Airplane Confessional (SRQ to DCA via ATL, OMG) and O Hai Potomac!

Yesterday was a bit of a rush. My cab was a bit late getting to my house to pick me up for my 7:10 am flight and while I made it to the gate in plenty of time, I wasn’t early enough to take out my computer and get all introspective. This was after ten shifts in a row, including the night before where I had to clock out an hour earlier than I was scheduled because otherwise I would’ve gone into overtime and gosh darn it, we can’t have that.

People have strange things they want to read on the airplane. I was in the newsstand getting water and a woman comes in and asks the cashier, “Do you have the new issue of Garden and Gun?” She was completely serious and expecting an answer from the confused and surprised woman behind the register. I walked out giggling. Garden and Gun? Really?

I slept through most of the two flights to get to Alexandria, Virginia. Not a whole lot of time for deep thoughts outside of the fact that it takes an enormous leap of faith to not only get into a large aluminum tube that has jet fuel attached to it, but to also allow yourself to fall asleep while moving at some 200 mph surrounded by strangers, especially when, the closer one gets to Washington, D.C., the more the conversation around you turns to terrorism and health care. One woman alerted flight staff to a bag that was underneath the empty seat beside her. The stewardess patiently said, “It belongs to the person in the seat behind this one...” without a hint of the “duh” that she was probably feeling. Geez, lady, where’d you put your carry-on?

I’m in Virginia for an event that starts today, the FemaleShorts Film Festival which is being held at the Torpedo Factory. When I got to my hotel yesterday, I was told that my room wasn’t ready yet (to be fair, I was early) so I left my bags with the concierge and walked down to King Street to grab something to eat. I was trying to not look too much like a tourist as I took in the architecture of St. Asaph Street. I’m in Old Town so most of the houses in the area are registered as historic landmarks and have that classic American Colonial look to them. I turned left when I got to the St. Asaph / King Street intersection, which eventually took me to the Potomac River and the venue, the Torpedo Factory Art Gallery. I didn’t have my camera with me yesterday, but I will today and over the weekend so I can get some photos of my trip that aren’t strangely blue, like the photo of the river I took yesterday with my cell phone...

Anyway, I was too tired and too stinky after the trip to go anywhere fancy so I went to a divey little food court that’s attached to the art gallery and had a delicious chicken gyro (though it wasn’t as good as the gyro I had in New Orleans.) Afterwards, I decided to have a little ice cream and stopped at Pop’s, an Olde Fashioned Ice Cream Parlour on King Street and had a small cookies and cream. Yummy, but not omigod yummy. Today, or tomorrow depending on my schedule, I’ll try the place that was directly across from it, a homemade ice cream place.

Anyway, I got back to my hotel and got my room. No view and I’m on the mezzanine level which is, like, floor 1 1/2, and I have no view to speak of, but the venue is pretty much on the Potomac so I’ll have an awesome view every day. After I went to the grocery store across the street to get some water and a snack, I took a three hour nap, woke up in time to watch the new Mythbusters and the Mythbusters from two weeks ago that I missed, and then went to sleep until around 8 so I could get a big breakfast in preparation for the first day of the festival, which is today.

There are only 22 short films in the four day event, plus special presentations from local artists. All of the short films will be played every day, by the looks of it, but today being the first day, I should be there for the whole shebang. I’m wearing my Call of Cthulhu shirt (not the video game, the brilliant silent film from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society), this is traditional for me, now. I’ve worn this shirt on the day my film shows since Without/Within at ShockerFest in 2008. I can’t wear it all weekend, though, but this is the first day so it works. I’ve got my I Am Nancy pin on my bag, though...maybe that’ll be part of the tradition now.

I’m still pretty tired, but I’m not as exhausted as I have been over the past couple of weeks. I had a good night’s sleep and plan on sleeping well over the next few days, too, because as soon as I get back, it’s back to work. Oy.

Anyway, the festival starts soon and it’s a twenty minute walk to the venue from the hotel so I’d better get going. More to come later!

Airport Confessions - SRQ Airport (surprise, surprise)

Well, here I am, back in the airport again. It's peaceful right now. The muzak right now is pretty hippity-hoppity and funky, completely opposite of the travelers herein gathered. While this trip is for a film festival, this isn't any old festival. It's the Vampire Film Festival's first year back in New Orleans. How exciting! To be there on the ground floor of an established festival's return to the city of its birth!

My film isn't a vampire film. It's in Gothic Shorts Package 2, which plays either at 5:30 or 10:00 pm on Saturday, October 25. The events calendar on their website (http://www.vampirefilmfestival.com) says 10:00 pm, but the short films detail page says 5:30. I guess I'll find out for sure when I pick up my filmmaker package.

I'm also excited because I turn 31 on Monday, the 26. This is the first time I've ever been out of the state on my birthday. I won't be around my family or friends, but I hope to make a few new friends in New Orleans. The only problem I foresee is that I don't take the vampire subgenre very seriously. Not that it's not historically a rich and vibrant subgenre, but have you seen some of the crap people are putting out these days? (Twilight, I'm looking at you...) (Yes, mom, I know you like it, but sparkling vampires? Really?)

I'm not sure yet, but I was thinking about taking Monday away from the festival to tourist up the city for my birthday. I think there are some movies I want to see that day, though, so who knows. I've never been there before, who knows when I'm going to be able to get back and it's my birthday, that's the one hand. On the other, I am in town for the festival which is playing my movie. So, who knows. Regardless, I'm very excited! So much so that I just spelled “excited” wrong. Hee!

I thought I'd have a problem getting to sleep due to the anticipation, but that wasn't the problem. The problem came when our new upstairs neighbour decided that wearing super thick soled boots was a good idea at 4 am and also decided to walk right above my bed, which means he or she was on my roof because my room sticks out a bit from the rest of the house. Then I had a bit of trouble getting back to sleep. But I'm here! The time is near! Get used to it! Or something!

Airport Confessional -- SRQ International (part deux)

Well, I’m back in the airport again, this time heading to Washington state for a vacation. I think this is the same gate I left from for Cleveland (SRQ is small in spite of calling themselves an international airport.) I decided to eat a cold sandwich from the Wolfgang Puck line next to the airport lounge. Eight bucks for the flipping sandwich, a “turkey remoulade on cibatta.” Well, I don’t want to survive on airplane cookies and Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chewy bars all day - I’ve got 12 hours of travel ahead of me after all - so I paid for the bloody thing.



Mommy’s sammiches are so much better.

I’d like to chalk it up to it being an airport convenience, like the need to take off our shoes and separate our laptops from everything else we’re carrying onto the flight for the security checkpoint, but I have a feeling that if I were to go to a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, I’d find the same sandwich for $10 so, maybe I got a bargain. It wasn’t a bad sandwich, it just wasn’t good and certainly not worth eight dollars. The gum I bought afterwards was better than the sandwich.

~~~~~

I got about five hours of sleep. I had to work last night and it being a Thursday, which is the busiest night for projectionists as that’s when we break down and move prints in preparation for the new prints to open on Friday, I didn’t get home until two in the morning and didn’t get to sleep until three. Thankfully, the only excitement last night was a couple of random pieces of matching luggage that were left outside the emergency exit of one of the auditoriums. I went up to my boss, who was sitting in his office with someone from corporate, and said, “Hey, uh...you might want to know that there are two bags outside one of the emergency exits. Now, either it’s Her Royal Highness’ Matched Luggage, a body chopped up and split between two bags, or a bomb. Just so’s you know.”

He didn’t even giggle at the Spaceballs reference. There’s no hope for him. He also said that it was for the Jennifer’s Body promotion (which of course we’re not doing) and while I played along and said that I wish I’d known since I know people in the special effects field (the corporate person is the regional head of promotions so I might have gotten my FX friends some work in the long run), it just showed his colossal ignorance of what’s being shown in the theatre he “runs.” However, he’s not that different from the people running the company as far as knowing that people are actually there to watch a movie, not give us their money willy-nilly.

When my alarm went off at the unGodly hour of eight this morning, I was deep in REM sleep, dreaming something about a baby. Lord, and maybe Morpheus, knows what it was all about. Not my kid and swaddled all in red. And I kept thinking, “Man, if I knew you were going to be here, I would have gotten you a onesie from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as well!” (I got my friend’s baby a cute onesie that read “Future Rocker” in the AC/DC font. Watch the kid grow up to be an accountant.)

I’m still not quite awake. I probably won’t be awake until after one in the afternoon my time (Eastern.) From here, I go to Charlotte, North Carolina, to catch a plane to Phoenix, Arizona, and from Phoenix I go to Portland, Oregon. I was so tired this morning, I told my mom I’d never been to Charlotte. Charlotte-Douglas is the airport with the bathroom attendants and the tasty mints. Yeah, brain no workie at 8 am, but somehow I managed to remember to pack my cell phone charger. All other chargers I packed on Wednesday. No, I’m not excited or anything.

~~~~~

I was on the phone with my wireless carrier the other day and the operator, who so kindly helped me with my phone issues, asked me where I was calling from, just making conversation while we waited for technology to catch up with us.

“Sarasota,” I replied.

“What’s Sarasota known for?” he asked.

“The circus.”

“What?” Obviously, he wasn’t expecting that.

“John Ringling, of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, pretty much founded Sarasota. The Clown College was here until about ten years ago when it was forced to move to, I think Michigan, because the rich, white majority found it too unseemly.” I’m just assuming that last part, but I’ve lived here long enough that it’s most likely the truth.

“Oh,” said he. “Wow...”

“Yeah...” said me.

He went on. “I lived in Orlando for a while and always heard about Sarasota...” I figure that was a lie, but he’s paid to fix my phone and be friendly and all I’m spending is my time so whatever. I neglected to tell him that Walt Disney considered building Disney World in Sarasota, but the then-current city elders thought that was a bad idea. I wonder if, in some alternate universe Disney actually had built his Floridian empire here, the guy would have said that he was from Sarasota and that he’d heard of Orlando.

~~~~~

The airport is filling up now. There’s one airplane that’s been here, and its passengers waiting, for about five hours. They had to wait for a part from Tampa. Tampa’s only an hour away so it must have been one hell of a part. I wonder if they flew it down or drove it.

I’ve seen a few pilots just aimlessly ambling around this particular area. I think they’re with the plane that’s been delayed for several hours. Or they’re zombies. I just saw a pilot running. I guess they were zombies.

You know, I don’t see Egon’s assessment that “print is dead” being true. I see lots of people, myself one of them, traveling with actual, physical books. I have Level 26 by CSI creator Anthony Zuiker. The dude across from me is reading the movie edition of My Life in France by Julia Child. The lady next to me is reading an actual newspaper (poor darling...)

Time to be packing up. The flight should be here soonish (it’s running a little late according to the gate attendant, but she assures us that we’ll be fine for our connecting flights...) and I should save some battery power for later on. I’ve got a writing contest starting today, too. :D

Airport Confessional -- Hartsfield - Jackson International Atlanta International Airport

I have decided that my favourite time to take off is just before dawn. The sun is still down and the street lights are still on and when you’re taking off, it’s easy to imagine that there is no ground and all of those little twinkling amber lights below aren’t street lights, but are actually stars. Then, when the sun comes out, it’s illuminating the ground, but hasn’t burned off the fog so there are white rivers of mist crawling over the landscape like fingers. It’s especially neat when the lights are still on in those fog-shrouded areas. And, if you’re me, when the lights blink and sputter, you think of the Stephen King story and the excellent Frank Darabont movie and shudder.

I’m in Atlanta now. It’s really gloomy here, overcast and a little foggy. It’s only 8 in the morning so the sun hasn’t had time to burn off the mist. I’d take a photo, but all of the seats by the windows are occupied by exhausted travelers who are thinking the same thing I am, “Why the hell am I awake?”

I was going to grab a quick nap on the Cleveland-Atlanta flight, but I was hungry and wanted some water to go with my breakfast bar so I couldn’t. I got about four or five hours of sleep last night, but going to bed at 7 or 8 at night to get up at 2 in the morning has really screwed up my internal clock. A friend was up at three in the morning my time, which was midnight hers, and I totally was like, “Oh em gee, dude, what are you doing awake?!” And then I was like, “Oh, wait...”

They oversold the Daytona Beach flights and are desperately seeking someone to give up their seat for another passenger. $400 Delta Dollars. What, exactly, does $400 Delta Dollars buy, anyway? Is that enough for a round trip domestic ticket? Or are the $400 Delta Dollars more like the points for frequent flyers where you have to spend almost a kabagillion dollars in order to accrue a half of a mile of travel? I’ll have to look that up when I get home, if I’m that curious. Or ask the attendant if they need someone to give up their seat to Sarasota...which I honestly can’t imagine. It’s Sarasota, after all.

When I left Cleveland, I took a moment to revel in the non-humid 70s and the light, cool breeze that was flitting through the runway. The plane was a small commuter so they didn’t hook up the gangway, they just had us go out to the tarmac. I didn’t breathe deeply. It’s still the airport in Cleveland after all, but I did revel in it. It was very nice. I’m going to miss not having humidity, especially when my hair decides to do its best Roseanne Roseannadanna impression.

Airport Confessional -- Charlotte-Douglas International Airport

Just got off the plane to the most glorious bathroom break ever, replete with the tastiest mint I’ve ever had the pleasure of putting in my mouth. Where am I, you ask, that still has bathroom attendants that give mints and other essential toiletries? Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, NC. The time is 10:32 in the morning and we landed in thinning fog; the sun is not burning through the windows and my poor little Goth eyeballs are safe and happy. This airport, at least this wing of it, feels smaller even than the one I just left, no easy feat considering SRQ International isn’t all that big in the first place.

I love flying. It’s not something I get to do very often so it’s always a treat. I hope, if I end up flying around more and more in my career, that I never lose the wonder that I have when I fly. I tend to sleep through the actual flight part, at least when we’re up above the clouds and all you can see is cotton for miles and miles, but I really enjoy the take off and landings. Especially this time. I’ve never seen a rainbow from above before and I saw at least six before we reached cruising altitude. And we passed underneath a cloud formation that looked to me, thanks to the miracle of matrixing, like a white phoenix. I couldn’t get a picture of it, though, so some random clouds will have to do. Just trust me when I say it was very cool.

I like to look around at my fellow passengers during take-off and landing. It surprises me just how many don’t look through the window during the really exciting stuff, much less when we’re soaring over the earth at a bazillion miles an hour. Like I’d mentioned previously, but with much different wording, I think a lot of our problems could be solved if people just looked around.

I think they’re going to start boarding soon. More to come from the land of Cleve!

Airport Confessional -- SRQ International

It’s 6:49 in the morning. The sun is just beginning its ascent in the east, midnight blue giving way to the delicate orange, yellow, and pink of the rising ball of fire some 93 million miles away. The airport is nearly deserted now, two full hours before my flight is scheduled to depart and there’s a nice sense of calm about the place that will soon be broken by wailing infants, wailing businesspeople, and wailing travelers. I can understand why the ticket agent at the desk was annoyed that myself and one other traveler were here so early; its so peaceful.

I’m on my way to a film festival in Cleveland, Ohio, which is roughly an hour north of the place of my birth, North Canton. I haven’t been back to the Motherland in 17 years. I haven’t even been to this airport since I returned from my untriumphant move to New York back in 1997.

Out on the tarmac, the airport workers are connecting what I hope is our plane to their cart so they can move it into position near the gangway. I hope I have a window seat, I forgot to check when I checked in.

I love to fly. It’s utterly terrifying to think about logistically, but none of that seems to matter when they open the throttle and you’re rocketing down the runway and then up up up into the sky. It’s so wonderful to look at the world from a different perspective; I think more people need to fly and to be seated at the window, so they can look at the world on which we live and how it’s really not that bad a place and could be better if we’d all just get over ourselves.

*****

“Bad Moon Rising” just started on the airport radio station. Is it bad that the only thing that comes to mind when I hear this song is Kevin Kline and Tom Berenger zooming down the road with the top down on a Jeep? No, I don’t think about An American Werewolf in London, I think of The Big Chill. I used to watch that film over and over when I was a kid, even though I really didn’t understand most of it until I was older. I never understood that the opening credits, and the body and the stitches, was the Alex they were talking about, though I understood that Alex was dead. I always thought that the girl who was dressing the guy was really nice to be dressing him, maybe it was his mom. And that he had strange wrists. I probably thought that was Glenn Close dressing Kevin Kline or something.

*****

It’s twenty minutes later and I’m thinking that soon I’m going to regret choosing this particular seat, right in front of the east-facing windows. But for now, I’m happy. I took some really nice pictures of the sun lifting up over the horizon that I’ll post when I get to the hotel in a few hours. Man, ain’t that a killer thought? Here I am, on the gulf coast of Florida about to board a plane (and then another one) that will take me to Ohio within four hours. It takes almost that long just to drive to Orlando from here.

I have a friend who gets all existential when she does laundry...I suppose that airports do that to me. I don’t think it’s the fact that I’m going to strap myself into a seat on a jet-fueled airplane and more the fact that I’m leaving everything I know and the people I love and heading to a place completely unknown to me (I’ve never been to Cleveland, at least not that I remember) and be surrounded by people that are, for all intents and purposes, completely unfamiliar.

I’m not a big fan of crowds, or attention for that matter. I have a hard time talking up my work. I do what I do and wish that my work, and how hard I work to bring that work to life, could speak for itself, but in this business I’ve become a part of, you need to be able to talk yourself up, to promote yourself. These film festivals are good exercise, but I wonder if I’ll have to almost split into two Loris, the me I know and the me I have to be so I can do what I love.

See? Existential. And I’m so low in the echelon as a filmmaker that it’s probably not a real question anyway.

Yup...regretting this seat now. Sun’s in my eyeballs...I’m a Goth, why in the world did I choose to get up this early?!