to become intertwined. And even as he drew away from the church we attended, we remained friends.

Each Christmas, he and his wife threw a huge soup party where he gave out as gifts Christmas music CD’s he burned that were as eclectic, nourishing and fun as time with him always was.

It is impossible to do justice to the impact he made on everyone. My last contact with him was a comic email that he sent to several of us the night he died, a song parody called “Rough Cut Lady”.With all that is wrong about this event, it only seems fitting that our last communication involved music and comedy, as immense as his gifts were in both areas.

I am part of a large community of people affected by his loss. He had many friends. I was just privileged to be one of them.

Now, my friend Tom is dead. And I will miss him in a way I have never in forty six years of life have missed anyone. And while I know that my feelings are common for anyone affected by the
passing of a friend, they are new to me and I don’t know what to do with them.

I ask friends questions, and then plumb my grief for what? A lesson? Some cliché that will make the grief slide down easier?

This makes me feel vaguely dirty. Why should I gain insight from a loss that hurt so many people? I don’t want to benefit from his being taken away so suddenly and cruelly. I don’t want to feel better about this, ever.

The first thing I heard as this news filtered through our church community was several versions of “God has a plan”. Sorry. I’m not ever going to understand a plan that involves the loss of an individual like Tom. We blessed to have known him are the better for it, but his loss is everyone’s. It is a darker world, quieter, with less laughter and less music now.

So I will hug my wife and my daughters, hoist a glass of Scotch to my friend Tom Amundsen and attempt to reconcile the fact that nothing I believed or thought I knew now makes any sense to me.

Will this get easier with time? I expect so. I will wrap reason and wisdom around me, like a cloak against a sudden, unwelcome chill, remembering the warmth of our friendship and looking forward to the coming thaw. But, I’ll still miss you, Tom. I promise.

My wife and I are watching the Olympics. Apollo Ono is being interviewed. Sigh. My wife gets very excited for the Olympics, especialy the winter ones, being a Maine native who pracitcally grew up on skis. Me, however, I think I must have contracted "Olympic Fever" an infant, because I appear to be immune now.

I've decided I want to blog. I'm not sure why. I know I'll have a lot to say and it will be fascinating, damn it. So here goes...more later