Often, no, most of the time, when I’m down here it feels like I could be in just about any suburb in America, even though the political intrigue of DC is less than 13 miles away. My sisters don’t act like Washingtonians and I don’t think they feel like they are either. They are citizens of Costco and Starbucks and Wegmans supermarket and the increasingly complex — geometrically, anyway — “strip” malls which are the dots the lines of their daily lives connect. These dots and lines reveal a serrated picture that, to me, is sometimes soothing, often boring, periodically compelling and somehow wrong.

Last week, though, even before the Italian dinner at which I was the well-known Mister Funny, we drove in, early AM, to drop off my niece at Union Station. The younger niece wanted to go to Georgetown Cupcakes (it’s famous!), which I was certain would be open, since what kind of bakery ignores a breakfast crowd?

It was closed ’til 10.

But the wise management of Sprinkles, just down the street, flung open their doors at the crack of 9, so we went there instead.

I thought.

However, my niece still wanted to go to the other one.

And we did.

Then, while we were waiting in line (they only allowed a few people in at a time, like the Loft Bar in Edinburgh on a busy night), some bicyclists shouted that another place, Baked and Wired, was better.

So, we went!  

We took all the cupcakes home — 9 between the 3 of us — and shared them that night. Sprinkles was best.

Apparently, the owner is a judge on “Cupcake Wars.” His or her jurisprudential chops — cupcake-wise — are sound.

City livin’, baby.

Oliver Douglas don’t know shit.

No, I’m pretty sure they didn’t use the word “nasty.” I’m not nasty, generally. But I liked the notion of it having been among the hurled, as it seemed a vital part of the hilarity-underscoring portrait of the compleat comedian that the rest of the scenario was painting.

I used the word nasty later the same night in a suggested response to an unpleasant message my niece received from a classmate. I opined that a simple, “Fuck you, you nasty prick,” followed by silence would be just the stuff. My niece didn’t know what “prick” meant in that context.

How we laughed, nasty as we are.

The waitress pronounced that I had the best personality of anyone who’d ever been a customer. And this was a major restaurant in the heart of Washington DC.

I must be a comedian, she said. An ordinary person couldn’t possibly be so funny.

I told her my sisters had been saying how funny I was all day. They’d used words like “snappish,” “mean,” “critical.” I’m not sure whether they said, “nasty.”

As I informed the enthusing server that my sisters likewise found me funny, my sisters laughed.

Some of my best Oscar nights have been ones where I resisted the conformist urge to view and did things that actually benefited me, like the one when I went to a clinic to check out a growth on my head or the time I went to perform at a bookstore in Santa Monica, stealing a (tiny) portion of spotlight for myself instead of orgasming over the triumphalism of those who care for and know me not.

Actually, the place didn’t have a spotlight.

Of course, there are many reasons to avoid the Oscars, but the one with most meaning for the motion picture industry is that the Oscars are killing their business. The internationally ogled telecast is not an awards show, it is a cavalcade of spoilers, strangling Hollywood.

After all, movies are expensive and most people wait to see them until they can do so in the most economical fashion possible. So, by awards night, the majority of a movie’s potential audience has not even seen the films.

And why should they ever after having everything given away by clips and speeches?

Not everyone will wait. Some will download the films illegally in order to see them by the night of the awards. At times, the films they’re improperly viewing will be Academy screeners, sent freely to members in hopes said members will be moved to offer an award. These copies have “don’t show these to anyone” messages all over them, ironic under the circumstances and not the best way to have your audience immerse itself in a cinematic world it wants them to find worthy of a statuette.

Every day in every way, the movie business is really the spoiler business. Especially on its biggest night of the year, a night when one billion people can see all the plot secrets and great acting moments that will spare them the necessity of ever paying to see the films.

Gee. The movie moguls are even spoiling it for themselves. Maybe they should wait three years before making a film eligible for the Oscar.

 

Originally published in The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-j-lederer/the-academy-awards-are-ki_b_2725624.html

Just me and the dogs, lying around, sleeping in a cold breakfast room on a damp day.

Their cages are open. Mine is never open. Nor have I a rawhide bone on which to chew.

Although I suppose I could.

Ate Ina Garten’s aglio olio for lunch or some comparable reason. I hope she doesn’t get angry when she comes home. It wasn’t that good.

Dinner with the family tomorrow. Pasting on jowls with bad peanuts as glue in preparation.

You know, for verisimilitude.

I am not a good dog trainer. For one thing, I don’t understand “dog normal.” I keep trying to hold them accountable to human standards of disgusting.

From the dog normal perspective, the enthusiastic dining upon (presumably his own) shit is probably something to commend, similar to you or me going to a Heston Blumenthal restaurant. But I was so disturbed by it that I ran onto the deck in my bare feet to stop it and squashed my foot flesh into rain-wet shit.

Which is not human normal.

See

When I was in line, waiting, at length, in the cold, to ascend the mountainish thing so that I could slide down it in a condom-wrapped inner tube, I, having let the young ones I accompanied go on ahead, felt very much alone. This was the kind of thing you should be doing with someone else. I wished I had made the kids endure me.

Then, flying on a pillow of snow with more descending and the wonders of Pennsylvania in every periphery, I was alive. With pleasure.

I must have had the kind of happiness that only a Newport smoker feels regularly.

Saw

Had another chance to embrace life Sunday. A 12-year-old girl not my own was being hauled by her mother to a hillside in Pennsylvania where she would go snowtubing. I was enlisted to provide Ma with adult company.

I went because, in the life-embracing spirit I’ve espoused, a trip through the wilds of another state seemed like, you know … a thing. I didn’t intend to actually snowtube, just hang with Mama, ’cause my clothes, in yet another show of insufficiency, were not up to the elements. But the youngster was happy I wasn’t joining as she was afraid I’d embarrass her, so I decided to do it.

Fuck her.

Scary looking down that long slope just before being set free. I had just tripped and nearly fallen getting on the moving sidewalk to get up top, the only adult to be so physically inept.

Sat in the tube and they set me free.

It was glorious.The sailing, the snow, the cold, the vistas and I were, if not one, then one plus some fraction, but not even two.

I was geologically central; amidst, aloft and a part of the realm of white, snowy, mountainous, tree-flecked, lake-adjacent beauty.

Hot chocolate made me a little sick.

I said no at first when she asked me to come to the synagogue Friday night.

I wasn’t ready, had to do laundry, take a shower, shave, all before no time had passed. But I decided I should at least try to embrace life. Maybe I would meet someone.

Of course, I could go another time.But maybe the person I needed to meet would only be there that night. Mostly moms and shit, anyway, so whoever might be would be rare and obvious. Chick rabbi a possibility.

In my mind.

So, I threw stuff (not good enough but the best I had) into the washer and took a shower and shaved. And cut my head up.

And didn’t go.

Couldn’t. Not with a blood-capped head.

Had grappled with the whole thing anyway, maybe going was desperate. Be methodical, right? Everything in its time.

But then I’ve used that as an excuse before.

She who asked me didn’t go either, anyway.

I am forced to admit it. I’m a full-time dog trainer.

I know nothing about dogs. This may impact upon my success.

There’s no money in it. Save for, sort of, room and board. (You’ve figured it out, I live in a kennel. And my board is Kennel rations.)

I, well, I just got tired of an abundance of interior shit in the place where I’m staying. Not stuff. Shit.

So I’m housebreaking 2 of each.

An adult and a child. A boy and a girl. A big and a small.

I don’t know how, though.

It’s hard.

Good chance I’ll fail.