Can you feel it?

The Academy Awards circuit is currently in full swing. It's the most wonderful time of the year, particularly for those who have an uncanny knack for retaining obscure facts, and who have never wanted anything more than to own an Oscar. Since the age of 12 when I first discovered the table listing Academy Award winners in my World Book Encyclopedia I have always had a particular curiosity with the ceremony and its statistics. It still feels absurd to me that they would pit professionals against each other in such a competition, in that it feels counter-productive to the artistic merits of the industry. If excellence was truly meant to be celebrated, surely they would just have a ballot for winners and disregard the embarrassment of the nomination process? Couldn't they just have five winners in each category voted by their peers?

I guess this would mean we miss out on the best part of the whole thing though, which is clearly the pageantry of it all and its attempts to be taken seriously as a celebration of art... The tension inherent in having four celebrities having to display loss and failure in such a public display is a sadistic stroke of genius. And who doesn't love a good frock? Or seeing A-listers stumble through embarrassingly weak live material and auto-cue readings?

I can't help but become seriously emotionally invested this time every year. I absorb and retain facts like I did when I was six and dinosaurs were my obsession. It's my vice, and a sure sign of a mild autism. These useless statistics have just about as much cultural relevancy as my dinosaur facts too, the only difference being that if I can play my cards right regurgitating these useless facts one day I may end up being a presenter from the Academy Awards red carpet. Oh to dream and dream big! After all, if I can't beat them, I can surely hope to at least join them, right? Suck it Richard Wilkins. I look better on camera and would most certainly have a better rapport with legendary actresses and auteurs alike. God bless the internet too while I'm at it, and its plethora of movie awards focused blogs and losers with more time than me insiders, for making me feel normal with this bizarre fetish of mine.

Nathan.