How to Fix the Oscars®

Part I

When I woke up on Sunday morning, Citizen Jim was sitting Indian-style in my living room. As the coffeetable groaned under his weight, he just kept staring at me while I lay on the couch.

Mister Meme stayed alert in a crouch position, looking from Jim to me. He was ready to attack when I gave the word: "kill".

"Why are you here? Are you doing yoga?" I finally asked.

"It's about time you woke up! Jesus, it's 5:30 already and we've got work to do," he said. "And it's got nothing to do with YOGA!"

I'd only been asleep for two hours, so the last thing I wanted to do was wake up and deal with Jim first thing in the godforsaken morning.

"Come back at 8:00," I said before pulling the covers up over my head.

"That won't give us enough time! We've got to start RIGHT NOW!" Jim yelled, leaning forward and ripping the blanket off me. "Hey! That's my goddamn sweatshirt! Where'd you get that, you little thief?"

I reminded Jim that he'd just sent me a box full of cast-off clothes and that what I was wearing to sleep in had been among them.

"That's what you girls always say when I find out you've stolen my clothes. But I'll hafta kick your ass into next week about that later. Time is running out. If we fool around for even five more minutes, everything will be ruined! Now GET UP! And you need to call Mitchell and tell him to get his ass on the ball PRONTO!"

"Mitchell?"

"You have amnesia? Mitchell! Also known as the computer who wore wing-tips?" Citizen Jim said, moving his arm back in preparation for pimp-slapping me. "He needs to get his butt up here so he can help us."

I removed my arm-shield when I realized Jim was just scratching his shoulder blade. "Mitchell is in Mississippi! What do you need him for?" I asked. "And don't tell me you want him to try to get into your e-mail because you lost your password again! For the last time, it's 'scrotum123ouch'!"

I picked up a copy of Franz Kafka's Diaries that I'd been reading the night before and smacked Citizen Jim as hard as I could with it. You've never heard such howling and yowling in your life!

"What the fuck—what was that for?" he asked. "I think I'm bleeding from my ears, you heartless bitch!"

"Good!" I said, and got off the couch and went into the kitchen. Of course, Jim was following right behind me.

"Stimpy, come on, now. Don't be mad. This is important to me. You gotta help me," he whined. "You just relax and let me make you a cuppa tea while I tell you my plan."

I can't ever stay mad at Citizen Jim for more than two minutes. He could've offered me a poison pickle instead of a cup of tea, and I still wouldn't be able to stay mad at him. And don't think he doesn't know it.

When he finished telling me why he was there at such an ungodly hour, I blew another gasket!

"The Oscars® aren't tonight, you idiot! They're NEXT SUNDAY!" I screamed. "And anyway, even with Mitchell's help, there's no way we can fix it so there'll be a tie for Best Picture!"

Citizen Jim grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. "We've got to try! We've just got to. I don't want The Return of the King to lose, and you know—you KNOW, goddamn you!—how I feel about Lost in Translation."

Do I ever know how he feels about the movie Lost in Translation. When it was in the theater, he went to see it every weekend during its entire run. When it came out on DVD, he bought it and has watched it twice a day, every day, since then. And each time he watches it, he calls me sobbing into the phone and cries for hours, until I finally hang up on him.

I'd like to feed that damned Sofia Coppola a knuckle sandwich for making a movie that breaks Citizen Jim's heart every time I turn around.

"If you're my friend, you'll help me. And if you help me, I'll help you," he said. He put an arm around me, but he didn't try to punch me in the face. Of course, this immediately made me suspicious. "Think about it! If we hack into the Oscar® voting database, we could have that sea hag Laura Linney win an Academy Award—for Congo! That'd make you happy. We could make things up, even, and play a trick on Oliver Stone! We could probably get Edward Burns black-balled from the Academy FOR LIFE!"

Jim knows better than anyone how much I hate Oliver Stone and Edward Burns. It was just like him to be thinking of me, too, in relation to this highly illegal, crackpot scheme.

"Yeah, I guess it could be fun," I admitted.

"Hell yeah! And how would you like to win Best Adapted Screenplay for that yellow book you're always reading even though you hate it? That'd be worth a few reunions with girls who've dumped you, huh?"

"Oh, I would HATE THAT!" I said, clapping my hands and hugging Citizen Jim. "Let's do it! Let's call the Republican National Committee and see how we can fix the vote!"

"What? What about Mitchell?" Jim asked. "Mitchell's the man—he's the only real genius we know!"

"First of all, he'll probably tell us to fuck off because he's got morals. And second of all, if anyone knows about fixing an election, it's the Republicans. Now leave everything to me!" I said.

* * *

As I'd predicted, our friend Mitchell adamantly refused to use his computer skills for evil. Even if Jim wasn't, I was prepared for that. But the greater blow came when the assholes at the Republican National Committee headquarters refused to help us because they'd read some of my anti-Bush columns in the Glenville Democrat/Pathfinder.

That left us little choice but to rely on Citizen Jim's plan to change Academy Award history. It was a plan so stupid I almost choked him.

He was aghast at my lack of faith in his powers of reasoning. "What? What's wrong with that idea? Who'll ever suspect that it's—"

"Even if that weren't the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say, we wouldn't even know where to send it," I argued.

"You always have to make things harder than they need to be," Citizen Jim said. "If you want to write a letter to Santa Claus, where do you send it?"

I glared at him, flaring my nostrils.

"Correct! The North Pole!" he said.

"Oh, bullshit. There's no such person and no such place!" I said.

Citizen Jim rolled his eyes at me. "Listen, sister, I know from experience that there is a Santa and that he does get those letters. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been opening up a Battleship™ game on Christmas morning in 1975. End of story. So if you want to write to the people who organize the Oscars®, where do you send it?"

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head without answering.

"That's exactly right! HOLLYWOOD!" Jim shouted. He pointed at the chair facing my computer monitor. "Now sit down and take a letter, Maria, so we can get this show on the road!"

At that point, I was willing to do anything to shut him up.

After we'd printed it out and he'd fondled his handiwork several times, he shoved it into an envelope and addressed it.

"Now you stick this in the mail tomorrow—send it PRIORITY! You got it?" he said, then grabbed the envelope away from me and scrawled across the back and the front:

PLEASE RUSH! VERY IMPORTANT! HURRY!

—————

Part II

"Listen, if you'd bite the bullet and get basic cable, we'd be sitting in your apartment," Citizen Jim said when I complained about the venue he'd chosen for us to watch the Oscars®.

I couldn't argue with that. But Citizen Jim has known for a long time that even with the hi-tech rabbit ears I purchased for $5 at Radio Shack, I only get a clear CBS, a fuzzy NBC and no ABC to speak of.

Our plans to fly out to Los Angeles on February 29 were ruined, and Citizen Jim was blaming me, of course. Never mind that he was the one who insisted on taking an empty can of pepper spray, a safety razor with no blade, a container of shaving cream and a snub-nosed plastic watergun on the plane with him. These, he reasoned, were all necessary for the "pranks" he hoped to pull while we were walking down the red carpet into the Kodak Theatre.

I argued that we'd never be able to get on the plane if he had these things on his person, but he swore he'd get through security.

"Stimpy, I'm a man of the world. I'm rich and I'm powerful. These guys at the security gate, they're getting paid seven dollars an hour and their wives beat them with rubber hoses when they come home five minutes late. Believe me, they don't care what I have in my carry-on."

After he'd been wrestled to the floor of the airport by three burly men and was being held at gunpoint by two more, Citizen Jim kept yelling, "It's her stuff, not mine! Take her, not me! I got a date tonight with Scarlett Johannsen! I'll sue!"

When they realized they were dealing with a half-wit who posed no real threat, the security people only added Jim to a "No-Fly-Ever-Again-Even-If-We-Win-the-War-on-Terror" list and escorted us out of Pittsburgh International Airport.

I was so angry and embarrassed that I hadn't said a word during the whole ordeal.

"And if you'd just kept your trap shut, we'd be on our way to LAX instead of sitting here in this titty bar like we are right now," he went on.

Every time one of the Good 'N Plenty performers approached, gyrating wildly and asking if we wanted a lap dance, I said, "No, but you're pretty as a picture and I thank you for asking."

Jim finally cocked a thumb at me, saying, "Don't let her fool you, ladies. She'd jump your bones in a minute if she wasn't so mad at me tonight."

Every time I tried to hold Jim's hand to make the strippers think I'd been pulled onto their turf against my will, Jim would pull away and say, "Don't try and make me your boyfriend now!"

After he had a couple of Mint Juleps in his system, Jim said, "I knew you'd ruin Oscar® night for me somehow. You just better hope the Academy Award people got that letter, or I'm gonna pound your face in so bad you're gonna hafta start combing your hair with your back to the mirror!"

Secretly, I was just as anxious as Jim to see if our letter had reached its intended recipients. If nothing else, it would make good fodder for jokes throughout the show. And God knew with Billy Crystal as the host, it wasn't going to be very funny otherwise.

While the Good 'N Plenty showgirls circled me like sharks around a SCUBA diver with a papercut, I daydreamed about getting a job writing for the Academy; as I dug deeper into the fantasy, I began cursing myself for not punching up our memo before Jim sealed the envelope in which it was sent.

"Oh, boy! I can't wait to see the looks on their faces when they read the names off our list!" Jim said for the thousandth time, cackling like a maniac and rubbing his hands together. "Oh, I wish I could be a little mouse inside Johnny Depp's jock strap tonight!"

Thankfully, this snapped me back to reality and I once again wanted to murder Jim for getting me involved in this bitchcake madness.

In spite of (or maybe because of) his glee, Jim seemed totally unconcerned with the fact that the manager of the bar wouldn't let us turn on the Oscars®. Even when Jim threw down $500 and challenged each patron to bet twice this amount that he couldn't predict every Academy Award winner of the evening, the only people who paid us any attention were the shimmying and shaking girls who seemed unable to take "No ma'am! NO MA'AM!" for an answer. Though I refused to buy them anything stronger than Coca Cola, they still didn't seem interested in hustling drinks from the increasingly pouty men who surrounded Jim and me on all sides.

Finally, grimacing at the young ladies who were hanging off each of my shoulders and standing behind me blowing into my ears, the club manager relented and turned on the show. I could only sigh and blow my bangs up out of my face while one of the strippers was biting at my earlobe: the credits were rolling up the screen.

By that time, Citizen Jim was so drunk he'd fallen onto the floor and, though his eyes were half-open, he was snoring loudly. In his left hand, he clutched a copy of the revised Oscar® Winners list we'd sent to Hollywood.

It was cinematically heartbreaking to realize that Jim's most fervent desires had come to nothing more than this crumpled piece of paper. Wrinkled and smudged by palm-sweat, made soggy with tears and spilled beer, it was the saddest thing I'd ever seen.

I finally gave in and let the Good 'N Plenty girls pay me a couple dollars apiece for their chance to perform the lap dances they'd been offering all evening. And when I dragged Citizen Jim from the bar—by his feet, trying not to bump his head too badly on the concrete once we got outside—I knew the weight of his bloated body could never be greater than the weight of his broken dreams.