Kage Baker adored the Academy Awards. It’s a family tradition of glitz, giggles and snark. She never missed watching in her life – neither have I. And Billy Crystal is back, the best host since dear old Bob Hope!

I spent the day watching nominated films (because the Dead White Male Academy always picks at least two films of which no one has ever heard), and we’re down to the last hour. I can’t stand the Red Carpet crap; neither could Kage, the inane vapourings out there made her scream and throw things at the telly. We have the telly on with a special on the Marianas Trench, on the grounds that it too is a background of abyssal darkness …

But soon the second-string commentators will be gone, and the people who did the work and got the nominations – cast or crew, makes no difference; they’re all equally terrified – will be able to stop being polite to the avid press and just sit there in the dark and stress. Bad enough to have to wait to see if you are among The Chosen, worse when you have to smile and make cocktail chatter with morons armed with microphones.

We’re gonna eat takeout fried chicken and biscuits, because no one in our house cooks on Oscar Night! We can slaver and cringe at the gowns, and boo the occasional idiot, and argue with the decisions: what film is only getting technical awards? Who gets the Oscar just for not being dead yet? Why do they always seem to have the dance numbers choreographed by and/or for a zombie with muscle spasms?

We are all daughters of Hollywood, me and my sisters. Industry brats,  children of the Dream Factory. We boast that we’re are inured to the glamour, immune to tinsel.

Except for tonight. Tonight is magic.