I'm gonna be a star!

Last week, I was on the Rochester paper's website perusing the news when I saw a link to taking part in their annual Oscar contest. In it, you pick the winners from 6 major categories (Best Pic, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, and Director). You also pick what you think will win for Best Foreign Language Film as a tiebreaker. I've participated in the contest the last couple years or so. I followed the link and saw that I only had one day left in which to make my picks. So I hurriedly (is that a word?) made my picks and submitted them. I basically picked the performances that were favored to win (Forest Whitaker, Helen Mirren, Martin Scorsese, Jennifer Hudson, and "The Departed" for Best Pic, though some thought "Babel" or "Little Miss Sunshine" would win). I realized that in order to have a good chance at winning, I would need to pick at least one upset. I elected to pick Alan Arkin over Eddie Murphy. I had heard rumblings that he might not be able to get enough votes due to many in Hollywood thinking he's an a-hole as well as the release of the movie, "Norbit" (which critics have eviscerated).



Murphy was still favored to win, however. For the tiebreaker, I picked "Pan's Labyrinth", the consensus choice to win. I watched the show on Sunday and didn't think much of my chances even after Arkin won. I felt that someone else probably picked the tiebreaker correctly ("The Lives of Others" actually beat "Labyrinth").

Me and Dori went out to eat after work yesterday afternoon (I had Taco John's, she brought Chinese to the restaurant). She then went to pick up some groceries while I headed home. I listened to our voice mails. One of them was from the Post Bulletin. At first, I thought it was another call regarding renewing my subscription (see entry from yesterday). But no, this guy said that this was regarding the contest. He said that 5 people were 6 for 6 on the regular picks with none of those 5 correctly picking the tiebreaker. He said the names of those 5 people were put in a trucker's cap, no, just kidding, some other kind of hat and what do you know, my name was picked. Nice!! He said they had about 300 entries and almost all of them picked Murphy as Best Supporting Actor.

There are two prizes, well, actually three. The first is a $100 check that is to be mailed to me in the near future. The second is (are you ready for this?) 2 movie tickets a week for every week over the next year (that's 104 movie tickets!) I like!! I'm to receive those in the next week or two as well. The third "prize" is my pic in the paper. I've never had my pic in the paper. The guy on the phone asked if I could come in this morning to get it taken. I said, "Absotively posilutely".

I went to their offices this morning and their photographer came out to obtain me. We went upstairs to the newsroom and (you ain't gonna believe this shit) there were people using typewriters! Not only that, but their phones were all rotary! What the fuck?! The only thing missing were all the guys wearing mustaches and women wearing flowery dresses. Talk about "I love the 70's"!

(Pic from "Zodiac". I'm looking forward to seeing it this weekend)

I'm just kidding. But wouldn't it have been wicked if their newsroom looked like it came right out of 30 years ago? That would've been "Twilight Zone" territory. The photog asked me if I wanted to go to a mirror before getting a pic taken. I said, "Yes" and headed for the men's room. It wasn't to make sure I looked alright (I knew I did :P). I went in there to practice smiling, you know, to make sure that my smile would look genuine (not fake). I tried for a couple minutes and finally came up with something decent. I was taken to the "portait studio". The lady told me to sit on a stool that was placed in the studio. She took a few test shots and then began with the real thing. I thought of all those movie tickets and for some reason, a smile came to my face. As she took the pictures, the photog said, "Nice...nice...that's great." (I'm sure she says that to everybody). After that, I was debriefed by the Lifestyle editor of the newspaper and was free to go on my way. My pic is scheduled to be in tomorrow's paper. Needless to say, my life will never be the same.