Shorter = Mo’ Bettuh.

I’m pretty sure I’ve ranted about this before with that whole life story fitting into 42 seconds by Chris Milk but now there’s another short that just makes you want to feel like you chugged a tall glass of awesome (unlike film student movies which make you feel like you were drip fed a bottle of concentrated sick).

The winner of this year’s Mixtape short film contest is Luke Snellin and his short is ridiculously charming. Three characters, all well acted, clean shooting, and a simple story that anyone can relate to (more on that in a minute), and best of all, it’s short (by which I mean it’s only as long as it needs to be).

So everyone has made a mixtape in the past right? Well maybe not, now that I think about it. A lot of young whipper snappers out there are born well past the time of cassette tapes. They have grown into the age where kids start to love music in an era of burnable cd’s (or alleged-god forbid: ipod playlists). And how much less charming is that shit? Completely less charming, that’s how much. Chuck Klosterman has got some smart writing about how burnable cd’s ruined his mixtape making on one hand because if the girl he was making it for didn’t like a track, she could just hit skip and be to the next song, completely removing the punch from the message each song was supposed to deliver. On the other hand, it meant that he could burn the same cd for the girl on the east coast and the girl on the west coast and could do it in a lot less time and they would never find out (until he published that book at least).

I work with college kids every day and when I see them misserably fail at simple tasks such as filling out forms with whimsical details like “their names” and “today’s date” and stuff like that, it just makes me lose all kinds of hope for the future. But then something like that Mixtape film shows up and gives me a little glimmer of hope that some where out there, a young kid is listening to The Kinks and making a mixtape by hand, in real time for the girl next door, and she loves it, and she listens to it really loud and maybe they preserve some of the sensibilities of times gone by. I hope.

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This has got to be some of the coolest photography news in recent memory.

Why Antichrist was crazy good.

I could talk all day about the movie, let me tell you. But I won’t. That’s a 7,000 word essay for another day. I’m here to reminisce about why the movie going experience was so damn awesome for me.

The film was screening at IFS which means it’s going to be watched by a crowd of film students and film nerds, some of which are probably there for class credit. And I’m in the restroom before the movie starts when this crooked faced film student guy that, quite frankly, gives everyone the willies, stops to talk to me on his way out of the bathroom. The problem is that I’m still using the facilities, which is to say I was mid-piss. The conversation goes as follows (his lines are in italics):

-Hey man. You looking forward to this movie?

-Uh. Yeah. Sure am.

-I hear it’s intense.

-Yeah. I’ve uh, heard that too.

-Man. I just hope my girlfriend has sex with me after this. Like, at all.

-Okay. I hope so too? Good luck.

-Thanks man. Well, see you in there.

Now that wouldn’t be so weird I guess if he were just a normal guy. But he’s not. And by that I mean that he kept glancing down towards my junk while I’m trying to take a piss in peace. So that set the mood for the whole first part of the show, haunted by this general weirdness that I had somehow just been molested.

Then most of the movie goes pretty smoothly for me. Much of the audience is getting pretty grossed out by what’s happening on screen by about 2/3 of the way through the movie. I can’t blame them at all. Like the crooked weirdo prophesied, the movie was pretty intense. Then we get to the, how do I put this nicely… climax of the movie, the scene involving the much written about slow motion cliterectomy, and about 10-15 seconds later the kid behind me lets loose a thunderous kick to the back of my chair. Two things happened simultaneously at this moment: one, I shit my pants because it scared the hell out of me aided by the terrifying stuff on screen and two, I was sent into a slight bit of rage that some kid just took me out of the moment where I was really enjoying what the movie was building up to. I looked back to see what the fucking problem was and was greeted with the sight of a guy I recognized, his body stiff from head to toe, his foot shaking next to my arm rest, his eyes rolled back into his head, and maybe some puke down his shirt- I couldn’t really see all that well. The rage passed and I wasn’t sure if he had just passed out or was having a seizure or what. I sort of panicked and didn’t know if I should run for help but right as I was pondering that he seemed to come to and slowly and mechanically stumbled out the doors down his row. I spent the rest of the movie trying my damnedest to suppress my hysterical laughter and not ruin the film for any more people.

Say what you will about Von Trier, no other filmmaker is really making movies that make viewers pass the hell out… or issue pre-screening molestation in the restroom.

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EEEEE!!! PUPPIES!

Oh wow. Woo. Ick.

This afternoon I was sitting in a chair at a local barber shop and just getting myself a little trim so that I don’t look like quite such a hobo. There was another guy in the seat next to me, maybe a few years younger seemingly doing the same thing (though he needed more than a haircut, perhaps one of those tv show makeovers would be a good start). His haircut wraps up and when the guy cutting his hair takes off the little cape dealie that keeps all the hair clippings off your clothes, a big waft of rancid egg fart smell blasts everyone in the face.

We all kind of make the same “Oh jesus…” face and we all see each other make it. But you know, social contract and all, no one says anything. Nothing. The air just hangs thick with horrible, stinky silence. Nothing like “Oh wow. Woo. Ick. Hey kid, don’t take a dump in the barber’s chair, please.” This jerk just gets away with the perfect crime and goes about his day.

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Don’t know anything about it other than the fact that I like it a whoe helluvalot.

Kids love dinosaurs.

I loved dinosaurs when I was a kid, and I mean, who didn’t?

It was fascinating to me that the Brontosaurus was so big that it had two brains. One in the head and another was located in the butt. This was because it would take too long to send nerve signals to the hind part of its body from the head.

When I was 6 or 7 though I called that secondary butt-brain the “brainus” and thought it was really funny but I never told anyone about it because I felt like adults would judge me for that since it seemed kind of inappropriate somehow.

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I also thought that you spelled dandelion “dandy-lion” when I was young but at the time I had no idea that a dandy was sort of like an 19th century metrosexual guy. I just thought it meant “swell” or “hey neato!”… now this dandy-lion seems way funnier to me.

The good news is…

I don’t have cervical cancer! Hey, that’s swell.

When I went to a new doctor today (the first time I’ve been to a regular doctor since it was to see a pediatrician), I was handed a bunch of pamphlets on general health issues. It seemed like one of each that they had. I flipped through them and read a few as I was waiting to be seen by the doc. I was handed an interesting one called “The Pap Smear: And My Cervix” and I read it and reaffirmed my suspicion that I don’t really need one of those procedures and that my man-cervix seems to be doing just fine in its non-existence. When the doctor came in to check over me, she explained some stuff about their practice and asked if I had any questions. “Why yes I do. Am I correct in my assumption that My Cervix is probably doing alright?,” I asked as I held up that pamphlet. Her face flushed red and said, “Yeah, you’re probably doing alright there, did they give you that in the waiting room?” … “Yeah”… “Well. Hmmm. I read that you’re coughing a lot?”

And so went the rest of the exam. And then later x-rays of my chest would show that I do not have pneumonia or a cervix. So that’s good news- neither of those things that should not be present in my body showed up on my death-scan-pictures. I’ll live to die from some other ailment I suppose!

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Sometimes I miss Space Ghost CTC but I think if I watched them again now, I’d still just be sitting there thinking, “I’m never going to get high enough to understand this humor.”

And that’s probably a good thing for me.