From my perspective, the Oscars are very strange. I don’t allow myself many diversions. Music is a given, but I never watch movies during a period of time when I’m interested in sports. When I went to the movies every Friday night as a pre-teenybopper, I had almost no interest in sports other than the basics that needed to be known to be allowed to live in Massachusetts. Now I watch a lot of sports but have almost no interest in movies (I’m sure the fact that sports bars are more popular than adult beverage-serving movie theaters is at least a small factor in this shift).

I haven’t set foot inside a theater to watch a Hollywood film since sometime in 2004. It had been maybe three years since I’d seen my last movie before that. It has been over a decade since I last watched movies with any regularity. So almost everyone I see at the Oscars is Paris Hilton to me. I say this not to cast aspersions on their talent — I’m sure many of them are very talented and their movies are just fine. But I only know who they are because they are famous. To me, they are famous for being famous.

I am pretty certain I have watched a movie in which Brad Pitt starred at least once. I vaguely recall some film where he gets hit by a car in some dramatic fashion very early on. But that’s about all I could tell you. To me, Brad Pitt is Angelina Jolie’s boyfriend, Jennifer Aniston’s homewrecker, some guy who appears on magazine covers and gets chased around by camera-wielding paparazzi. I can identify him with no character and would have to strain to name a movie he’s been in that was released more than a year ago.

The only part of the Oscars that doesn’t seem completely bizarre to me is the “In Memoriam” montage. I’ve actually heard of all the dead people and watched their movies. But unless my tastes undergo another shift, I suppose in about ten years I won’t even care about that part.