Full disclosure: Meta Cranky has taken an oath with a friend we'll call Renaissance Mom to write something on a regular basis. This semi-solemn vow means that while the rest of the world is watching Christopher Waltz win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, MC is maintaining her credibility. Truth be told, MC is so far removed from popular culture that she wouldn't recognize Christopher Waltz if he sacked her groceries at Wheatsville, and she wonders why Quentin Tarantino gets to misspell both Inglourious and Basterds and apparently be rewarded for it. Wait, she does know a smidge about popular culture: A mom friend who is a faithful Vulcan Video customer reports that Quentin Tarantino's assistant tried to check out a DVD with the Famous Director's card. The clerks at Vulcan, exponentially hipper than Tarantino's assistant, were so unimpressed. Mom friend rented a DVD despite a contested fine; Inglourious Tarantino assistant did not.
MC recognizes that Oscar night is about rewarding cinematic excellence, but it's also about the ritual, elements that have been in place since the time of the flood: red carpet, Harry Winston jewelry, Joan Rivers' surgically enhanced face. She adores the morning-after fashionista comments and wishes she could authoritatively opine like Salon's Cintra Wilson, that Devil Wears Prada-era Anne Hathaway wore "a Valentino gown made of unborn ballerina fur." But when does a self-congratulatory film makers' award program become a ritual that people schedule elective surgeries around? One minute you're hoisting a sidecar with Bob Hope in the Roosevelt Hotel, and the next thing you know you're participating in a full-blown pagan-fertility-Fisher-King-type cult with Meryl Streep.
Late-winter Cranky rituals are conducted without the bling of heavily insured jewelry. Cranky #1 will wince operatically when Cranky #2 does a top-of-the-lung "Jolene" cover. Oldest Cranky consistently will dress for weather 15 degrees warmer than the current temperature, then will scramble to adjust before the 7 a.m. carpool. Youngest Cranky habitually will exit the bath to converse starkers with guests. MC finds comfort and assurance in the regularity of such behaviors. Perhaps this comportment doesn't yet approach the complexity of a pagan winter solstice, but like those other cold-weather observances, these ritual practices give hope that spring, or at least Spring Break, will arrive soon.
--MC
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