'Bred Crumbs
06.28.02
A trip last night to the San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Film Festival yielded an unexpected, entertaining social experiment.
As always, there were long waits to get in. Our ticketholders' line went around a corner and into a long hallway, past a low-capacity men's restroom, by which we wound up parked. Given that the show in question was a collection of short films about gay men, demand for the room definitely exceeded supply. Even so, at least 20 people had entered and exited the restroom before it occurred to the guy in front of us, plopped down on the floor right in front of the door, that maybe he was in the way.
When two or three men were waiting for the restroom, their wait was understandably confused with the meandering movie line that crossed the doorway (see the illustration on the left), and almost everyone who needed the services made it all the way to the locked door before realizing others were waiting.
What was amusingly ridiculous was that, even when the bathroom line had grown long enough to veer clearly away from the movie line (as per the illustration at right), people still rushed past it, imagining or pretending it wasn't really there, sweeping in quickly through small gaps in the wall of people before everyone around (including Robbie and me, who became the de facto bathroom monitors) pointed out the line. In some cases, people would have to veer around the end of the line to be able to reach the door, and yet they'd blaze on ahead as if the line didn't exist. Of around 50 people who used the restroom while there was a line, only maybe two joined the end of the line without first trying the door. It was a new version of what I see on highways and sidewalks and in store aisles constantly; most people move about as if each is the only person around, despite considerable evidence to the contrary.
The films themselves were mostly pretty good. Robbie and I got worried early on, after the first three films were all short on narrative and long on narration, grimly intoned over blurry visuals. Two of them invoked AIDS, and two of them consisted mostly of non-original film clips. But then the fourth film burst forth with peppy music, clear, color, original images, and dialogue, and the show suddenly got much better. Of the nine movies shown, three are worth looking for in future possible festivals or video collections:
- daMNaged, an intriguingly vague but engaging story of obsession that is creepy and suspenseful enough to overcome its reliance on narration and the spelling of its title.
- Sexual Orientation, which masquerades as a video presentation, complete with ex-boyfriend testimonials, prepping us for a night of passion with an absurdedly self-assured date. Mui humorous.
- Breadcrumbs (love the title), in which the filmmaker points the camera at his lovably matter-of-fact elderly father while the two discuss the director's coming out. This was, surprisingly, the night's most revealing movie, reminding us that sometimes acceptance is there no matter what words are being said.
06.26.02
A profession that we are a nation "under God" is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation "under Jesus," a nation "under Vishnu," a nation "under Zeus," or a nation "under no god," because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion.
– Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, in today's federal appeals court ruling that the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional
Pretty clear logic, isn't it? And the government could put the whole matter to rest simply by taking two inappropriate words out of the Pledge. Wouldn't weaken it one bit as a statement of loyalty to the United States. Yet the outrage has already begun, and judges higher up the food chain will somehow find an excuse to overturn this dead-on-correct ruling lest the U.S. theocracy smite them. So it goes in a nation that supposedly has no official religion yet whose quasi-elected president is heedless enough to close a key speech about the future of Israel and the Palestianians with a quote from the Bible. Way to play to the audience, Dubya. Arggh.
But then, maybe Bush just wasn't thinking as clearly as he could, distracted as he was by the fact that after the speech he was going to sign a bill benefitting same-sex couples. That sort of thing can really rattle a right-wing robot.
06.25.02
MY 25 CENTS' WORTH UPDATE: This year's first state quarter, Tennessee's, has finally lollygagged its way through circulation and into my pocket. How does it stack up? See the verdict.
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Since Jack brought up the topic of details to which movies are inattentive, let me add one: binoculars. Many flicks try to show you what someone sees through binoculars; almost none of them gets it right. So Behind Enemy Lines may be as disposable as Owen Wilson's broken-nose good looks, but it got big points from me for having its stranded hero soldier look through binoculars and see an image framed not by the conventional, but impossible, horizonal pair of joined circles 
, but by a single circle 
. That's the way it really works, because your eyes work together, not separately. Don't believe me? Pick up a pair sometime. Of binoculars, I mean, not eyes.
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The upcoming Powerpuff Girls movie is rated PG "for non-stop frenetic animated action." Oh, MPAA, there's always something wrong with you!
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Confidential to a reader: It isn't stalking if you're imitating a popular, award-winning general-circulation magazine. See? Yes! Succumb to my powers of rationalization!
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