Golden slumbers

Awards season is truly kicking off with the Golden Globes tonight. I like the Globes: you get movies and television and you get that slightly-off European sensibility and the stars get to drink. It's a good mix, pretty much guaranteed to be at least somewhat entertaining. That all said, I'm already exhausted by "Awards Season."

(A side note: it's kind of weird that we watch these, right? We certainly don't watch other industries give themselves prizes. But this is, like, news. We have parties around these shows.)

The problem with the awards season is that it just simply goes on way too long. Oscar nominations aren't even out and I'm already a bit tired of the whole thing. I can only imagine how the actual nominees feel. There's a few groups of nominees: the "of-course-they're-nominated", the group that rounds out the nominations but won't win, the surprise nominee group. Some categories are wide open, which at least makes it interesting, but a lot of the categories have the same group and the same winner. Maybe it might go back and forth between a couple of nominees, but the rest have to sit there, politely clapping and smiling, saying that it's an honor to just be nominated, but knowing that next weekend, it's another dress, another walk down that carpet, another interview that will be forgotten.

It's almost worst for the slamdunk winners. Last year, it was Mo'nique and Jeff Bridges and Christoph Waltz, having to go to every show and pretend that they weren't sure if they'd win or not. They had to be grateful and act a bit surprised and come with another speech that had to be more moving or funnier or deeper than the one they gave at the other ceremony. They had to be sure they didn't forget to thank someone and they had to wear things that wouldn't look awful when their picture was in the papers. And I'm sure there was that dreadful moment where they were just hoping that the big awards wouldn't be when that big upset occurred. "...and the Oscar goes to..." Hold your breath.

I will be watching tonight. I'll be hoping for some upsets and I'll be checking out the dresses. I'll hope for good speeches and interesting winners. But I'll be glad when the Oscars are over and the season is done.