Oscar Predictions

First of all, there may be some spoilers in here if you haven't yet seen the movies being discussed, so be forewarned. Second, I haven't bothered to read today's New York Times, or looked over my Twitter feeds. More importantly, I haven't seen all of the movies up for consideration, but, as with politics, I'm guessing it won't matter.

Here we go:

Best Picture: "Lincoln" is going to win, and probably should. This in spite of the fact that Stephen Spielberg directed it. The Academy, for reasons that aren't completely clear, has, in the past, had a problem with Spielberg—recall, among other lesser slights ("AI", "ET", the list goes on), the year 1999, when "Saving Private Ryan" got edged out by a late-surging "Shakespeare in Love"—but there is no surging outlier this year, at least not one I'm aware of, but we'll see. "Les Miserables" has its fans, but not enough of them. "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" are both very good (if not excellent), but of a similar piece: movies that are "based on actual events," actual events that happened in more or less the same part of the world, and star the CIA; neither Ben Affleck nor Kathryn Bigelow (who won a couple of years back, over her ex-husband, James Cameron, for "The Hurt Locker") got a nomination for Best Director; neither is going to win Best Picture. "Django Unchained," granted, deals with slavery, too, and may be the best Tarantino movie since "Pulp Fiction," but it is hardly a sibling/vote-dilutor to "Lincoln" and otherwise has too much Tarantino-ish, bug-eyed, nutcase violence in it, even for this country. "Silver Linings Playbook" is essentially a screwball comedy, one that is dramatically forced in parts, that doesn't cohere particularly well. In dealing with its purported theme of mental illness, it doesn't unnerve us, or stray too far from crowd-pleasing notions; nonetheless, it was a lot of  fun, and the performances, Cooper's ranking behind Lawrence's, Deniro's, and Jacki Weaver's, were superb. If there is a movie that stands a chance of beating out "Lincoln" in an upset, one that would demonstrate the Academy's new insistence on happy endings in these, our difficult times, it might be this one, but I wouldn't put money on it. "Amour" is reportedly excellent, and I'm actually coping fairly well with the fact that I haven't seen it yet; it is also up for Best Foreign Picture, and will probably take that category. "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Life of Pi" are both very good, I'm told, but they won't win. "Lincoln" is going to win.

Actor in a Leading Role: Daniel Day-Lewis. If you saw "Lincoln" you know why. Joaquin Phoenix, whom the Golden Globes forgot about, is the darkhorse in this category. But his unbelievable performance will almost certainly, again, get beat out by another: last time it was his Johnny Cash getting beat out by Philip Seymour Hoffman's "Capote." This time, however (unlike "Ring of Fire"), hardly anyone has seen "The Master," and of those who did, few knew what to make of it, since, among other aspects of its artistry, it doesn't play to popular themes in the way that, say, Silver Linings does. Anderson isn't as weird as Malick, but he's moving in that direction. I liked Denzel in "Flight," but it isn't a performance to knock out Day-Lewis's, or Phoenix's. Hugh Jackman and Bradley Cooper might get votes, but they mostly round out the field.

Actress in a Leading Role: Jennifer Lawrence, from "Silver Linings Playbook," following an incredible, completely different role in "A Winter's Tale." A remarkable actress. Everyone else in the category was arguably excellent, but all but Jessica Chastain were in movies that few saw, and Jessica Chastain wasn't as excellent (nor did she wiggle her ass as well) as Jennifer Lawrence was (did) in a movie that could have easily been a mess without her.

Actor in a Supporting Role: This is tougher, especially if you saw all the performances. I'm going with the obvious: Tommy Lee Jones. In a role more nuanced than meets the eye, or the ear (it isn't every actor who could carry off that kind of vaulted, period diction and make it both enjoyable and memorable to adults and 11-year-olds like mine. Alan Arkin was excellent counterpoint in a movie that might have otherwise been too serious for a larger audience, but has won recently, for a performance that had more meat. DeNiro and Hoffman, actors' actors, helped out their pictures considerably, but it is Christoph Waltz, if "Lincoln" doesn't sweep, who stands the best chance of upsetting in this category.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Hmmmmm ... I haven't seen Anne Hathaway in "Les Miserables" though I'm not sure the Academy wants to chance letting her up on stage to prattle on like she did at the Golden Globes. Nor have I seen Helen Hunt in "The Sessions" though I heard she looks pretty hot naked, for someone in her forties. Amy Adams should probably win for her excellent work alongside Phoenix and Hoffman, in "The Master," but I'm skeptical. Sally Field also did fine work as Mary Todd Lincoln. Jacki Weaver's nomination shows you that the Academy is paying attention more than you sometimes think. This is my long-shot pick: Jacki Weaver.

Animated Feature: I liked "Frankenweenie." Then again, I liked "Dark Shadows." Don't be surprised, however, if "Brave" wins.

Cinematography: "Lincoln," I'm guessing, based on the sweep model. "The Master" should have gotten a nomination in this category.

Costume Design: How about ... "Les Miserables."

Directing: "Lincoln," and Spielberg, unless the Academy wants to stick it to Spielberg a little (the ending, after the excellent surprise with Jones and the woman from Law & Order, featured a bit too much of that treacly quality many object to). "Amour," and Michael Haneke, could upset.

Documentary Feature: I'm going with the OTC/Clateman feature "Searching for Sugarman," the only one in the category I've seen. Don't have a clue about the rest.

Nor do I have a clue about Documentary Shorts ...

Film Editing: "Lincoln," as I've remarked, had too fat of a coda; Silver Linings has no business in the category ... oddly, I think either "Argo" or "Zero Dark Thirty" wins here. "Zero Dark Thirty."

Foreign Language Film: "Amour" (though I haven't seen any of the rest).

Makeup and Hairstyling: "Les Miserables" (particularly for Anne Hathaway's look).

Musical score and Original Song: I don't have a clue/Can't remember/Have never gotten over Celine Dion winning for that song in "Titanic"...

Shorts: No idea

Sound editing/mixing: "Zero Dark Thirty" ... in the former (I have never understood the difference between the two) and "Argo" in the latter.

Visual Effects: "Marvel's The Avengers."

Adapted Screenplay: "Argo." An imaginative, crisp, elementally balanced treatment of something that actually happened in a more boring, less dramatic way.

Original Screenplay: My only opportunity to vote for a movie that should have had more nominations: Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom."

Have a good night. Don't stay up too late!

Timeshare: The Epilogue

It's now been nearly a year since my mother and I have been timeshare owners. Some of you may remember the post of the letter I sent to Diamond Resorts last May, a relatively detailed and articulate rant composed at the urging of a group that I'd engaged to get me out of the arrangement, one that had gotten too expensive to justify. For those who haven't read the letter, it's informative, and germaine to what follows:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5814647557969361869#editor/target=post;postID=69679870050537002

As I said, the letter was written at the urging of a group that I had paid seven months earlier to help me get out of my timeshare arrangement. This after speaking with real estate lawyers, friends, the resort, after finding out that there was no secondary market at all for the ersatz "property." By this time I was fairly certain that the group I'd paid, that guaranteed me in writing they would get me out of this arrangement and with no consequence to my credit rating (this was the worry, the only one, really, and the one thing no one else I spoke with could give me any insight on), were in fact a bunch of low-grade scam artists. Nothing they promised me up front, before they got my money—something I never should have done, that YOU should NEVER DO: give anybody any money at all, up front, to help you with your timeshare problem—had in seven months time come to pass, and by now I was simply pestering them endlessly, seeing what new absurd, ineffectual advice they had for me now that I had finally gotten a letter of foreclosure from Diamond Resorts. I was curious how the final innings would play out. What was the scam? How did it work? How were they still in business, nice people, it seemed, with a solid BBB rating (like many other groups promising the same)?

It took me awhile, but I finally discovered the smoking gun. I got my answer, in fact, from Diamond Resorts, and only because I was now in the "foreclosure" process. As I note in the letter, linked above, I had on at least two documented occasions tried to give the property back to Diamond—two weeks of de facto oceanfront, currently going for around $40,000 a week if you were to buy on the resort, at one of their presentations—and they had refused, saying that at this time they were not accepting "voluntary surrenders."

So, rather than pay the latest "special assessment" of around $20,000, this on top of the yearly maintenance fees, which had gone parabolic in the last few years, I was letting them foreclose on me. This, I was told by the group ostensibly assisting me, was part of the process. Once that happened they would really get down to business with cease and desist letters, and all manner of other legal tactics that would put this huge corporation, Diamond Resorts, on the ropes, whereupon they would finally yell Uncle and let me off the hook, not ruin my credit. Despite my amused skepticism at this point, they insisted that all I had to do was be patient and have faith. And write this one letter ...

"Why should I write the letter?" I had said. "I'm paying you. For you supposed expertise. Why don't you write the letter and cc me a copy?"

Well, it turned out that, contrary to what I was told, it was important that Diamond didn't think they were dealing with professionals. Thus what this group did was serve as expert advisors.

"Hand-holders, you mean," I said. "$3000 per week hand-holders, is what you're saying."

"Just be patient. You'll see—"

About a month after I wrote the letter, I called the number to Diamond Resorts "foreclosure unit." There was no phone bank to navigate, no Wagner-esque vacation soundtrack in the background. Just a woman who picked up the phone and said hello. I told her who I was, explained my situation, then added that I hadn't called to yell and scream at her, but that frankly I was looking for clarification on what was coming next. How this thing would play out. I told her we had, unlike many, gotten many good years and memories out of our place in Kauai, and that from my point of view the arc of that storyline was simply coming to an end, due largely to the fees, but nonetheless. In addition, I said, "I'm fairly certain I'm being scammed by a group that is claiming they're going to get me out of this thing—"

At this point she sighed. "There are a lot of crooks out there. The one thing I tell everyone is: Don't give anyone any money—"

"Unfortunately," I said, "It's a little late for that."

She paused a moment and said, "Listen, since you're the first person today who hasn't yelled at me I'm going to tell you something. I'd tell anybody this if they just knew what to ask and didn't yell and rant about things I can't help, but here it is: We are not going to list you with any credit bureau. We don't do that. It costs money to list an individual with a credit bureau and frankly we foreclose on so many that it wouldn't make any sense. What will happen," she added, "is you'll get two more letters. One indicating the foreclosure is imminent, the last being the one saying it is done. And then you're done. There will be a record in the courthouse in Lihue, along with a pile of others, but unless you're planning to buy property in Hawaii, it's nothing that is going to follow you around. No one is going to be calling you, or your mother, on the phone, wanting their maintenance fees. These guys prey on people who worried about their credit being ruined, and frankly, my group encourages those worries so that the owners continue to pay their fees, but the truth is nothing is going onto your credit rating—"

So, there it was. I asked if she'd send me an email documenting what she'd told me. She did. I told my hand-holding helpers in Orlando what I'd just been told, and that I had it in writing, and along with emails from their group that were, frankly, pretty damning. The woman who was my "case manager" now insisted that I was mistaken, that being foreclosed on was actually a good thing. "It means you've been released!"

She actually said that in an email.

I shared all this with the owner, all that I had in writing, particularly from his sister, the one who had initially pitched me, the one I told, quite candidly, that I was not the sort of person who would simply throw up his hands and go away if this turned out to be a scam; I was a writer, someone far more desperate and resourceful and potentially crazy than that. I would turn this into a based-on-a-true-story thriller, with her as the sexy villain, if she fucked with me, I had told her, in a more friendly way.

I told the owner the same, now, that his sister would be the first one I came after if I didn't get every last cent of what I'd paid them seven months earlier returned to me, right soon.

Many who heard me tell this said that I'd be lucky if I saw any money at all, that these people are typically pretty thick-skinned. Certainly, if I got half, I should count my blessings. If I wanted to hire an attorney, I would want to go local, get some one good. It was against the law to threaten a call to the DA ... all this added up to about a $3,000.00 legal bill, if I decided to push forward. Oddly, it seemed to me, that was the fee, per week of timeshare ownership the group promised to get you out of, that the group charged. It would cost you as much to get your money back, and most who had problems didn't quite understand what was happening to them, what had happened. They were people who had bought into timeshare, after all. Many were old. I was told all this is more candid conversations with the owner, when times were better. It turned out he was the sort of guy that if you talked to him long enough, he just could help telling you things. I'm the perfect person for someone like that, to get someone like that to finally tell you something.

I told the owner after weeks of hemming and hawing and feigned outrage on his part that I was going on vacation with my family in a week, and if I didn't have a check in my mailbox when I returned, I was booking a flight to Orlando.

That weekend some nut shot up a theater in Aurora. And now ... perhaps ... some garrulous nut writer from Colorado was coming to Orlando. I have to think that worked in my favor. As I told him, there's nothing crazier and more dogged than a desperate writer who has just finished a novel concurrent with being scammed by timeshare crooks. Trust me, I said, that person is looking for meaning wherever he can find it, and if it happens to be in Orlando, researching his next unfolding book, so be it.

And God help him if the check didn't cash. That would be a Federal Offense, as he must certainly know.

I ended up getting all the money back. I never had to go to Orlando. All I had to do was be relentless, it turned out. Relentless, and just on the careful, prudent side of crazy.

Moral of the story: Don't buy a timeshare unless you have money to burn, and value ease of use over any hope of return. And if you do, and find yourself one day without money to burn, just do what Cary Grant suggested one should do when it just isn't any fun anymore: walk away.

Walking the Dog

As some of you may know, we have a new puppy. We got her shortly before Thanksgiving, just in time to make the holidays even more interesting than usual. Her name, the one on her passport, as well as on the chip the breeder embedded inside her somewhere (with instructions to eat socks, and then chase them with goose manure, apparently) is Lexi O'Hare Bueltel, though we just call her Lexi. Almost always. 

I held out for five years after our last dog, Melville, died, explaining over and over to my children that my nervous system felt besieged, that if I had to handle the slightest bit more calamity I would end up in a padded cell, curled in a ball, cracked up like Fitzgerald—there are many metaphors, and my children were quick to relay them to strangers now that I'd finally buckled and gotten us a puppy.

For instance, on the second day we had her we went to the place in Boulder where I get my coffee beans. It was a warm sunny day, more like early September than late November, and I told them, my boys, that we were going to learn how to pick up girls. I told them to sit at one of the tables with the new puppy and I would go in and pick up the beans and an espresso and a couple of hot chocolates and by the time I came back out we'd see how they'd done. By the time I returned, two young teachers who had the Thanksgiving break off and, presumably, were trying to sober up after a wild morning, had already sidled beside our table and were fussing with the puppy. They looked up, smiling. "Your children just told us that you're a writer, that you just finished a book, that you wouldn't get them a puppy until you finished your book which apparently took a long time and you're lucky you're not in a padded cell—"

"Though there's still time!" the other one added while Lexi chewed on her hand that was apparently numbed somewhat from all the shots of tequila they'd had earlier that day, since they were teachers and had the week off.

"Oh yes, they told us everything about you!"

"You see how it works?" I said to the boys. They agreed it was remarkable, if you were into picking up teachers. Could we take her home now, they wondered, and wait for her to pee on the carpet and for me to go FUCK!!! and pick her up and haul her outside, that whole routine?

The teachers, like everyone else, wanted to know if we were "crate training" her. In the five years that I had actively resisted my fate, this sort of training had become de rigueur: someone had discovered that dogs apparently love being in a crate as much as we humans love debt, devices, houses that are too big for us to manage without despairing, and a lot of other things you wouldn't necessarily imagine we'd love. Moreover, if you put the dog in a crate, one that was small enough, the dog wouldn't "make a mess" in her crate but rather would wake you two or three times in the middle of the night to take her outside in the snow so she could "do her business" there, once she got done sniffing around, after she (and neighbors, who were trying to sleep) got tired of hearing you noisily whisper for her to hurry up, to piss already, to take a goddamn shit if she had to!

"So you aren't crate training her, then?" they said, in chorus, as if I'd told them I had no intention of fixing my tom cat, cleaning up my dog's poop from the sidewalk, composting, recycling, going gluten-free ...

"No," I said, "why would I? I work at home. I don't like a cage, why would she?"

They frowned. I imagined them thinking, fearing, perhaps, that they might be right: "One day you'll look back and realize what a mistake you made, not crate-training. Dogs who are properly crate-trained don't eat gym socks, nor do they indulge overly in goose manure. That and your nice oak floor will be curled up like dirty, filthy elephant tusks—"

Whereas if I had just done what the book said, adhered to the program ...

"Are you absolutely sure she ate a sock?" our vet's receptionist asked one day in January, not long ago.

"My son said she just pulled it from his hand and swallowed it."

"Just now?"

"No, yesterday. Yesterday morning. Right before school."

"Why didn't you call yesterday morning?"

"Because I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe it."

It was true. I couldn't believe it. Even with an eye-witness. My son who had no reason to lie ...

Then, a week later, the sock emerged, soiled from the ride through her GI tract—it looked like something you'd find in an alley, in the garbage of a shoeshiner. Three weeks later there was another one. No one had seen her eat this one. Then, on Super Bowl Sunday, Donna—a registered nurse trained to spot things like this, who hardly ever makes anything up—saw her, Lexi, eat a sock. Saw it with her own eyes and immediately got on the phone. The vet had said that if you can catch them eating it and get them in within a half-hour, they can give them something to make them throw up. So you don't have to do an x-ray, surgery, watch them die, your dog that you paid a crazy amount of money for, dead after swallowing a sock ...

So that's what we did. We took her in. I did. While Donna made guacamole and got the stuff out for martinis. Ten minutes after I arrived at the vet emergency room—$163.00 later—the vet tech came out with a slightly staggering Lexi (they give them a morphine byproduct) and a baggie with a gooey gym sock inside.

On the way home she threw up two more. Gym socks. Along with a smattering of undigested food.

I'm not making this up. 

I came home, still in awe, in disbelief—three socks! not one but three fucking socks!!—and told the boys that if I found another sock laying on the floor I was going to take away their allowance for a week and in all likelihood completely lose it on them ...

They assured me they'd pick up their socks. Just as soon as I quit freaking out and cussing so much—

Fuck you! Pick up your fucking socks!!!

"We're just kidding. We'll pick up our socks. By the way, she's peeing on the floor—"

"Jeee-zusss—"

"Why don't you go write," one of my boys said to me then. "Go hide in your office and turn the fan on so we can let the puppy run all over the house and listen to Mommy unravel. She's even more fun than you. By the way, when's this new book you keep talking about going to be done? Is this one going to take ten years, too? Are we going to starve? Lose our cable?

I said no, it wouldn't take ten years.

"Five?"

I didn't think it would take five either. At least I hoped. "Why are you asking me?"

"Three?" he asked coyly, buttering his bagel.

"A thousand days," I finally answered, so he'd leave me alone and I could go write, and if nothing came, well, I could watch the Super Bowl; I could walk the dog. "I'll have it done in a thousand days ... if you just pick up your socks, and I'm able to sell the last book and execute a film option, and make millions and hire a butler, a governess, a wife for your mother and another one for me—"

"Awesome! Can we get a parrot then?"