Tuning back in to the Oscars frequency

My wife had to remind me that the Oscars were on today.

This from the person who basically hasn't watched them since we moved to Australia 13 years ago.

So yeah, it's been pretty far from my mind. I have not been keeping up with the horse race at all. I had my fantasy baseball draft yesterday. That's the sort of thing that occupies my thoughts these days in the first half of March and before. 

Of course, I do actually plan to watch them for the, I don't know, 40th year in a row. It'll just be on a delay. The last couple years, the Oscars had the decency to align with our Labour Day here in Australia, but that was last Monday. So I'll have to do the normal social media ban that I always do during my workday, which should be fine as there will be enough baseball news to consume. 

It is probably just about 40 years now. Earlier this month I mentioned that Rain Man was the first best picture winner I'd already seen at the time it was named best picture, but I was following the Oscars a few years before that. I have a distinct memory of being on my paper route the morning after the Oscars and reading in the paper about the victory of The Last Emperor, which I probably would not have known about it because I would have gone to sleep before the ceremony finished. (And what time was the Boston Globe's final deadline of the night, anyway?) I think I remember the wins of Platoon and Out of Africa as well, as things I cared about at the time they happened. I even think there was some awareness all the way back to 1981, when I would have been only seven, about Chariots of Fire, but this is becoming a bit more speculative, and I certainly wouldn't have been watching the ceremony at that point. 

As you know, in the past ten years if not a little bit more than that, I've shifted my interest to which films get nominated, not which films win. While others are deciding whether the Screen Actors Guild awards and things like that are a bellweather for a film's Oscar chances, I am barely registering that these things occurred.

But today I do plan to print out a nominations list (better do that right after I post this), make my choices, and go through with either a highlighter or a red pen to mark the ones I got right or wrong as I watch the ceremony sometime after 9 p.m. local time, after my son's basketball game and our dinner. And then hopefully post my usual reactions post at some point not too late in the early morning.

The Oscars will always remain in my blood, but sometimes I do have to force myself to tune back in.