1994

Best Picture: schindler's list

It was a nutty-sounding idea...invite a bunch of friends over to watch the Academy Awards ceremony and place bets on who the winners would be...but enough people seemed amenable to the idea that we were able to kick off a tradition that's still alive 18 years later. I honestly don't recall who's at fault...I mean, who's responsible for creating the ballots for the first two years of our Oscar Pool. They're both rather...well, let's be kind and call them "inelegant".

I certainly remember the parties themselves from those first two years clearly enough. The Oscars were held on Monday night at the time, and our guests would come staggering in after having grabbed a quick dinner following an exhausting day of work, flop down in front of our tiny little TV set for 3 1/2+ hours of Oscar extravaganza, and then rouse themselves into leaving and getting back home to get a few hours' sleep before starting another day of work bright 'n' early the next day. To add another layer of strangeness to the evening, Gwen and I lived in a cramped little basement apartment in Ridley Park during those first two years, and without enough seating available for everyone we ended up with several of our guests sprawled out on the floor in front of the TV. Looking back on it, I'm sort of amazed that people came back for a second year of this. With everyone's filled-in Oscar ballots in hand, I would spend the entire evening seated on the floor in front of a blackboard, writing down and erasing everyone's score every few minutes as I did a running tally as each category was ticked off. Come to think of it, I'm rather amazed that I came back for a second year of this. But I'm glad that we all did.