Watching entertainment news recently I saw where some actors were boycotting the Oscars coming up soon because of lack of diversity and that most of the academy were older, white males.?
I guess I have to acknowledge I am no longer in the know nor in the vanguard of what’s going on in the industry as I felt I once was. In fact, when the Critic’s Choice awards came on recently, I wound up turning the show off because I didn’t know the shows or entertainers being honored. In fact, the types of dance, songs and jokes being performed were not my cup of tea at all – hip hop, rap and snarky remarks just don’t make it for me. I’m much more likely to get into the Kennedy Center Honors with honorees being more of my era these days.?I guess it’s a concession to aging and not keeping up with the times. Because I don’t have premium cable stations, I don’t see the new- and talked-about shows that are on now. Even a half hour sitcom like Veep airs on Show Time and, I’d like to mention, we don’t subscribe to.
Herman and I have Dish Network here at the house because Time Warner Cable was getting ridiculously expensive. So right now I’ve been relying on the major networks – ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC.
I do enjoy the Hallmark station and I watch a lot of movies on that station – they’re pretty much feel-good movies. What I do is “tape” them (read DVR) at night and watch them the following day.
When I was pursuing my acting career, I was aware of all the popular and hit TV shows on all the networks, but that’s the environment I lived in back then.?I pretty much had to be familiar with the current shows that were on TV so I would be able to audition for them and so I would be familiar with the plot lines. But that was then and this is now.
My aide Heather and I, on the weekends when she works, tend to find good movies on LifeTime movie network as well as Hallmark.
Herman has been kind enough to record figure-skating competitions and those shows I tend to watch first before movies. This is something my mom and I used to watch together in my youth growing up in Cleveland. I still enjoy figure skating very much today. In fact this past weekend, I watched pairs competitions called Pair Ice Dancing.
The Oscars focus on serious dramas, whereas I enjoy slice of life stories about day-to-day living. I anxiously await the Academy Awards, Golden Globes Awards and People’s Choice awards all leading up the Oscars. I will let you know how I thought they were. I’ll be looking for the stuffy, white, male academy voters to see if they really do lean that way.
In the mean time, I have my Oscar, a cross between a miniature doberman pinscher and a decker rat terrier, named for the little golden man I never got a crack at achieving. I enclose a picture with my Oscar – a much warmer, loving Oscar than any golden statue.
Kathryn Spira, a native of Cleveland who pursued an acting career in New York City and Los Angeles, now pursues freelance writing from Caroga Lake in Fulton County. Previous columns and contact information may be accessed at her website www.kathrynskorner.com or follow her on Facebook under Kathryn Phillips-Spira.
