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The Daily News

1 For about the eight-thousandth time, I watched the Academy Awards last night.

2 I have a tendency truly not to care.

3 I think it's the blue-collar guy in me. I believe that EVERYBODY deserves an award in their OWN lives just for waking up each morning and being unappreciated.

4 It was fun watching Jeff Bridges win, and then stumble through his lines of acceptance. There are always good moments. But for the most part, we have scripted stuff, unfunny lines, and a lot of schleppy stuff from Hollywood.

5 It is always a tough DN, because everybody wants an angle on all of this, but believe me, a little goes a long way.

6 To me, the lady who helps me each time I go into Walgreens should win an award for "Most Polite Clerk With Interestingly Amazing Concern About Everything I Buy." Nicest lady you could meet. Never an award, so far as I know.

7 Always with some sort of thing like, "Oh, I just LOVE Quaker Oats' bars! They're so wonderful!"

8 Hey, she doesn't have to do that.

9 So as always, I just wish to acknowledge all the everyday Joe's who come in each day to their jobs (if they HAVE jobs!) and always deliver. We ALL have people like that in our lives, so let's give THEM awards, instead of a bunch of people with inflated egos.

10 Sandra Bullock received the Best Actress and Worst Actress awards all in the same night. She actually delivered a somewhat fun speech, but then took it a bit further than it needed to go.

11 But really?

12 Let's thank the REAL people who work hard for us in our lives.

13 To ALL of you who really DO work to make things better, I give YOU my accolades, for what it's worth.

14 Moving on, Part the First: Well, we're on the road to getting grades done, which is always an interesting ordeal. It takes a ton to do, and is usually met with nothing short of absolutely nobody really caring at all.

15 And the award goes to...

16 I really think I'm hitting that groove in life where we start to roll our eyes at nearly everything.

17 Fortunately, I still love nearly everything, know absolutely NOTHING about The Hurt Locker, could care less, and continue to live life, and to love life.

18 And of course, not really to take any of it seriously.

19 I'm more interested right now in the correct way to open a banana, for example.

20 I think we've been down this road before, but my daughter Caitlin brought banana-opening to my attention earlier this year.

21 She asked me which end of the banana I tended to open: the part that hangs on the tree, or the other end.

22 Like most people, I answered, "Why, the part that hangs on the tree!"

23 Her response was that monkeys open the OTHER end.

24 Who knew? A monkey would know, but he sure as heck isn't going to tell you.

25 Who knows anyway?

26 Anyway, I just figure that's a pretty important issue, and if what K.T. says is right, it could revolutionize lunch for billions of caring people.

27 This moves me deeply.

28 Moving on, Part the Second: Does it ever strike you as remarkable the amount of Mondays in a year?

29 I assume there are 52, which really IS an extraordinary amount.

30 But that's 52 Sunday nights as well, when many people start getting nervous about the rest of the week.

31 Interesting cycle, life.

32 We make our meek adjustments, each and every day.

33 I am once more reminded of the great poem Chaplinesque by Hart Crane. It has been a major poem in my life since I first ran across it so long ago when I did my first Show at YB. It was called simply, Silents, and to this day remains one of my fondest memories.

34 And here is the poem that dovetailed with the Show:

Chaplinesque

Hart Crane

We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.