A new book called "The End of Time," a densely theoretical work by the physicist Julian Barbour, states that there is no such thing as time. That is absurd. Time not only exists, it has a spiral shape, a rotary motion and seasonal habits. Time grinds along like an auger through space — working the dark transparency as if it were a coal face. Time is metered, and marks its relentless passage by clicking off recurrent milestones.
These begin in the dead of winter with the Super Bowl.
Some weeks later, St. Patrick's Day arrives — confirming that the universe is made of beer suds and not, as some physicists have theorized, of string. Spring follows immediately, announcing itself by another milestone, the Academy Awards. What happens between last year and this year is... time. Last year was "Shakespeare in Love" and Whoopi Goldberg. This year was "American Beauty" and Billy Crystal. What happened between the "Shakespeare"-Whoopi show and the "Beauty"-Crystal show was one year.
Therefore, Barbour is wrong.
On the other hand: Is it possible, as a Barbourite might hypothesize, that the two Academy Award programs were one and the same event? Is it possible, in fact, that ALL Academy Award shows are, metaphysically speaking, one and the same event, and indistinguishable from one another?
How can they all be the same? After all, Whoopi wasn't funny last year, she was awful — coarse, crude, smirking. Billy this year almost could not help being better. And he really was better. It is an impossible format — the top banana always brought on as a sort of ritual sacrifice (though he may not know it), condemned to be slightly lame, no matter what. The best he can hope to do is get out alive. When I was a kid, I knew there was no difference between one year and the next, because Bob Hope made the same pseudo-wounded joke every year about watching everyone else get Oscars and not winning one himself. I could never figure out why anyone thought Hope was funny.
This year, the killjoy Wall Street Journal published the Academy Award winners in advance — having done a kind of exit poll of the members of the Academy. Another reason to hate the media. These were not exactly the Pentagon Papers. The Journal printed the awards in the wanton spirit of Gordon Gecko in the movie "Wall Street," who said he had wrecked a good company simply because it was wreckable. Next December 23, the Journal will publish an article beginning, "No, Virginia, there is no...."
The Journal was right about the major winners — about Michael Caine for Best Supporting Actor, Angelina Jolie for Best Supporting Actress, Hillary Swank as Best Actress and of course about "American Beauty" as Best Picture. The Journal got Best Actor wrong — the winner was Kevin Spacey in "American Beauty," not Denzel Washington in "The Hurricane."
The Journal's Visigothic investigative reporting did take some of the fun out of the show, but not much. The winners are not the point, really; it's the performance, the clothes, the people. Suddenly, there was Ray Charles, singing old Oscar songs. The women's dresses were mostly terrific, especially Salma Hayek's. Warren Beatty, aspiring politician, accepted the Thalberg Award and sounded weirdly like John McCain — a precise and husky understatement.
Some of one's enjoyment always bleeds away in the sheer duration of the Academy Award evening, in the relentless and grinding abundance of it, which is, if nothing else, irrefutable proof of the existence of time. I wonder if Julian Barbour, the physicist, sat through the whole thing.