A Week without Sleep

Got a damn lot to catch up on! A week of film festival and traveling. Let's scooch back to last Tuesday. The Indie Memphis film festival started. I got off work early (came in early, though I fuckin' forgot and almost worked til the end of my shift until I saw a text from Mary Beth and realized I was way late!) and we went straight downtown to the new Halloran Center for the opening stuffs. That night we watched The Keepers (a local documentary about zookeepers at the Memphis Zoo) and it was really good. After that we watched Tangerine, which was a real good movie too. The rest of the week it was more waking up early and staying out late. The next night we watched local narrative shorts. They were okay. I felt I didn't judge well as I decided I'd do it as I went along so I wouldn't worry about forgetting anything. Well, my scale was all out of whack and I don't think I judged as well as I would have had I waited til the end and done 'em all at once. Oh well. After that it was another local documentary called Barge, about life on a barge (surprise!). It was fucking great. The imagery was incredible and the bulk of its "narrative," which was the people who work on the barge talking about their lives and work, was very engaging as well. I think I saw something about it winning one of the major awards. I haven't really looked all that up, but I'm glad and it deserves it. Next we're on Thursday. First we watched the local documentaries. This had the best of the local stuff. The first one I called Memphisqatsi (that's not its actual name, but it was Koyaanisqatsi-esque time lapse imagery of Memphis) and I was predisposed to like it. I was excited because there was going to be this one about the artist who did the pyramid of pipes that's on the side of I-55, still standing where the rest area it adorned was recently torn down (turns out it's called Pyradoptics). After that was the movie brought in by the new sponsor Starz: Tumbledown. I did not like it at all. Real sappy shit. Okay, Friday! Now the festival was moved from downtown to just down our street. We started off at the Metropolitan pre-party. Whit Stillman was there, star-studded for Memphis. Still haven't actually seen the movie. We didn't see it that night either 'cuz Mary Beth went for shorts when she could 'cuz those are usually harder to ever get to see. So we saw the regular narrative shorts thingie. There was some good stuff in that. Then we saw the After Dark Shorts (horror-themed, more or less), I was less impressed by those offerings though there were a couple that were good: Unspoken (just takes place at a diner with a family where, as the title suggests, it hints strongly at abuse without anything being explicit...really creepy in tone without being heavy, it hit a unique balance, I thought) and Son (about a boy home sick, exploring the house while his mom's away to find...dot dot dot..., it was also really creepy, though with a more straightforward horror feel, though not much actually happens, something I like as well). Lastly we saw Phantom of the Paradise. Never seen it before and it shattered my expectations! First, I'll say the director of Son ended up sitting next to me so I got to tell him I liked his movie. He let me know that I was in for a treat with what was coming up. I'd expected it to be an entertainingly bad movie, but it was something else entirely. Obviously it's deliberately campy as fuck but it manages to be really good at the same it's absolutely ridiculous. It was awesome. Of course I'm a nerd and spent a lot of the time thinking, "ooh it's TONTO!" Also laughing while he's playing this modular synth and the sounds are of a piano. Q&A at the end was with none other than Gerrit Graham, Beef himself. He was a goddamn delight to listen to. Real friendly and funny and matter of fact and told great stories. So that was just frickin' awesome. Okay, so we get out of that super late and get home to wake up early and start our trip! I'll back up a step and start talking about other stuff that went on along the aforementioned timeframe. I got some shit from my employer about the time-off I was taking. They told me to make up that 1.3 hours I was short for the vacation I'm currently on before I went on vacation. So I threw in a little bit of time this past week (coming in extra-extra early on a couple days, depriving myself of even more sleep than I was already missing, but just a little bit as it wasn't even much time anyway). Well, they expected it to have been before my last pay period, but hadn't specified that when they said "before." I had figured it'd be easier to shuffle the time around if it was on the same pay period. So I'm going to be missing a day on my next paycheck, but it should get made up for on the one after that. There was also some stress at the end of the day on Friday. There was an issue I'd been working on that finally got pushed out to QA. Well, at 3:30 it came back with more stuff that needed to happen, so I didn't have time to fix it so I had to scramble to make sure John was up to speed on the issue. I knew what needed to be done, just didn't think I'd have the time to get it done myself and committed and everything. Anyway. Just anxious-making when there's a thing I've been working on but I'm going to be gone for days in the middle of it. Yikes! It's fine, just a bit of a last minute "fright." Well, I guess this is a good place to break.

Voodoo Gator Jazz Gumbo

Ooh, thought I was going to get started on the trip but realized I need to start off with the cds I got in the mail on Friday. It was an order from Creel Pone: Bülent Arel & Daria Semegen: Electronic Music for Dance, Christian Clozier/Jacques Lejeune: Perspectives Musicales, New Zealand Electronic Music, Electronic Music: University of Melbourne, Greek Electronic Music - 1, and Hungarian Electronic Music (detecting a theme? yeah, I know).

Okay, so after days of not much sleep and another night of not much sleep it was off to drive to New Orleans! Ended up being one of the worst drives in a long time (for other reason, I actually wasn't feeling too bad, cumulative days of not much sleep tends to make my sleep deeper and I make up for it, at least somewhat). It was raining the whole day, pretty much (though starting just a little into Mississippi). It wasn't bad and I was actually making good time up until a little before Jackson, then it picked up. Started seeing cars that had slid off road. Apparently Mary Beth's tires are well past their prime 'cuz we started to slide around a few times on the drive (but ended up being lucky and/or careful, mostly lucky probably). We made it alive and all that. There was also another bit of fun! You know before New Orleans where there's just 30 or 40 miles of bridge, right? Well for the first time I missed an exit for gas before we hit it (the bridge being right where you're running down your tank of gas coming from Memphis). I started to actually get off on an exit, but Mary Beth was worried 'cuz, while there were signs for food, there were no signs for gas, so I said I'd stop at the next one and got out of the turning lane... That was, of course, the last one. In the middle, where there's an exchange with another highway, there ended up being a gas station (no sign at all, just thought it was another stretch of road) that I saw after we passed it, this is when we're in desperate fucking territory. You'd think that being such a crazy gasless stretch a fucking gas station would be some well-advertised shit. Anyway, nothing to do but keep on. The light came on somewhere in the middle of Lake Pontchartrain. We drove 12 miles on that light before it all ended and I pulled into the first fucking gas station there was (Discount Gas, how I will love you forever). I'd figured we'd probably make it because I figured once the light came on we'd probably have a gallon and it would probably last about another 30 miles. I, of course, was nowhere close to sure. So that was one of the most stressful goddamn drives. But, just took a deep breath and kept moving forward.

So getting into the city, the first thing we did was hit up Parkway Bakery for some poboys that were in-fucking-credible! We had these surf and turf poboys that were roast beef and shrimp (apparently roast beef is a typical thing on actual New Orleans poboys, not something you'd ever see on one outside New Orleans, just about, I've never seen it anyway). Okay this shit is amazing and just melts in your fucking mouth. We also had alligator sausage gumbo that was out of this fucking world. Throw in banana puddin' and I ate way too much food (ended up being stuffed to fuck that night). Next stop was in the Quarter to Skully'z! I got some stuff: Cut Hands: s/t, The Soft Moon: Zeros, Prurient: Frozen Niagara Falls, Tuxedomoon: Desire / No Tears, Whitehouse: Halogen, Xiu Xiu: Dear God, I Hate Myself., and The Hafler Trio: An Utterance of the Supreme Ventriloquist. So a pretty nice haul. A little respite at Twelve Mile Limit (a favorite bar of Mary Beth's) and wrapping things up at Cafe du Monde. Then to the hotel where we crashed and passed the fuck out relatively early.

So now we're at the point in my adventure where I actually get a good night's sleep! Okay so we're off in the morning to meet Karen and Paul (Mary Beth's friends who came to New Orleans to see her while she was there!) for breakfast at Elizabeth's. A bit of a wait, but we ate good. It's fun being in a city like New Orleans where now I've been enough I pretty much know my way around (at least certain parts) well enough to know how to get places without checking a map (sometimes) even after having not been in close to two years. After that it was bar hopping in the CBD and lots of conversation. We were going to eat dinner before the show and were going to go to Cochon Butcher. We walked over when we probably should have driven (not far but not close). Then we get there and it's closed! So we walk back. Now it's time to go to the show. I'd eaten a lot in the past 24 hours so I was feeling okay to go without dinner (speaking for myself). We met Josh and Jacques in this bar upstairs of the venue (yeah, House of Blues). We were on a fancy guest list and had to take a fancy elevator up to the top.

Okay, the show! Mary Beth didn't eat as much as me and she was having a hard time with it. So I went to the restaurant downstairs and ordered a sandwich to go. The 8 minutes I was told it would take turned into over 20. Youth Code started their set while I was in this other room. So I was getting damn antsy waiting for that sandwich. I could pretty much hear it through the door, but still. Anyway, only half-missed two songs or so. Grabbed that sandwich and went back upstairs to join Mary Beth. I'd heard a little bit of their stuff before online and had been into it. They were good live but didn't quite live up to my memory of their recordings (I'd remembered them as either more minimal or noisy or something). They were still good and I enjoyed it. They just sounded a bit more derivative (of Skinny Puppy) than I'd remembered. But I still wanna check out more of their stuff. The singer was wearing a shirt that says SPITTING IS ROMANTIC. And she spat in the air and let it fall on her face a lot. Okay, stayed in the balcony but moved to a more central spot for Skinny Puppy. They were good. Mostly they just played old stuff (I think I was told one song was from Handover and that was it for post-breakup material). They leaned heavily on stuff from Rabies through The Process ("newer" old stuff and a lot from the two I mentioned, it's been so long since I've listened to The Process I had to be told this, however). So I wasn't thinking they'd do much early early stuff, but was surprised when they did a few. They did "The Choke" and they closed the main set with "Assimilate." The first encore also had "Smothered Hope." They did a total of two encores. So it was pretty sweet. "The Choke" and "Smothered Hope" were probably my favorites (I have a soft spot for that real early stuff). I was also really into "The Killing Game" and "Testure." They did a good bit of brap shit which was awesome (especially at the start of the first encore). The theatrics were goofy and fun. There was this fucking guy in a bull mask with horns and glowing red eyes that kept coming out and doing shit, mostly sticking oversized syringes on Ogre. He came out in a priest robe hoodie thing and then took it off to reveal a white suit that was gradually covered in fake blood throughout the course of the evening. I picked up a t-shirt for both bands. There was an afterparty up at the bar we started in and Kevin Cey did show up and Jacques talked to him (apparently about Goblin as that was the shirt he was wearing). We wrapped up the night with Josh and Jacques at Cafe du Monde, where else?

Took them all back to our hotel room where we crashed. Back up this morning. Stopped at Central Market to pick up muffalettas for the ride home. Walking down Decature Mark just appeared. We laughed and it was just like, yeah, that's Mark, should have expected that typical demonstration of Mark behavior, just appearing randomly where the fuck ever. So he tagged along with us as we went to Slim Goody's for breakfast. Mary Beth and I also picked up poboys for the ride home (okay, all these sandwiches ended up being for after we got home, still only eaten half) at Mahony's. The drive back was pretty uneventful. Much better weather. Normal, great. So we got home and watched some John Oliver while eating half of those sandwiches. I got on the computer to post this stuff. Also, had to deploy some of my code to the dev server for someone that depends on some recent changes of mine (as they disappeared from dev earlier today). Anyway. Time to chill and/or relax and/or something.