Later, when she was nommed for "Alice," she was appearing on Broadway in "Same Time, Next Year" (which would earn her a Tony later), but she still could've gone to the Oscars. Everyone expected her to attend and producers even gave her permission. However, she said that she didn't want to disappoint her Broadway fans. Really? So disappointing a far greater number of her other fans by not appearing at the podium as Oscar winner was a better choice? What rubbish! In "Lessons in Becoming Myself," she admits, "I must confess that this moral high ground was not so difficult for me to take because I have very ambivalent feelings about awards and award shows. Part of my character loves to put on a pretty dress and go out on the red carpet and shine my false smile for the cameras. But I don't consider that the best part of me or the deepest or most real. So when there's a choice I have to go with my better self."

By the way, she had a choice not to attend the Oscars in 2000 when she was nommed for "Requiem for a Dream," a role she initially turned down ("I thought it was too dreary, too hard") until her shrewd agent brought her to her senses (temporarily). But she attended the Academy Awards.

Mysteriously, her better self somehow changed its better mind. She even attended the National Board of Review that year and had a merry ole time. I could tell. I sat a few feet away from her at the next table. A few months later when she passed me on the red carpet at the Oscars, I could see that she was happy to be there and she says so in her memoirs.

"I even had a good time," she writes. "My favorite designer in San Francisco, Catherine Bacon, made a dress for me that I loved and I got to wear a Christian Dior diamond and gold necklace that was like a sunburst around my neck. I must say I looked just as I felt. It was as though in the 20 years since I'd attended this strange rite, I'd been cleansed, swept clean of my psychic demons, the cobwebs of guilt and shame had been vacuumed away and the walls of my inner room were flooded with light. I could walk down the red carpet knowing it was a return into the spotlight from the recesses of my travels in psychic spiritual darkness and I felt like light was able to shine through me. I had polished my mirror."

The mirror bit has something to do with God smiling through (don't ask) and is as nonsensical, inconsistent and ridiculous as her attitude about showbiz awards, which is really an outrage considering one revealing thing about this book. On the inside back flap is a seven-line description of Burstyn and her career. Half of the wordage has to do with showbiz awards: "She has been nominated six times for an Academy Award, and won the Best Actress Oscar in 1974 for 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore,' as well a Tony for her performance in 'Same Time, Next Year.'"

At least she had the good sense this year not to attend the Emmys. She didn't need a psychic nutritionist to tell her she'd lose for a role that would've turned out to be shorter than her acceptance speech.

I wouldn't mind if she chose not to attend the Oscars or Emmys for a real, specific reason and then embraced that view consistently, but she flips and flops and tries to sell us old, stinking baloney and expects us to be dumb enough, or star-struck enough, to swallow it. Then she upchucks all that and decides to attend a showbiz award and suddenly appreciates its value. Jeeeeeeeeeez!