And The Award Goes To...

Andy Warhol notwithstanding, we may not all get our 15 minutes of fame. Chances are we will get a trophy though. Whether you live in Calais, Maine, New Canaan, Connecticut, or Sheep Dip, South Dakota you’re going to win an award at some time in your life. And it’ll probably even be on television.

I know this because while I was scanning the T-V listings last week I found the notation that the “World Magic Awards” would be presented one night from 8 to 10 on “MyNetwork TV”. I mean no disrespect to the practitioners of prestidigitation but do we really need to broadcast their awards show?

Alright I guess the first argument is, if it’s on “MyNetwork TV” it’s probably still only seen by a small circle of family, friends and a few old classmates wondering whatever happened to the kid who wore the white tie and tails to school all the time. But this is really a symptom of a larger problem. As with most well intended nonsense it starts when we’re very young.

If you’re 5 or 6 years old it’s pretty neat to get a trophy for being on the t-ball team or for participating in Ms. Overbearing’s Dance Recital but by the time you hit 10 you probably know that you’re being patronized. If the kid who hit .600 and led your little league in everything and I got the same trophy I would have learned two things. First, the trophy doesn’t really mean much and second that the kid who hit .600 got screwed. He deserves more recognition than I got because he did more or did it so much better than I did that there should be some distinction for that.

But we all want recognition for something so the tendency is to slice the baloney so thin that everybody gets a piece...but it’s utterly worthless. So that’s bad enough but there’s something even worse. No matter how silly the award is, no matter how thinly we’ve sliced the baloney to give everybody a chance to win, somebody thinks it has to be televised.

“Live from Wilmington, Vermont it’s the first annual Small Market Tenor-Voiced New England Disc Jockeys Awards. Good evening and welcome to the White House Inn in Wilmington, Vermont where tonight we’ve gathered some of the most talented young to middle age non-descript announcers from communities all over New England who make as much in one night doing a club gig as they make in a week on the air. But they crave recognition and tonight at least one of them will get it.”

I will admit that there are a couple of awards shows that I do watch. I watch the Oscars every year because I’m generally interested in movies and because I hope each year that composer Thomas Newman, who is becoming the Susan Lucci of the Academy Awards, will get the trophy he’s deserved several times over. And my wife and I make an annual trip to Cooperstown, New York for the baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony. So I am not without responsibility for the proliferation of these things although I consider it a limited liability.

I don’t watch the Emmys because I don’t watch enough television to have a rooting interest. The Grammys were always just phony. In 1965 when the Beatles were at the height of their popularity the Grammy for best song went to Louis Armstrong for “Hello Dolly.” Great for Louie but totally out of touch with the reality of pop music. Although I’ve always found it amusing that for the first several years they handed out the same trophies year after year. They’d just go over to Henry Mancini’s house and borrow his from previous years and hand those to the winners so the winners would have something to accept. The Tonys, the Espys, The Golden Globes (unless Newman is nominated), the MTV awards, the Peoples Choice Awards, you name the award – I give it a miss.

But I think there may be room for one more award show to combine the best of them all. It’s the American Orgy of Self-Congratulation Award. “There are some people behind the scenes who I must thank. First my family, who provide encouragement, inspiration and punctuation. To my Darling Wife without whom there wouldn’t be a single comma in any of my writing, I Love You. Thank You, Thank You Thank You!”