4:05 AM somewhere in Los Angeles…
The last thing that I clearly remember is walking into a bar on Silver Lake Boulevard, and in a man-bites-dog scenario the bartender was trying to get my attention.
“Hey paparazzo,” he said, “I invented a new drink specially for you! You want to know what’s in it?”
“Five shots of vodka! Hahahahaha!”
This was supposed to be my last stop on the way to the Kodak Theatre, where Sandra Bullock would inevitably win Best Actress as the first female headliner of a movie grossing over $200 million, in her more or less irrelevant role as a University of Mississippi football booster so insanely gung-ho that she coincidentally adopts a huge, inarticulate, and unfriendly black teenager who is coincidentally a future All-American left tackle at Ole Miss.
This payoff for the relentlessly likeable Ms. Bullock would be followed as night follows day by Best Picture for “The Hurt Locker,” a passive-aggressive video game where Iraqi bombers mysteriously decline to blow up a bomb-squad honcho 800 times in a row, and nobody even wonders why!
It’s just those wacky Iraqis!
So now I’m at an after-after-after party with my new best friend, the inventive Silver Lake bartender.
“Hey paparzzo,” he says, “you want to know what I call your special drink?”
“The Oblivion Ha-Ha.”
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FYI The Oblivion Ha-Ha is the title of a book of poems published in 1970 by the brilliant American poet James Tate.
Drop a shot of 151 into a Bud with a float of (Happy Days!) root beer schnapps, and down she goes. Kaboom. Problema Americana fini.