Decision Week in Review – Jan. 26, 2024

I am so tired of hearing that Greta Gerwig was “snubbed” by not getting nominated for the Oscar for Best Director. Excuse me, but there were four other directors of Best Picture-nominated movies who also didn’t make the cut. Ten nominees in one category and only five in the other – I can do the math.

The easiest solution would be to even it out. Ten and ten. The directors of all Best Picture-nominated pictures, and only those directors, are automatically nominated for Best Director. But then some of those people writing the articles about the snubs might be out of work, which, they might be anyway, based on the L.A. Times staff reductions this week.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists left the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight. In explaining their decision to not move the clock, the organization nevertheless expressed concern about “a new nuclear arms race,” the “lack of action on climate change [that] threatens billions of lives and livelihoods,” biological research that presents the risk of causing a future pandemic, “and recent advances in artificial intelligence . . . that could . . . threaten civilization in countless ways.”

I wonder what kind of news would have been required to move the clock forward – Alex Rodriguez getting elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame despite his admissions about using steroids during his career? Or perhaps Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce breaking up.

No Kidding

It’s not April 1st until tomorrow, in case you think this is a joke. For once, it isn’t.

I hadn’t paid any attention to the Oscar nominations when they were announced a couple weeks ago, but an article today about one of the nominees, Paul Raci, caught my attention, because, guess what, he and I took improv classes together in 1979-80.

I have some interesting memories of Paul. We were friends, though we definitely had different ways of letting loose on the weekends. He was a very intense guy, and certainly, as evidenced by his newly-found acclaim, a hell of a lot more talented than I was.

Nevertheless, I can tell you that he and I shared the stage in a scene where we, along with two others (one of whom was the cause of me running in the Chicago Marathon after a night of debauchery – but that’s another story, which I have told before), put Harry Belafonte to shame, as we turned the venue into a banana boat and went to work while we sang (even me, with a little help from my friends) Day-O.

Congratulations Paul.