LET’S GET CRAZY AND GO TO THE ACADEMY AWARDS

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away. . . .

Actually, it wasn’t that long ago--just three years. And it wasn’t far away, just at the Music Center. Yes, there were stars. And they were only yards away. But it all seems so distant now.

That was the day I sat in the bleachers outside the Academy Awards.

Through 15 minutes of sunshine, six hours of cold winds and two hours of downpour, I warmed a hard and crowded wooden bench in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, waiting for the stars to come out.

Yes, it was crazy. But I never expected it to rank as one of the smartest things I’ve done. Still, I was surprised when it turned out to be one of the most foolish.

Let me explain:

I, too, used to be amazed at the fans--no, call them fan atics--in the stands every year on Academy Awards night. It is one thing to enjoy movies, I would muse, but quite another to spend tedious hours in waiting, just to be momentarily in the shadow of cinema celebrities. Where were their priorities, these stargazers?

But then I talked to someone who had once roosted in the bleachers at the Music Center on Oscar day, and he made it sound like fun, an offbeat adventure of sorts. No, nothing intellectually stimulating or socially relevant--just fun.

“Why not?” my husband and I rationalized as we took a day off work to indulge in this junk food for the senses.

We awoke on Oscar Monday to a weather forecast calling for rain, but the morning sky showed encouraging patches of blue. We’ll go, we decided, and if it starts raining heavily, we’ll just leave. We may be silly, we said, but we’re not stupid.

Well. . . .

We took raincoats and umbrellas--just in case there was a short cloudburst, we told ourselves; no use giving up our seats just for a few drops. But our precautions should have been the tip-off that we had overestimated our good sense.

Actually, most of that Monday’s events probably followed the normally bizarre Oscar-Day-in-the-stands pattern.

Some of the more fervent fans had brought felt markers and sheets of cardboard to tailor-make posters to wave at their favorite actors. One young man wearing a Joan Crawford T-shirt acted as a cheerleader, directing his band of giddy friends as they chanted bad-taste movie star jokes.

Whenever a television or newspaper reporter plowed through the stands looking for “color,” the more uninhibited star-starers clamored noisily to be interviewed, eager to capture a moment of fame, like the celebrities they had come to see. My husband and I turned up our collars. We were not one with the crazies; we were there more as observers than participants, we reminded ourselves.

About 3 p.m.--after nearly a full day of sitting under glowering skies--we felt the first raindrops. Then a torrent. Up went our umbrella; we were confident that the cloudburst would be brief. An hour later, rain was still bouncing off our neighbors’ umbrellas and onto our shoulders. We were soaked, but now there was only an hour left until the stars were to show up. And, besides, we asked ourselves, how much more miserable could we get?

It was our Vietnam: We had invested too much to pull out now.

Then--a light at the end of the tunnel. The rain dwindled to a drizzle, the limousines rolled up, the umbrellas came down. Squeals, squeaks and cheers erupted all around us. After nine hours of braving the elements, we were finally getting our payoff. We were able to see Debra Winger’s peek-a-boo gown and Edy Williams’ peek-a-boo everything. Gregory Peck, Diana Ross, Jane Fonda, Bette Midler, Meryl Streep, Bob Hope--a constellation--swept in front of us.

The stars’ parade was as brief as the letup in the rain--once again, the drops started coming down. But by now it was close to Oscar show time. We decided to skip seeing the latecomers and instead hurriedly headed for our car so we could watch the rest of the evening’s events on television in a warm, dry living room. Like sensible people.

And that’s where we’ll be viewing the Academy Awards this year, like sensible people. Even in dry weather, those seats would be too hard, the company too raucous, our time too valuable to go back to the bleachers for a second time.

I look back on that camp-out at the Music Center now with a mixture of embarrassment and sated curiosity, an experience I will never repeat. Still, it was amusing. It was memorable. I have no regrets.

Except one.

I missed Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton because we left early. Darn.