What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

In the Academy Award nominations issue of Entertainment Weekly, did you notice the disparity in the pictures accompanying the Best Actor and Best Actress profiles? I mean that all of the men are buttoned up and covered and looking like they mean business while all of the women are wearing underwear or revealing outfits, showing lots of cleavage, looking like they mean sex. (And Meryl Streep, though fully clothed for her Best Supporting portrait, has a facial expression that looks post-orgasmic.) Way to go, Entertainment Weekly. And while we are on the subject of objectification, here is the order in which I would do the Best Actor nominees: 1. Michael Caine (seriously, I surprised even myself on that one); 2. (tie) Daniel Day-Lewis and Adrien Brody; 4. Nicolas Cage; 5. Jack Nicholson. I am interested that Amy, in the guestbook, has raised the issue of Ben vs. Casey Affleck, because this is something I have thought about myself from time to time, how different they are, how they barely even look related, what an excellent narrative it is of the one brother who wins an Oscar (don�t get me started on that one) and dates a media juggernaut and makes millions per role and, however incompetently, plays a superhero and gets an action figure made of him and the other brother, skinny, brooding, faintly unfocused and druggy looking in an appealing way, who may have hit a career apex as a teenager playing the young Robert Kennedy on TV, may be trying to reinvent himself as a screenwriter though the early reviews are not kind, and who worked on "Finding Forrester" as Gus Van Sant�s assistant and technical advisor � to which, not to get all Martin Bashir on you, there is at least a waft of lurid suggestiveness, don�t you think? Like, what kind of technical advising does Gus Van Sant need in a movie about a rough-hewn high-school kid with a crusty reclusive mentor? It is very unusual for someone to work on a film crew in both of those capacities simultaneously. The hidden indignities, the ugly burden of being Casey Affleck, I mean Casey-not-Ben, when it�s Ben whose unexpressive meaty face and beady eyes make him the unlikeliest of movie stars. Poor Casey was a few years too early to hop onto the Jake Gyllenhaal and Adrien Brody bandwagon of disaffected loner-stoner types, that�s all, and now he�s consigned to a lifetime in the shadow of mediocrity. Actually I think the better comic book would be one about the Affleck brothers, with Casey as the true ignoble hero laboring in obscurity while Ben went around buying Bentleys and getting his teeth buffed and accepting seven-digit checks. Maybe in the comic book, Ben would have sold his soul to the devil, which now that I think of it would also be the explanation for how Robin Williams got his Oscar for that ham-chewing handjob of a performance in "Good Will Hunting," and only Casey would know about the transaction. Maybe Casey could be a scholar of the classics who specialized in Epictetus! Maybe he and Jake and Adrien could recruit a fourth � any suggestions? � and be the Gen X Fantastic Four!

It is that kind of day so far. Also in Entertainment Weekly, I was disappointed to read Todd Haynes� sour-grapesing about his sole nomination for "Far From Heaven" being for the screenplay. I didn�t bring the magazine and their web site sucks so I can�t copy the quote out, but it was something about how traditionally this is the Academy�s way of recognizing the totality of a truly original work � as though he�s been reading their mail, as though he has the inside scoop that mainstream Hollywood finds him so much an auteur that they fear him. Shut up, Todd, you�re being a baby.

(I want to see "All The Real Girls." I want Michael Caine to win.)

Oh, and Steve set me up with some wire nuts (huh huh) and how-to instructions and now I get a few channels of the teevee, including ghostly Fox and all the other networks but the WB. So my Oscar party is theoretically on, and I will be working with Jerry in the next few weeks to put a plan together. I think we need to keep it on the hush-hush and be ready to say Oh dear but I don�t have cable anymore when people start calling to pester me for invitations who don�t want anything to do with me the other 364 nights of the year, telling me how much they�re looking forward to drinking their faces off on good bourbon and eating shrimp and chocolate torte and by the way is it OK if they�ve invited a few people from their office? Not anymore it isn�t, bitch. The OP is downsizing, becoming a lot less of an orgy of hostessing, and that is the final word on the subject.

What else? I shouldn�t write too much today because I have a lot to do. Next winter I am joining a gym, because during the short cold days I am simply not up to both having a boyfriend and maintaining any kind of a running regimen, and as the bod gets older and the fat cells start their inexorable expansion a few months of slacking becomes less and less an option. I feel like a loser but I gracefully admit defeat. It is good to know one�s limitations. I want to lose between seven and ten pounds by the time Naked Sunbathing Club starts, which I am guessing will be towards the middle or end of May. So no problem. Just let me polish off the giant box of brownies my sister sent me for Valentine�s Day � she would have been at the top of my list if the package had arrived before I posted the last entry � and I will get right on that. And, as I pointed out to Vanessa in e-mail, you must not interpret my resolution about the gym as my assuming that I am indeed going to have a boyfriend next winter. I�m not, and if you put a gun to my head and made me talk, I�d probably even tell you that any pipe dreams I might have had on the subject are crystallizing into reality, I am shape-shifting from Ben to Epictetan Casey; in a sense that doesn�t definitively have to do with Steve-in-particular I am stirring to the realization that there are so many ways in which a romance can end, definitively and sadly but also maturely and in a way that would not be my fault, that would be nobody�s fault. I think I may be becoming agnostic. I picture myself elsewhere, alone, and you know what? It is not so bad. I could be out of my hypothetical apartment and on that plane to Gainesville or Budapest within two weeks. So don�t cry for me, Argentina. I want not to have illusions. I want to contain the possibility of multiple outcomes. I want to be realistic, and I think I�m getting tough enough to where it�s in sight.

Next time I want to say something about the package I got last week. I was thinking about this over the weekend, why it bugged me like it did.

Oh, ha, and my weekend! Right. I�ll tell about that too. Now I have to go be productive.