Here’s to the Losers

It’s as if Seth and Kristen were singing just for me.

{If you didn’t stay awake long enough to watch the Sinatra-spoof, closing number at The Oscars check it out here: http://starcrush.com/2013-oscars-closing-heres-to-the-losers/}

I used to have my finger on the pulse of Hollywood — as much as anyone in the Central Time Zone can.

It doesn’t have a date and since the AOL email address I was probably using back then has long since been overgrown with spam, I don’t know exactly what year I earned that puppy from E!, but it’s been collecting dust on my dresser for give or take 15 years. I won it by playing a game online called Studio Boss (I just checked. They don’t have it anymore…) that is much like Fantasy Football. I chose actors, directors, movies to be on my list and as the weeks went by their successes at the box office earned me points. I don’t remember what movies were out then or how many people I bested to win this thing, but I DO remember being pre-tty darn impressed with myself at the time.

Studio BOSS. I could pick ‘em. It was also during this movie-obsessed period of my life that I decided I wanted to be a movie director and idolized James Cameron and saw Titanic approximately seven times IN THE THEATER. Not necessarily in that order…

And then I went to college — where I did NOT study to become a brilliant filmmaker — but continued to appreciate the storytelling and magic of movies. In my pre-”8-to-5″ days, I discovered the joy of going to the theater during the day when there were fewer people to contend with and I could soak up the sights and sounds completely uninterrupted by cellphones ringing and people chatting.

I was a bottomless pit of otherwise useless Hollywood and movie knowledge and I sometimes wondered if the game Scene It? was created just for me and my movie trivia dominance.

But somewhere along the way — woven between married life, a full-time job, and becoming a mom — my firm, beloved grasp on Hollywood started slipping. Instead of seeing every film nominated for the Oscars each year I concentrated on seeing all of the Best Picture nominations. Eventually, even that started to slip.

And this year. An all-time low. There were nine films nominated for Best Picture. NINE. And I haven’t seen a single one of them. In fact, here’s my ballot for our office Oscars game — I haven’t seen a single movie represented on this entire page.

Click to enlarge.

It will come as no surprise that I did not win the office game. I didn’t even come close. I can’t even remember my “method” for making most of these predictions. (The blue checkmarks are my original predictions, the highlighted blue lines are the winners.) Some of them I went by the Golden Globe winner, some by just pure, wild guess — and poor Documentary Short, I just skipped right over it!

So. It’s snowing outside and I have the day off. And, as part of my 2013 plan to work on my Life List a little each month, I have two past Best Picture winners on the DVR.

You know where to find me.