On Oscar eve, the last bird left town

I have no one to blame but myself, but for a while there, it was tempting to blame my wife.

See, I had a secret plan to sneak out to see Lady Bird on the night before the Oscars telecast, which would have actually been the morning of the Oscars telecast in America. A secret plan that I fully deserved after a full day of looking after my kids, solo.

It was so secret, unfortunately, that my wife knew nothing about it and unwittingly ruined the plan by staying out until after the last showing had started.

See, she'd been in an all-day workshop that she was running, and had been planning for weeks. I knew it ended at 5, and I also knew she planned to go out for "a drink" afterward -- a drink she richly deserved. But "a drink" turned into, well, more than one. I guess she needed to decompress from the event more than I thought she did, though she didn't even really seem tipsy when she got home.

I didn't think it was actually possible she'd be home so late. I mean, even setting aside the parental guilt we both feel when we leave the other with both kids all day, I thought she'd still get home at least in time for me to make a quick awkward exit but still get to the movie on time. I mean, we'd been texting and she said she'd be home in time for dinner. Not the kids' dinner, which I had also been preparing solo, and which usually goes up between 6 and 6:30. But our dinner, which usually goes up between 8 and 8:30, and if eaten quickly, would allow me to run out in time for the 9 o'clock showing.

But as time marched along, I could no longer play it cool and just wait for the text she planned to send when she was leaving the bar. So I texted again, still not revealing my intentions, asking "Am I still expecting you?" This was about 7:45, and if she used that text to spur her to leave, she could have still made it home in time to relieve me. But her response -- "Leaving soon" -- lacked urgency, and when she told me to go on with dinner without her at about 8:15, I knew all was lost.

I'd thought my biggest problem would be whether Cinema Nova would even let me into the movie for free on my critics card, since the two-week window since it opened has elapsed by three days. Oh, I'd considered other theaters, and Lady Bird is playing at just about all of them. But weirdly, as if by some industry consensus, each of the others had a final Sunday showing at about 6:45. Nova was the only one that had the traditional 9 o'clock time slot, and it was also the only one with grounds to deny me based on how long the movie had already been out.

Whether I'd actually get denied depended on whether I got someone in the box office who's a stickler for the rules (one or two of them) or the breezy types who will basically wave you through (most of the rest). If I did get denied, I didn't want it enough to spend the $21 to watch it, so I had a backup plan of Red Sparrow, starting 20 minutes later. I figured my biggest unknown would be whether I'd write a blog post today entitled "On Oscar eve, the wrong bird got seen" or "On Oscar eve, the right bird at last." (See, both movies have birds in their titles.)

But I didn't see any movie -- actually, I saw Collateral Beauty, which I want to write about later in the week but won't touch on now.

And it's my own damn fault. I've been to the movies twice since Lady Bird was finally released on February 15th. The first time I saw Black Panther. The second time I saw, God help me, Winchester. I had my chances. But I blew them.

By going on at such lengths, I'm painting it as some kind of tragedy that I'm not getting to see Lady Bird before the Oscars. But really, I just liked the idea of kicking off the most sacred day on the movie calendar (to some people, anyway) by watching the last of the best picture nominees I had not seen. It's not only that, but it's also probably the most acclaimed of the nominees, which in itself would have been reason to try to see it before now. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I haven't been thinking about the Oscars much this Oscar season, and this was my way to get me into it.

But it's not worth crying over spilled milk, and not seeing Lady Bird before the 90th Academy Awards is certainly the equivalent of spilling milk.

Now that my first reason to see a movie in the theater (to rank it on my year-end list, if it's released in time) and my second reason to see a movie in the theater (to prepare for the Oscars) have both passed, it looks like a video date between me and Lady Bird at some unspecified date in the future. And that will be fine too.

I'm sure my wife, who has also not seen it, will be glad to watch it with me. It'll be nice to actually see a good movie with her, one I didn't leap on the moment it hit theaters, preventing us from having the opportunity to see it together later on. It'll be a date between the three of us.

I do think that a strange consequence of letting it slip through my fingers, I'm just now realizing, is that I'll be rooting for it a bit harder to win tonight. I don't know why. It's like "the one that got away."

But it's just spilled milk, Vance. Let it go.

Enjoy your Oscars, everybody. I'll be back here in 24 hours to recap what we all saw.