A Small Animal Wrapped inside a Snake

Thursday we went to Crosstown for Indie Memphis's follow-up film on the refugee theme: The Winds that Scatter. It's about a Syrian refugee living in New Jersey (made towards the beginning of the Arab Spring, so before the recent wave of extreme anti-Syrian-refugee sentiment, obviously movies don't get made and distributed in less than a month). It was really good. Slow and well-filmed within its micro budget constraints. Afterwards there was a Skype interview with the director and that was good. Weird synchronicity thing: so we saw two movies two nights in a row and in both of them there's a scene where a snake eats a live animal (a chick in A Poem Is a Naked Person and a mouse in The Winds that Scatter). In both it's the whole drawn out thing with the snake's slow process. I mean, possibly the only two films I've ever seen with such scenes and then they're both on consecutive nights. That's all. Also, both filmed decades apart and both released around the same time. So, yeah. That's all

Last night Mary Beth and I were back at Crosstown Arts and this time it was for art. We went to this exhibit of Latino artists (which had apparently been closed a few minutes before, but we were there to take in some of the good art before we were escorted to the adjacent space to look at the exhibit that was just opening). The other exhibit was by their first resident artist. Just a lot of stuff. Some of it was really good, some of it was 80s trapper-keeper with eyeballs and neon splashes (some of which was good and some of which just reminded me of 80s trapper-keepers, which I'm sure was the intent, maybe that style of art is more interesting when approached from the future and not lived through it, I don't know). There was a dj in the back room who was playing some good music like ESG and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Then we went over to Amurica for Spill It. The theme was sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. This time it wasn't really a competition and there were fewer speakers but there also wasn't the usual time limit. So some of the stories were pretty long. They were mostly good. One I liked a lot. About a road trip that ended up at the weird art commune (/scheme to get vulnuerable young boys for sex stuff) run by a "helium heir." So it ended up with a Cadillac Ranch, floating mountain, and Amarillo Ramp (cool to hear the Robert Smithson tie-in). Afterwards we ended up watching the 12 Angry Men inside Amy Schumer espisode and holy crap was it spot-on. Hadn't seen 12 Angry Men since high school and it was such a visceral reminder of that movie with every detail.

Today woke up to hear that Meg died last night. Very surreal. We weren't close friends but we were friend and it's sad to hear about her passing and so sudden. Don't really know any details other than it was at home. I don't know her exact age. I think she was a little older than me, but still way way way too young. It's hard to even process right now. I know a lot of people will be missing her.