Best Animated Short - 1974

Well, I've had quite an adventure since finishing my last review back on Thursday, August 30. The day after that, I finished my Infectious Disease rotation in Akron, OH and went on a detour to Atlanta, GA to watch a Braves game. You see, I had seen eight games at eight stadiums so far this year, and hadn't even seen a Rangers game yet, even though they are the closest team to me. I figure I'll probably watch a Rangers game by the end of the year. If I can just see another game on my way back from Ohio I'd have seen games at 1/3 of the Major League stadiums, which would be a mini ballpark tour. When I found out I get a Labor Day weekend, I immediately set off to look for home games that wouldn't deviate too much from the 18-hour drive.

In the end I found that the Cubs and Braves had home games on Saturday, September 1, and attending those games only adds 4 hours to my drive. Chicago is six hours away from Akron while Atlanta is 12 hours away. The Cubs game is at 1:05 while the Braves game is at 4:05. In the end I opted to visit Atlanta.

Best Animated Short - 1975

So in my last review I tried getting rid of the excess topics in my introductions, and I was able to streamline it quite well! Sure, I didn't talk about baseball as much as I would have liked, but at the same time I wasn't spending two to three hours on just the introduction alone. It's worked so well I'll keep limiting my discussions on the Oscar awards of a particular year. Yeah, I won't be getting to talk about the Big Red Machine and the legendary World Series they had with the underdog Boston Red Sox (which included the memorable Game 6 that ended with Carlton Fisk's home run, a moment that was referenced in the Best Picture nominated Good Will Hunting). Nor would I have the chance to talk about my classmate Brian Barkley, who actually pitched for the Red Sox in 1998. But you know what? I'm okay with that.

Best Animated Short - 1976

So I've been here fretting about the length of my introductions while blabbering about who I know that was born a certain year or the major current events in the world and in baseball from that particular year. It was up to my sister that told me a solution: why bother spending my time writing about those excess things? It's just a waste of time and space about stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with animated shorts in the first place, and she doesn't even bother reading them. At least the Oscars has some connection because it's, you know, the Oscars, but even she skims through that stuff.

So I'm going to follow her advice and not write anything about the Bicentennial, and not write anything about Chris Chambliss's triumphant home run that broke the hearts of the Kansas City Royals. And we'll see how it goes.

Best Animated Short - 1977

Hmm. I just realized a certain inherent flaw in my "Who was born in this year" game for these introductions. The fact is, I don't know very many people. I couldn't think of anybody that was born in 1977 that I knew until I cheated and looked up the birthday chart that I've been keeping for people in my med school class. (As it turns out four of my classmates were born in 1977. Actually two of them are no longer with us but with the class of 2014 instead. Such tragedy.) Also, the attending physician for my infectious disease rotation in Akron, OH was born in 1977. Still, I can't keep doing this, as the oldest person in my class was born in 1955, and there were 23 years of animated shorts that came before that.

One thing I can do, of course, is take somebody born in that particular year and talk about their life.