Robert Randolph and the 86th Academy Awards Show

This will be the first night in many decades that I will have to view the 86th Academy Awards show on some other day. The reason is that Robert Randolph and the Family Band is bringing funky soul tonight to the Crest Theatre in downtown Sacramento. Randolph is a guy who got his start in southern church music and was named about 10 years ago to the Rolling Stone’s list of 100 best guitar players ever. I just hope he doesn’t make us get up on stage and dance because I’ll be fighting the bedtime nod-off time. Hey, 9 PM, I want to go to sleep. I don’t care where I am.

Of course, the downside is I will get up tomorrow morning and read in the headlines who won the Oscars, and I won’t have watched the Academy Awards. I have decided that this is OK, worked through the rationalization. After all, it’s not like I don’t know who is in the running. It will be one of those movies, and one of those best actresses, and one of those best actors. And 12 Years a Slave, a favorite, with 9 nominations and which isn’t yet out on Netflix (darn), will probably steal the show with many Oscars. That movie, which I wish my husband would have agreed to see with me, has generated a lot of momentum and buzz.

My fingers are crossed for Bruce Dern in Nebraska.

Then I will get to watch at my leisure the very amusing Ellen DeGeneres and fast-forward through all of the commercials. I read in Parade today that one of DeGeneres’ favorite top 5 movies is Steven Martin’s and Carl Reiner’s The Jerk. What do you know! That’s one of my favorite all-time movies, too, primarily because it’s a movie that makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it. It never gets old. Unlike some of us.

Plus, that movie is responsible for the way I have long been filling out biographies about my background. Whenever a document directed me to write a little bit more about myself or share private information, I would write: I was born a poor black child.

I hope nobody thought that was racist and they got the reference. See, this is probably why I had to go into real estate in the 1970s and why nobody would hire me to do anything else. I make an excellent Sacramento real estate agent.