So, I’m sure most of you saw or heard about the Academy Awards that were handed out in Hollywood last weekend. Big night, first big event since the end of the strike. Lots of glamour, celebrity, etc. For me, and I think for a lot of people, the highlight of the show was seeing Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova win “Best Song” for their beautiful tune, “Falling Slowly” from the wicked awesome flick, “Once.” We both absolutely loved this film when we saw it. If you haven’t yet, you should… soon.

The great part was seeing these two independent Irish musicians standing on stage in front of the biggest celebrities in the world. They were incredibly grateful and excited, and impressively articulate. And after the orchestra cut short their acceptance speech (Ironic, I thought), gracious host Jon Stewart went over their heads and brought Marketa back for a couple words. All class.

It really struck me how surreal that moment must have been for them. I mean, it was surreal enough for me watching it on TV. Two extremely talented, yet moderately successful singer-songwriters from Dublin, who made a super low budget film, and whose hopes were probably no larger than to just get the damn film into theatres. And before they know it, they are thrust into the Kodak theatre in LA infront of some of the most famous people in the world! Did they ever even have a thought in their mind that something like that may happen? It seems so far from where they started. I think it’s awesome. Sometimes things just line up, and then the next thing lines up, and before you know it, you’ve boarded a plane across the atlantic to accept an Oscar before flying back home to your one bedroom apartment in Dublin. It’s so surreal.

I’m sure the odds of something like that are one in a million. In a million tries, that happens once. But it happens. It must. The odds say it must. Even if just Once.