Oscar, Meet Oscar

Tonight is Oscar night, the annual event where celebrities come together for two hours of red carpet reveling and then spend the rest of the night honoring themselves, doing arm curls with those coveted golden statues. From talking about who’s wearing what to seeing who wins for each award, I do love the Academy Awards. I’m less invested this year because I found the quality of movies in 2009 to be far inferior than previous years. For me it was definitely a downer. The only thing I care about is not having to endure any speech by James Cameron, the “King of the World” in 1997 and a person who annoys me more than any other.

But it’s not really him, it’s his movie Avatar. The writing in that movie is atrocious. Everything out of Sigourney Weaver’s mouth was embarrassingly bad. But that’s the last of my Oscar night commentary. Now on to an Oscar who definitely knew how to write, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde. Yes, that one.

I’d love to know what the flamboyant even in his time Oscar Wilde would think of all of this. Wilde was quite a character and I wish he were alive to blog and tweet about the styles, hair and make-up of everyone involved on this opulent awards night. I spent a good half hour today thinking about him, and how I often traced his paths along the streets of Dublin when I lived there over a decade ago. Wilde would love the costumes, the elegance of Sandra (for some reason being called "Sandy") Bullock’s hair, the breast enhancing dress of Charlize Theron, the undeniable beauty of Dame Helen Mirren and he definitely would have done something with George Clooney’s overgrown mop of hair. 
(Addendum: If you want entertainment via the blogosphere, try the Cooler).

Oscar Wilde once wrote “Anybody can make history. Only great men can write it.” I sincerely hope some good writers win tonight and some good actors have their fun. Who better to give us our poem for the day, appropriately with a golden title.

In The Gold Room-- A Harmony
by Oscar Wilde

Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy,
Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale-leaves listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze.

Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold
Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun
On the burnished disk of the marigold,
Or the sunflower turning to meet the sun
When the gloom of the dark blue night is done,
And the spear of the lily is aureoled.

And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine
Burned like the ruby fire set
In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,
Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,
Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet
With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.