Passing of the Gold

I got a late start today.  I watched the Golden Globe awards last night.  Not that the ceremony was all that interesting enough to keep me awake until 3 a.m.  It’s just that I couldn’t sleep when it was all over.  I sat on the couch playing computer games on my Palm.  

All of these Hollywood award shows are just examples of the “popular kids” from high school congratulating each other for doing nothing particularly special and allowing the rest of us to look on.  

No that’s not why I couldn’t sleep.  

It’s the passing of the generations that disturbed my rest.  

Uncharacteristically, I actually saw the nominated performances of both Rachel Weisz and Shirley MacLaine this year.  Rachel, pregnant at the moment, and luminously beautiful, gave a good performance in The Constant Gardener but Shirley MacLaine, saddled with a turkey of a movie, In Her Shoes, was the best thing in her movie.

Shirley deserved to win, hands down!  She didn’t.

There were Candice Bergen and Burt Reynolds, the “It” girl and boy of my generation.  They were nominated, but passed over.  A noticeably botoxed Melanie Griffith, the daughter of my generation’s quintessential ice queen, Tippi Hedren, introduced her daughter, Tippi Hedren’s grandchild, the starlet assigned Miss Golden Globe for this year.  

It’s not possible!  Melanie Griffith?  Old enough to have a grown daughter?  Nah.  Yup.  

There was a Golden Globe tribute to Shelley Winters who just died this weekend.  The obituaries said she was in her mid-80s.  It can’t be but must’ve been over 20 years ago that the perpetually dieting but overly corpulent Shelley trilled on Johnny Carson’s couch about her passionate love trysts with William Holden and Burt Lancaster?

Each of them: dead as is Sandra Dee.  Sandra Dee, the ideal of my generation; died an alcoholic, anorexic recluse.  She’s only a couple of years older than me.  Hell, Troy Donahue, her Summer Place co-star has been dead for years.  

So that’s that kept me awake and left me with little energy to find these words.  All these memories of people I admired, aspired to be, and longed to know.  They were the familiar faces Golden Globes ceremonies I used to read about in movie magazines.  No one knows or cares about them anymore.  

Attempting to make peace with making room for the next generation, I still wonder how it happened without my noticing?  I’m still waiting to achieve my potential.  I’m still waiting for that big break that will give me a secure future.  Oh well.

Does this mean it’s all over for me?  I guess it does.  

It’s all yours Keira Knightly!