Awards Season Withdrawal

Published 2/25/2013

Southern California may not be known for its inconsistencies in weather, but Hollywood most certainly has very clearly defined seasons. They all sort of overlap each other, but pilot season, awards season, sweeps,  and “beach weather” are all very real to us. As awards season has come to an end, I now find myself in the midst of a jarring post-Oscar slump, and I’m seriously considering substance abuse to fill the void that I’ve been facing since this morning.

I think the problem is that I’ve been living a bit above my station for the last few days and the sudden decrease in fabulousness is proving harmful to my emotional health. Because I’m one of the great many scarcely employed actresses in this city, I can accept all matter of gigs, which recently included delivering invites for Elton John’s Oscar party and “working” the party itself. Work in this case is relative, and most of it consisted of telling obscenely wealthy people where they could and could not go, and standing in platform pumps for 11 hours.

With my deliveries began the very depressing task of going to houses that could easily be mistaken for museums or English estates. It was seriously architecture porn, and if I hadn’t been driving a borrowed luxury car I might have driven off the road while straining my neck to see these veritable castles. I was also simultaneously depressed and elated as I tiptoed through the depths of one of the big three,  which incidentally had a great week in client stealing recently, and thought about how far I am from being on the radar of any of the super agents who are no doubt upset that they didn’t think of those staff meeting videos first. Le sigh.

In any case, by the time the actual event started, I had come to terms with the fact that I would be surrounded by people whose watches cost more than my car. Also, after attending the party last year and having spent another year as a jaded, seldom working actress, I thought that I had sufficiently trained myself not to gawk at the stars, but alas….

There were a few instances in which I had to restrain myself, like when I saw Aisha Tyler for example. It was really, really hard for me not to go up to her and yell “Lana… Lana… LANA! “ the way Duchess does on Archer. I also had to stop myself from attacking Armie Hammer. The man is beautiful- not hot, beautiful. He looks like he was carved out of stone. Despite those two moments of weakness, I spent most of my time watching ridiculously rich people get extremely wasted, which is always a treat, and I openly laughed in the face of a naïve Canadian who told me she was going to crash the Vanity Fair party when she left Elton’s. Yeah, good luck with that.

 I also learned some important things, like the fact that Analeigh Tipton is freakishly tall and ridiculously gorgeous , Jim Carrey literally looks as if he’s animated, Andrew Rannells is much thinner than he looks on TV, and the sideburns on that guy from the Vampire Diaries are real. Also, apparently it’s cool to wear fur again because I guess it’s the 80’s in New York? Someone forgot to tell me.

In any event, driving home in my own car and waking up in my own bed felt horribly dreary and I’m not entirely convinced that I won’t break out in hives.  A year is far too long to wait for awards season to come again, but luckily I can keep myself busy by watching horrible franchise installments and writing specs that people will pretend to read.

EVENING SCORECARD:

Venue: 5

Alcohol Situation: 5

Actual Beneficial Networking Achieved: 5

Personal Victory/Dignity Retained: 5

Atmosphere: 5

*Drag queens who demonstrated the correct way to dance to Disco Inferno: 1

*Times I was mistaken for Kelly Rowland: 2

*Intensity with which I wished I could hug Jennifer Lawrence for her win: 12

*How much I loved Charlize Theron’s hair: 10

*Oscar extras*