Heading back to NY

Monday morning 10:30 pacific time.  Waiting at gate 46a, 

hungry for lunch but everyone still on the breakfast shift.  

Finally grabbed a lousy salad to go from Chilies.

Feeling a little guilty for  returning to the ladies empty
handed, too late for anything but the duty free shop--
better no gift than afterthoughts.

Good decision to visit the Wallings yesterday—connecting 

w/ friends in a distant city is the human thing to do.

Met some of their friends and neighbors and their kids while 

watching the Saints go marching to their victory.

The Annies: parting notes

I’m ate the age now where a little partying past 11pm involving 

a glass of wine, in a different time zone is going wallop me the 

next morning.    So I’m putting these words down at 7:30 am 

Sunday with a fair bit of slush in my head, as I couldn’t get to 

sleep until 3 or 4am.  I’m about to hit the gym to bootstrap myself 

back to functioning form, and see if Cogan is around here some-

where for breakfast.  I made an arrangement to visit the Wallings, 

who live over in Pasedina, and share some company.  Its also 

Superbowl Sunday, a much bigger show than the Annies.

Showtime

So its Saturday morning at the Intercontinental, same dank
rainy skies as yesterday.  No doubt a beneficiary of the time
shift, I feel pretty good for being up at 7 am.  Morning
agenda will be the gym after I finish writing this, then track
down Nick Cogan for some breakfast in the restaurant down-
stairs.   The hotel has free car service to locations within a mile
and a half, so at some point I'll have them take me to a CVS
for sundries (I've been fixated on getting hair gel on the off
chance it will make me look ten years younger).

Saturday morning view

Note regarding the tux: it was in fact, waiting for me here when I
arrived.  To have made arrangements in New York, five days
ago, for a tux (with my measurements) to appear in a hotel in
Culver City, and have it actually be there on time,  with no
mistakes in the logistical chain is, well, its a feeling of relief,
and maybe, power.  Until remembering its not power but
being fleeced for 125 bucks rental at a menswear chain plus
25 dollar messenger fee to the hotel.  Still, the all the links
worked.

Speaking of links, the shirt cuffs are turning out to not be visible
under the jacket sleeves.  Fleeced AND wearing a prom clown suit.

with co-director Nick Cogan

UCLA campus

Annie Award impressions.   

William Shatner took a bemused, ironic  air as host and provided 

plenty of impromptu moments of humor, most stemming from a 

small moment when he mispronounced John Leguzamo’s name 

when introducing him as a presenter.  Leguzamo did not let 

this go without getting back at Shatner, saying the mistake 

was understandable, nafter all “it was only my given name.”  After 

this Shatner (and even other presenters) were off to the races for the 

rest of the evening, referring back to this.  Shatner tried to be 

smarmily ingraciating, kissing up to Leguzamo about what a talented 

actor he was, why get bothered by a little mispronounciation.

Shattner kept the crowed amused with other remarks.  When the 

well know Indian actor Deep Roy, Who played the lead Oompa 

Loompa in Willy Wonka finished hosting the tribute to Tim Burton, 

Shartner quipped, “You know Deep Roy—well I’m Shallow Bill.”

The smarmily ingratiating host.

Another funny running gag concerned Shatner taking over hosting 

duties from long-time Host Jeff Kinney (the voice of SpongeBob).  

They showed a video of Shatner and Kinney doing a comically 

slow and stiff fight scene shot in some scrub desert locale, 

over dubbed with the audio from the well-known Star Trek 

episode where Kirk fights a lumbering bipedal lizard called 

a Gorn.  Later, there was another brilliant video created for the 

show which had Spongebob and Patrick trying to escape to the 

surface in a rocket, with Sharter doing the voice of Spongebob—

no falsetto or anything, just Shatner.  Funny stuff, only to be 

topped by the inevitable answer to this clip, a re-dubbing of an old

Star Trek show with Jeff Kinney’s Spongebob voice replacing 

Shatners.  It was appreciated that they had found a clip which has 

Kirk emit a chuckle, which of course came out instead as the 

Spongebob laugh.

Very interesting to see all the big names in the field take 

the stage, including Pete Docter, Eric Goldberg, Don Hahn, 

a slightly drunk June Foray soldiering on through her remarks 

(and mispronouncing her own name at one point, which 

would have a genius comedy moment, given the evening, had 

it been intentional),  a spookily nervous Bill Reeve, rambling 

on for five minutes as he recounted his life odyssey in computer 

graphics in minutia,  ignoring the producer’s music cues to
wind it up several times.
  

Jeffery Katzenburg took the stage to receive  the final of 

three Windsor McCay awards.   It was somewhat of a relief to 

see that Katzenberg and other top dogs were not above

Reading off of paper or prompter as they gave their speeches.   

For a different audience, maybe the Oscars,  perhaps he 

would have made the effort to appear extemporaneous,

But thats just the cynicism talking again.

Disappointment in all three flavors for Blue Sky—no Powell, 

no Leguzamo, and most self-interestedly, no Nutty Trade.  

Two random observeations.   When they show clips from 

nominated productions, there is almost always healthy 

applause, or at worstt a smattering.  NOTHING, crickets, for 

Nutty Trade.   Until I alone clapped loudly to pathetically fill

the void.   The other thing is that I had resigned myself to 

stay in the audience, bereft of a moment of glory on the 

stage should we have won, because of some rules sent

out by Asifa requesting just one person go up to represent 

for production awards.   Turns out everyone walked all over 

those rules, as every production award saw two, three or more 

people take the stage.  My blind faith in authority would have
foolishly trumped my need for vainglory.   The advice 

to anyone else who thinks they should be up on that stage is, get 

up there and say at least “thank you”, even if somebody else owns 

the main speech.

All in all, Nick had the most riding on a win, and seeing him in 

the hotel gym at 7:30 in the morning before the show only 

underscored for me he wanted to be ready for his moment.   

I couldn’t tell how disappointed he felt afterward.  They afterparty 

at Royce hall on the UCLA campus was insufferably crowded, 

and I huddled with Nick and Gail Harrison, the FOX VP of marketing

only for a short while.   Then Nick was off with his pal Pete, while 

Gail dropped me off back to the hotel, saving me the trouble of a 

cab, and showing me a little of the Beverly Hills and BelAire 

neighborhoods we passed. 

Off to LA for the Annie Awards

Car arrived prompltly at 930.   Driver friendly, professional 

demeanor.  Gregarious, and we banetered for much of the 

hour drive to JFK.  He’s originally from Jamaica,  has a wife 

and 27 yo kid in the Navy down in SC. --proud of him.  Had 

him when he was pretty much a kid himself.  “He was more 

like my little brother.”  The son is buying a condo for 160, and 

the old man is putting in 12,000 for the down payment.  Got 

talking about pets, cause he once drove a FOX animation creative 

to the airport with his six cats.   The dude loved his cats.   

“Takes all types to make the world go around.  In Jamaica, the 

dogs live outside the house.   They come to the door and look 

around, but they know their boundaries.”

He had other stories about driving folks from Bluesky around, 

most memorably the guy he picked up at his house in Mahopac, 

“Big guy,” who’s odor forced him to open the windows.  “I think 

he was a programming genius or an editor.  Didn’t dress well, wore

dirty jeans.”  You’d think somebody would tell him.  I asked hold 

old the guy was and the driver guesses middle age, “mid-thirties.”  

I really have no clue (nor want to find out), other than more than 

few collegues are from that area northern Westchester.   At one 

point I wonder whether this guy angling for a tip with the bonhomie, 

but I know I’m too much of a knee-jerk cynic when it comes to 

parsing human motives, so I settle for him just being a good guy.

Because of this, I feel I should offer thr gratuity when we pull up 

to the curb at the American terminal (almost spooky lack of traffic 

at 10am), and this leads to the obligatory social faux pax moment.   

Knowing n the past I’ve been informed not to tip the driver as 

gratuity has been pre-paid, I figure ten bucks would be a reasonable 

over-tip if this guy has in fact been pre paid (I have no clue what the 

deal is this time).  So, bags offloaded I hold out a twenty and say 

“Great ride, man” and ask for ten back.  Well, he can’t find a ten in 

his wallet, so I stand there awkwardly for a beat thinking “Don’t tip 

him a twenty, no way, its too much!”  The guy ends the impasse 

with “don’t worry, next time boss”.   Striding off into the terminal, 

I wonder when the next WTF moment that I am responsible for

will occur.

For now, I’m 38,000 feet over the mid section of the country, 

crammed in next to the mid-deck gally on a 767.   My ass hurts.

Then we're descending somewhere over the Nevada desert, ground
invisible under a rolling meringue landscape of cloud tops.
Soon enough, its time to plunge into the meringue and make
a wide, slow turn to land from the east, which air traffic control in
the wet and windy LA basin has deemed necessary.

To be banking and maneuvering through solid clouds for
anything longer than a few seconds has always made me un-
comfortable.  For my primitive id, there be monsters, mountains,
and other passenger jets here in this gray nothingness.  So I
examine each moment that passes during the fifteen minute descent
f0r some sense of bearing and relationship to the ground.

Then, from below, the gray void darkens and dissolves and there
is the storm dark ocean dotted with white caps.  So, a landing
from the east it is.

The limo driver who picks me up from LAX looks a bit like the
actor Luke Wilson, doing nothing to dispel the old saw that everyone's
an actor or writer out here, biding their time. The limo is beyond
clean,  it appears to gleam with cleanliness on a molecular level.
So the limo patter starts with observations about the differences
in appearance between New York and LA Towncars. Its ap-
parent to me during this trip, and again a week later in Miami,
that it really is more about a certain visual here--nobody wants
to experience old and ugly.   Back east, the grimy and grim
aspects of things are more taken for granted, maybe simply
because the weather gets bad and the bricks and mortar are
much older and crumbling and nobody can afford to keep
it all clean.

The limo patter--yes, I get the guy's story in broad strokes,
of growing up in the snows of Minnesota spinning the Jeep
around in the local ice rink for chuckles, the year in Sydney with
his girlfriend, and the philosophy the crept up on him from time
spent in other cultures that you should work to provide only
what you need--the simple daily joy of life in many places
can be had without spending much at all.

Soon he'll be heading to Bolivia to spend time with a girl from
La Paz--a lawyer for the government.  He says he may try
again to convince her to bring her skills and education to the
States, but the subtext of everything he's been sharing makes
me wonder if he knows that maybe she's getting too old for the
career upheaval that such a displacement would demand.  

What unfolds when even scratching the surface of people's lives.

The limo's at the hotel.

The dank Culver City vista.