4 degrees from an Oscar!

Just how close are you to an Oscar?

As I was watching tonight's academy awards show I realized that I'm only 4 degrees from one!

Back up to a couple of years ago.....

I was chatting with a lady at church and we were discussing computers (she is a big computer whiz for her age 70+), Jean likes to talk (and talk and talk) so her story was taking all sorts of twist when it finally came around to her nephew "little Eddie" (what she called him) and his computer knowledge! "Little Eddie had worked with computers and video games for years and finally had gotten a job with Pixar. Actually, her words were, "oh, you know that company that makes all those kid movies, like Toy Story?" My ears perked up now but I was thinking that Little Eddie was probably pushing some mail cart around the Pixar offices. She chatted some more when she said that she and her husband had gone to see Toy Story 2 and waited and waited for the end credits to see Eddie's name. Well, it wasn't there and what a surprise that was to them. So now I'm thinking that little Eddie must have been a computer artist that worked on the movie. My interested was now peaked even more.

A couple of weeks later this same lady came back up to me and said she'd called her brother about why "little Eddie's" name wasn't in the ending credits of Toy Story 2, her brother informed her that Little Eddie's name was at the beginning of the film. Wow my interested was at the highest!

Just How Can this be?

As I sat through the rest of church I was absorbed with this conversation......I got to figuring this all out.... the 70ish lady at church is the youngest of many children, so her "little Eddie was probably not a teenager or a twenty something (like I'd pictured him), he was most likely a grown man older than I, and then I got to thinking of her maiden name (remember she likes to talk so I've heard it many, many times).......

CATMULL

Little Eddie is .......

Ed Catmull

and tonight he won another Oscar!

SO....

Me, Jean (lady at church), Little Eddie (as we call him here on the prairie), Oscar

that makes 4 .... you know me so that gives you 5

AND I'll have to tell you my Steven Spielberg connection someother time!