Watch Out Here I Come: Zoom Party 2009

I’m having the post break-up depression that comes full throttle when the Film Festival ends. I have nothing more to look forward to except the warmth of spring. Though I don’t think my body could have taken another day. I’m burnt out and I’m starting to feel the symptoms of something terrible, something I could only diagnose as a brain tumor in my head and bubonic plague everywhere else. I’m not certain though, I’m no doctor. I’m just a humble waiter with nothing to offer this world except fine cuisine.

Time to update my imaginary Postcard from Mars audience of the events of the Festival, which will be unraveled in a series of posts. We’ll start with the big Zoom Party thrown by Cinetic Media.

The reason why this party is our favorite event of the year….80’s dancing! Dear D.J.- The quickest way to get me on the dance floor acting ridiculous is to grab the most terribly cliché neon pink album from the 80’s. Thank you John Melloncamp for the good times. He makes it hurt so good.


I would do anything for love….but I won’t do that

I come from a land down under..

Two American kids growing up in the Heartland…

why can’t I find a woman like that…


You can Dance if you want to…we can leave your friends behind cuz your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance they aint no friends of mine.

Brooklyns Finest: Sundance Film Festival 2009

I don’t want to sound too star struck by saying it was kind of exciting being in the same movie theatre as Wesley Snipes, Don Cheadle, 50 Cent, Cuba Gooding Jr.,Russel Simmons, Spike Lee (who was wearing the most absurd fur baseball hat. I guess when your Spike Lee you do what you want.) and, of course, Antione Fugua, the director of Training Day and the movie we were about to see.

The theatre was filled with actors, directors, producers, the Sundance Institute, publicists, advertisers. At the very last second, after all the important people got in and the theatre was almost full, Mike used his charm to get a ticket from a female publicist for the movie Brooklyn’s Finest and I managed to score a ticket from a product advertiser. We were nobodies in a room full of somebody’s, trying our hardest not to stick out terribly.

Brooklyn’s Finest has taken a lot of criticism. However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get choked up watching it. It was dark and tragic. Ethan Hawke’s character was heartbreaking. And though I can identify some points of underdevelopment, especially with some characters, I’m still struck by what Antoine Fuqua said about the film afterwards “Like Rembrant we are all living our lives in light and dark.” This was another good cop bad cop story that explored the blurry line between black and white and that enormous gray area in which we all reside.

Taking it back to the Old School

Today was an extension of Christmas. I bought the Blitzen Trapper album on vinyl and white converse.



Anyone who knows me knows I’ve never been one for fashion. Being trendy for some strange reason embarrasses me (Note: I admire people who are fashionable and up-to-date with trends. I think this quirk shares its roots with the same quirk that prevents me from dancing "sexy" at clubs. I just get embarrassed okay?!) I don’t usually buy things for fashion sake, and if I bought these converse to be trendy I would surely be a day late and a dollar short, even I know that. What I'm trying to say is I bought these because Gabriel Macht looked so cool in his black converse in the movie The Spirit! It’s pitiful to admit but as soon as I saw them I thought “I want to look like the Spirit.”



This is the only picture I could find of The Spirits converse. Don’t ask me why in the infinite fountain of internet trash there isn’t one picture of his shoes. Did nobody else think that was the coolest part of the movie?

Who Watches the Watchmen?

As I have mentioned before Zack Znyder is directing the movie screenplay of one of my favorite graphic novels The Watchmen. I’ve been waiting for almost a year for this movie, whose release date was supposed to be 3-6-09. However, there have been some complications in one of the most anticipated comic book movies ever made. There is some disagreement between Fox who bought the rights to the movie back in the late 80’s and Warner Brothers who just spent a lot of money filming and advertising for the movie and its release in March. Read more. I would be one disappointed child if the movie doesn’t ever make it to the big screen.



The Watchmen is so incredible because it asks all the questions super hero stories should ask. It’s the reality of the super hero genre. What would super heroes look like in the real world? What should the world look like with super heroes? And of course what in reality would the world look like with super heroes? Who watches our superheroes? Who watches America? Where are we headed? SO COOL!!

Homage to 2008

2008 wasn’t really full of all the accomplishments I had expected back with naivety in 2007. But that’s the beauty of life. It’s not scripted. Happiness and accomplishment are self-defined. We create our own paths and we write our own endings. And I imagine my path or my book will be marked with all the peculiarities that could only define me.

If I could write a brief synopsis, of a potential chapter out of a series from my life under the section “2008” it might go something like this:

There I was 365 days ago, ringing in 2008 on a Boeing 757, accelerating through tropical rain, away from tropical places, toward snowy places and the new year. As the flight attendant counted down to midnight I had wished we were actually counting forward, flying backwards in space and backwards in time, that I was actually spending the rest of 2008 in Kauai. But we can only move forwards.

Memories flash like the flicker of the big screen. There I am. Thom Yorke, Ray LaMontagne, Robert Redford, Luke Wilson. There all there in my 2008 synopsis, I doubt I’m on theirs. Las Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Hollywood. The big screen flashes The Sundance Film Festival and I remember feeling like the center of the universe. 2008 gave birth to self-discovery. I discovered I love dancing funny. I discovered cheese is better than chocolate. I discovered Batman and that I am him.


(Thats my Bat mask.)