That Time I Went To The Oscars

With the 91st Oscars happening this Sunday night, I want to share the story of how I went to the Academy Awards in 1988. Back when I was eighteen years old, I was the hundredth caller for a radio contest that was giving away movie premiere tickets. I was then put in a larger pool of entries to win a trip to Los Angeles and attend the Academy Awards. I’ve always been lucky in life to have opportunities that most others would only dream of. This was my first experience winning something as big as this, and it was especially exciting considering I was raised by a family of film buffs and lovers of everything movies.

Defragmenting Memory Lane

I’ve been playing video games since 1977. My first time was in Ryan and Brendon Babanzien’s wood-paneled basement of their Long Island childhood home. Our mothers have been best friends forever and we were forced to “go play” as our mothers drank endless coffees and smoked their Virginia Slim cigarettes while gossiping about the men in their lives. I didn’t mind because these kids had really cool toys – the “boy toys” that I rarely got to play with – being a girl and an only child. They had just gotten a PONG unit and we would play for hours. I was hooked on day one. Who knew virtual ping-pong could be so entertaining?

Too Good To be True

PLEASE NOTE: parts of this story were changed to protect the guilty and innocent.

Back in January 2014, I started talking to a guy I met on an online dating site. He was very good-looking, tall, worked as a chef, no kids, never married, early 40’s, highly intelligent, and charming. A real dreamboat. He studied an extremely difficult language at an ivy league school on a full athletic scholarship. He used to teach at a pristine private school, but his best friend opened a restaurant and he climbed on board with a “running the next restaurant in the near future” deal. He claimed to be very good with his culinary skills. A bonus. Conversations with him were effortless as we talked every night for two weeks. I could not wait to meet him and my nervous excitement was a bit on the high level for our first date. I haven’t felt that nervous for a date in a long time. Maybe my sub-conscious was telling me something, as I can be intuitive. In retrospect, there are a lot of “maybes” and “WHY DIDN’T I FUCKING SEE THATs” that run through my head, especially after I tell this story or when I think about it. At that time, nothing would prepare me for what happened. Never did I expect the outcome of this wonderfulness to end the way it did.

Porn Expo

I was only dating my (now ex) boyfriend a week when he asked me to go to a porn expo, Exxxotica. We were at a local diner and as we passed by the television, it blared the commercial for the expo. “We should go”, he said. “Wow”, I said. “Hanging with you and the possibility of meeting James Deen? I’m in!”