It’s another trip! I’m in New York City this weekend. I came here to vote for the animated short films that will be nominated for the Academy Award next year. This is one of the great perks of being a member of the Academy.

Here’s what happens during one of these voting weekends: me and a couple dozen other members from New York and Canada converge on a state-of-the-art movie theatre in midtown Manhattan at 10 in the morning. Some of us arrive bleary-eyed with only 3 hours of sleep, because we have spent the previous night walking around the West Village looking for fried calamari (which we find at 3 in the morning at funky little bistro called Pastis). For the entire day, we watch thirty-seven short films that have been submitted to the Academy, and keep a scorecard where we rate the films. Then we leave, even more bleary-eyed. And full of great cheer.

I won’t say much more about this process, except to say that there was one short film which I’ve never seen before, that I gave a “10″ score to. I was so happy to do this that I think I underlined the “10″ twice.

Staying at my friend John Dilworth’s in the West Village. I met John at the 1996 Oscars; both of our short films had been nominated and both of us were the geeky, gawky and nervous ones there. John is the originator of one of the funniest films ever, the truly undefinable “Dirdy Birdy”: