One advantage of having no readers is there is no such thing as instant accountability for my statements, no matter how wrong or wrong-headed they may be. Yesterday was a perfect example of this. Either I am way more attractive than I thought - a delusion I am certain my friends (heck, even my wife) will disavow me of - or else the species is a lot less attractive than I gave it credit for. I believe my numbers yesterday were skewed by exactly the kind of thing I warned about. My 80% figure came from observing females outside of my office. Said office, however, is located within spitting distance of the University of Toronto and the Ontario College of Art and Design, thus sending a disproportionate number of young ladies (and gentlemen) through our neighbourhood. In addition, we are near the courts and thus a lot of law firms are in the vicinity, with their recent secretarial school grads and baby lawyers. Finally, The Hospital for Sick Children spills out a large number of young moms (and dads) seeking victuals of the non-fast food variety. Add it all together and you get an excessive number of attractive people.

I may also have been guilty of just a bit too much generosity to my species. I mean, who wants to consider how horrible many of us look? Well, I was on the TTC on my way home and wondering about the validity of my 80%. It didn't take long to realize how wrong I was. The women on the train had me wondering if the figure might be more like 5% super attractive, 20% middling attractive and 75% unattractive. Trying to come up with an objective appraisal of the other men on the train didn't help the numbers. Then, getting off the train at Victoria Park station, they swung back up, unusual for this area. I can only assume the females in question were visiting.

So, where does this leave us? Sadly, I think the average attractive/unattractive breakdown is more like 50/45, with the top 5% still reserved for the really attractive. While this means more options for the lower group, my initial enthusiasm about the prospects of the middle group has been dampened. Since this group roughly corresponds with the middle class, this represents just another way in which we are getting screwed. I take solace only from the words of the comedian Gallagher, who thought that two ugly people dating was a great idea because it took both of them off the market. Of course, he also recognized the downside of a future crop of ugly people being generated. The lesson is that if you find someone whose company you enjoy and who seems to enjoy yours, and who is in your range of attractiveness, grab him or her and never let go. Because there are fewer opportunities than you think. That isn't deep, it's just common sense. Oh, and that fat guy with the mustard? His chances just got better. After all, for every loser there must be a winner, and it looks like this is his day.

I think it's safe to say that the world is made for people of average attractiveness. It's true that there are advantages to being super-attractive. For one, you would have the opportunity to have sex with a wide variety of people, without having to pay (or perhaps even being paid by others). Also, there are a wide range of careers available to you based to some degree or entirely on your looks - model, actor, receptionist, hooker, stripper, politician. Plus, I think, as a general rule, that the really attractive have a basic level of self-esteem that comes from knowing that the rest of the world wants to be like you.

The flipside of all that attractiveness, of course, are the insecurities that go with them. Fear of being judged for their looks, fear of losing their looks, fear that their mind will be undervalued, fear of predators who desire them, fear of being neglected by potential partners intimidated by their attractiveness, fear of the next pretty face to come along - that's a lot of fear. And, let's face it - a career based on looks has a very short shelf life. When's the last time you saw a 50-year-old stripper? Plus, all that natural self-esteem is undermined by the fears, leading to such contemporary wonders as anorexia and plastic surgery.

As for the unattractive, what is there to be said? They have their own unique set of concerns - fear of being unloved, fear of losing opportunities to more superficially appropriate competitors, fear of being judged for their lack of good looks. On top of this, society conditions them to feel less confident and sure of themselves, to feel less of a person than the slim or muscled wonder sitting next to them on the subway, thus fueling the diet, fitness and - yes - cosmetic surgery industries. Yet, despite this, we are as a society fatter and less attractive than ever.

Which leaves those in the middle. Attractive enough to reach crests of opportunity where their talents can be assessed and considered. Attractive enough to find an attractive partner while enjoying the attentions of other potential attractive partners. Attractive enough to have healthy self-esteem without the narcissism of the super-attractive and the self-loathing of the unattractive. The glorious middle.

I think most people fit in the middle group, maybe as much as 80% of the population. Try this experiment. Take a seat in a public area. Try not to stack the deck by positioning yourself outside of a modeling agency or Weight Watchers meeting place. Look at the members of the sex to which you are attracted who pass by. Assuming that you are in that 80%, I believe that you will have absolutely no interest in 15% of them and will be intimidated by 5%. But the other 80%, regardless of age, body type, fashion sense, personal hygiene, whatever, will be appealing to you in some way. I noticed this when I found my attention drawn by a ridiculous number of disparate women just in the short walk to and from a convenience store to buy a Sprite. Of course, one way of knowing if you are in the 5% will be if you try this and begin to wonder if you'll ever see anyone worthwhile. And if the fat guy with mustard on his shirt and an open fly looks good to you? Yep, you're in the 15%. But your choices are infinite. Try to draw some comfort from that.

* * * * *

Other than Crash, I only saw two movies in the past week. I'm not a film critic and blogging is hardly the proper forum for deep analysis of anything creative. Hence, from now on I will limit myself to capsule commentaries on my movie-viewing experience.

Donnie Darko - A twisting journey through the mind of a possibly schizophrenic teen, tracking his adventures in time travel with a man in a bunny costume. What's not to love about a movie that discusses the origins of Smurfette and the sexual habits of her male companions. Great performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone as his girlfriend, Mary McDonnell as his mother and, shockingly, Patrick Swayze as a sublimely creepy inspirational speaker/kiddie porn kingpin. Hysterically funny at times, terrifying at others, always entertaining and thought-provoking. I now eagerly await writer/director Richard Kelly's next film, Southland Tales, and its uninspiring cast of The Rock, Seann William Scott and Sarah Michelle Geller.

Rome, Open City - Classic Italian neorealism. A powerful tale from the end of World War II, as the decadence of the German conquerors and their Italian consorts compete with the independent spirit of the city's inhabitants. The subtitles were a little odd, with huge chunks of presumably non-essential dialogue neglected, and this detracted a bit from the experience. But still an excellent story well rendered for the screen.

The uproar over Crash's best picture win at the Oscars is so ridiculous that it begs for comment. I happened to watch Crash on Sunday afternoon in anticipation of the evening's festivities, and will repeat what I essentially said to my wife at dinner that evening. It is a good film with complex storytelling and realistic multi-faceted characters that builds to a strong climax. What keeps it from being a great film is a bit of heavy-handedness and an ending that goes on longer than Return of the King's. The performances are mostly excellent, in particular Terrence Howard but also Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, William Fitchner and - who guessed it? - Ludacris. The weak links for me were Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock, but even she has a scene that redeems her performance just a little by the end. While by no means perfect, it certainly is deserving of notice, and would be my pick over the only other nominated films that I saw (Brokeback Mountain and Good Night, and Good Luck).

So why the cries of disdain? The master of one apparently well-known awards database web site (awards.fennec.org) has vowed to shut down over what he/she calls "the worst Best Picture in history". (As an aside, I had never heard of this site before reading this proclamation in a newspaper article. It's a great site, and would be sorely missed if this vow is kept.) This is way too dramatic. After all, is it worse than Gladiator? How about Titanic? Or, dear God, Forrest Gump? Each of these (well, the first two, anyway) have much to recommend them, but were they the best film of their year? Were they even in the ten best? Gladiator was a mildly-received box office smash that somehow emerged as a candidate when the noms were announced and slipped into the winner's circle over the much more deserving Traffic and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Titanic won on the power of its technical achievement and box office majesty, but can anyone honestly admit being able to look at it in its entirety today? As for Forrest Gump, it's just one of those embarassments that the Academy sometimes succumbs to, never to be spoken of again in polite company.

Hell, let's take this further and mention some of the less-than-worthy films that have been nominated for best picture, like Jerry Maguire and Scent of a Woman. How about 1990, when Ghost and Awakenings managed to be nominated over such clearly superior fare as Reversal of Fortune, The Grifters, Avalon and Edward Scissorhands. And while we're discussing injustices, Martin Scorsese isn't the only director without an Oscar in that category. How about Hitchcock, Fellini, Truffaut, Godard, Ray, Renoir, etc., etc., etc. The Oscars have nothing to do with art. They are a beauty pageant, a pat on the back, a celebration. To the extent that they are about art, it is the opinions of a small group of people who live mostly in California that matter. In the collective opinion of this group, potentially limited to 20% of the membership plus one, Crash was a better movie than Brokeback Mountain. Are they wrong? You think so? Then start your own bloody awards.

I hadn't realized how much negative opinion there was about Crash until Tuesday past when I picked up the latest Premiere and noted how many really bad reviews it had received over the past year. This was a surprise, since my recollection was that it had a pretty good score on Metacritic (www.metacritic.com). A check back there shows a score of 69, which is generally favourable, although I recall it being more in the high 70s earlier in the year. I suspect the score came down when some critics who ignored it on initial release looked at it later in the year when it picked up momentum in the awards race and these folks did some Monday-morning quarterbacking by concluding that their predecessors were wrong. David Denby and Roger Ebert are two of the critics who raved about Crash, and those high-profile opinions may have helped develop the Hollywood consensus that led to Sunday's upset win. It's a film that spoke to the voting audience in a highly personal way, hitting them in the gut, and the seal of critical approval helped them shape an opinion that they might have been a little anxious about expressing. It's a good movie, and doesn't deserve all this negativity.

Now, weighing in with a classic crybaby attitude is David Cronenberg, which really disappointed me. For me, the best film of 2005 was Cronenberg's A History of Violence, which received scant attention from the Academy. Today, little David is in the paper, whining about being neglected, not just by Oscar but by his brothers in the Director's Guild. But the worst part is his comment that the use of Crash as the title of this movie was unethical because Cronenberg released a film by this name in 1996. In fact, Cronenberg claims to have said as much to Crash writer/director Paul Haggis. God, what incredible garbage this is. We aren't talking about Citizen Kane or Gone with the Wind here. Your film wasn't that good, Dave (although the sex scenes - and there were tons of them - were awesome, almost pornographic, only with famous faces), and your title isn't that distinctive. Take a look at IMDb and get back to me, Mr. Cronenberg. There have been at least nine other movies that have used Crash as a main or alternate title, including a feature from 1977. Sure, you used the title of the book you were adapting. But you don't own it. You would have a right to be pissed if Haggis had called his movie Videodrome or Scanners. But a nice generic word like "crash". David, you need to get a life.

The Oscars are fun (sometimes), and can be a pleasure if the films or artists you like win. But they reflect only the opinions of a few thousand people out of the six or so billion on the planet. They are neither right nor are they wrong. They simply are. To let that affect how much you enjoy movies is to cheat yourself, and not the Academy. The people who lost on Sunday will work again, making such great films as The Hulk, 1941, The Order and Death to Smoochy. And we will be richer for it, and ready to root for them on Oscar night 2007. As long as they don't include James Schamus and his ridiculous bowtie. That I can't abide.