THE TWILIGHT ZONE : When the Stars Come Out at Night in California, That’ll Be the Day

Just what kind of party can the Academy Awards ever be when right here in Los Angeles--Oscar’s native time zone--the show is over before your average 8-year-old’s bedtime?

For the big finish, there stands Steven Spielberg, holding his double Oskars like golden barbells, and it’s still practically daylight outside. If he hurries, he can probably get the tux back to the rental shop for the one-day discount rate.

Oscar night is just one more instance of West Coast humiliation, of the bowing and scraping we do to Eastern Standard Time. The Greeks sent sacrificial virgins to the Minotaur. The U.S. government handed over protection money to the Barbary pirates. And we pay our colonial tribute by screwing up our body clocks.

Hollywood-- our Hollywood, the cynosure of the world, an industry that abandoned New York to come west--puts on its grandest fete at an hour that’s too early even for a first date.

Shed no tears for actors and actresses dragooned into sequins and black tie at 2 p.m. Shed them instead for hometown fans. As the curtains rise on Oscar, New York guys named Vinnie are already ensconced on the La-Z-Boy--while L.A. guys are struggling home from work on the Artesia Freeway.

All this to accommodate the East Coast and New York, a city that, if restricted to its own entertainment, would have to get by with Woody Allen, Stephen Sondheim and Howard Stern.

The jet/phone/fax/satellite age has mandated one national circadian rhythm: Manhattan’s. (Washington, D.C., is only along for the ride.) And just as the tiny island of England once ruled a fifth of the world, the tiny island of Manhattan tyrannizes us:

It makes California brokers rise just as rave parties are winding down so they can be at work in time to answer a Pavlovian bell that rings 3,000 miles away in the New York Stock Exchange.

It forces wee-small-hours stars such as Jay and Arsenio to tape their “late-night shows” on a matinee schedule.

It rousts West Coast notables and pundits at 3 a.m. to look fabulous or sound brilliant, live, for East Coast morning shows. (So obliging of us to have our big quake during New York morning drivetime.)

It puts nubby wool in the display windows of department stores in August, just as the weather here gets miserably hot. (If it’s sweater weather in New York, then by God it’s sweater weather everywhere.)

And would the U.S. Postal Service, which recently misidentified a Western rodeo star on a stamp, have committed such an error in the “Mafiosi of Long Island” commemorative series?

The last time I was in New York, everyone I met asked me what people in California thought about Amy and Joey. This was about two years ago, and I had never heard of Amy and Joey. (Would that that were still true.) The New Yorkers were flabbergasted that everyone on “The Coast”--a quaint term, like “the outback”--wasn’t enthralled by the cheesy couplings of a teen-ager in need of a curfew and an adult male in need of electrolysis. California crimes are so much more engrossing, and make far better TV movies.

About three decades ago, an enterprising reporter of my acquaintance asked Gov. Pat Brown, a third-generation Californian, whether the Golden State would ever overtake New York in national precedence. No, he said, not so long as the Big Apple had the time zone advantage.

Barring Fresno Mean Time, or the likelier possibility that the Earth’s magnetic poles will reverse sometime in the coming millenium, the sun will continue to rise in Eastern Standard Time. The only way to reverse Atlanti-centrism: Move Congress and Wall Street here.

May I see a show of hands? . . . I thought not.