No Red Carpet for Me

Is the red carpet at the Academy Awards huge like that kid says? Don’t ask me. It looks like I’ll never know. I should’ve known better than to buy a plane ticket to the 2023 Academy Awards so far in advance. You remember the Oscar I was almost assured of winning? Well, now that’s slipped out of my grasp.

I was cut from the movie. I didn’t even make it onto the cutting room floor. My scene was cut before filming even began. I was given some lame excuse about the restaurant my scene was to be filmed in was no longer available. I suspect it was the dastardly work of one of them jealous Hollyweird types like Matt Damon. He’s very paranoid about anyone else succeeding.

See what I mean? I wasted a whole week experimenting with make-up and mugging into the mirror to practice stealing the scene.

I know what you’re thinking. Fine. Take my wife’s side. Too much make-up.

Now, a normal person would continue on with their normal life and chalk up the lost Oscar as just a small inconsequential blip on their radar screen of life. Well, nobody’s going to pigeonhole me as normal. I’ve got a Zoom audition Sunday afternoon for a part as Family Member #2 in some other film. Never mind that I have no formal acting training or experience whatsoever. Wait, that’s wrong. I was Tree, Stage Right in my 4th grade class’s presentation of The Jungle Book.

If that doesn’t work out, the market research study work has recently been very good. I just finished a lawn & garden products study which paid really well along with a cremation study, which I really enjoyed. I was hoping the cremation study would reveal a new way to preserve cremains. Nope, just an expensive way to dump them somewhere. I really want to be stuffed, but I fear I will eventually be relegated to the garage. Then the kids will complain, “Mom, Dad’s in the way in the garage. We can’t get to the volleyball net and poles.” Then I’ll get moved to the attic, and they’ll “accidentally” leave me there when they move. The new owners will find me, pose me, and use me as an ottoman in the family room. Wouldn’t that be ironic? I once worked for a company called OTTO. I was once an actual OTTO man.

I guess it won’t matter what my family does with me. I’ll be in the afterlife. Oh, since you brought up the afterlife, did you know that I wrote an award-winning book of humorous short stories about the afterlife? Hmm?

I don’t want to make it sound like these market research studies are all cookies and cream. Wait, now that I think of it, the last taste test I did was literally all cookies, twelve of them. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but then I went to the airport after the taste test to pick-up my 13 year old daughter and burped up cookies from the taste test and farted out radishes from lunch the whole time. Despite that, I was still able to save a woman’s life. Yep, if not for me, she may be enjoying her afterlife right about now. Say, did I ever mention my award-winning book of short stories about the afterlife?