Tradition!

(and now you have "Fiddler On The Roof" playing in your head)

I come from a family of few traditions. Oh sure - there's the traditional Ramos Fizz on Easter Sunday before service, Black Russians on Christmas Eve, Champagne if it is on sale ... hmmm, quite a few alcohol-based traditions there. *shrug* What can I say - my family of few traditions IS, after all, Irish.

There is one tradition that is just for my mother and I. Entertainment Awards Shows. The real ones, 'tho - not the "best same-sex kiss in worst teenage movie" ones. I'm talking Oscar and his gal-pal Emmy.

I used to see a LOT of movies when I was in my teens and twenties. It was good entertainment, it was fairly inexpensive at just $5.50 for the latest blockbuster, and it was something that I really enjoyed doing. I know a lot of folks go to the movies to escape or to avoid doing something else - but I really liked just being entertained for a few hours. NOW when ya' go, it's about a $40 payment, the multiplex has paper-thin walls so you get to hear all the other movies around you, parking is impossible and if you haven't seen the previous four movies that this one follow and haven't bothered to read the book, the interviews, aren't reading the tweets and haven't "friended" the movie crew, screw it - you'd never understand the plot here either.

My movie-going came to a trickle for a lot of years, when there was no one would could go to the movies with me. (This is what happens when everyone you're friends with starts having a family.) So my mother and I started going together. We'd typically see either the latest Harry Potter (which, in fairness, we HAD read) or something fun and weightless - aka "the chick flick". Plus - as a bonus to seeing the current releases, we'd have someone to root for during the Oscar broadcast.

Ahhhh the Oscars. We'd been watching it together for yeaaaars ... long before Joan Rivers' kid was broadcasting. We'd discuss the dresses, the dates, the teases, the bad sketches, the host - oh, and the winners and losers. It was great fun.

When the movie-going slowed down, the show to watch became the Emmys. It was easier to watch the Emmys and to root for people because you didn't have to remember back in March which God-awful movie Ben Affleck had been in. These folks on TV - on the shows we'd watch - came into our homes each week. If the series was REALLY good, I'd even have the DVDs of the seasons - so yeah, watching the Emmys worked really well.

Tonight I was startled to see something about "2010 Emmy Fashion" online. I guess it had escaped my attention that the broadcast was tonight. I've already called my folks once today so I don't want to bother them with a stupid call to say "hey Mom - Emmy's are tonight". But watching them together was what we did. And since last years ceremony was broadcast in mid-September, I guess this is the first year we really won't watch and comment to each other.

It's a tradition I will miss.

(I still can't believe that Johnny Galecki isn't nominated. Jim Parsons had BETTER win.)