Hollywoodland

I'll be sitting there on the couch, as I always am, at five PM Pacific time to watch it all unfold LIVE! The spell of the Academy Awards has not been broken, even though I have had some healthy doses of "the business" in tangential and vicarious ways. I still feel lurid fascination for all things Hollywood. It's a little like Disneyland to me. I am no longer overwhelmed by the size of the thing - I have run around it in a brutal Orange County haze. The geography fits neatly into my head, and I now think of my experience there in terms of load capacity for rides and eight year old bladders. Still, when I am inside the Magic Kingdom, I am captivated and swept away by the essence of Disney.
Hollywood is no different. I get a very primal charge from walking down the street, naming the stars as I step on them, and even though the Chinese theater has changed names almost as many times as the stadium where the San Francisco Giants play baseball (this year AT&T Park, if you're scoring at home), the hand and footprints still captivate me. I know that they don't make movies there. There will probably be as many movies made in Toronto this year as there will be in Hollywood, but it's ground zero for the business of making movies. You can smell the desperation of people trying not to appear desperate. Truth is, if you head south for a mile or so, you'd never know that you were in the hot zone. People live there. They mow their lawns and wash their cars (0r have someone do it for them, it's still Hollywood after all).
But tonight, it will be different. Just a few doors down from Mann's Chinese Theater, the limos will be lined up and all those momentarily important people will pile out, waiting for their fifteen minutes of fame to start, or end. I'll be there on my couch, eating popcorn and staring at the wonder of it all.