I’m writing here today. I interviewed a bunch of hilarious kindergarteners. Enjoy!
xoxoxo
E-spouse and I attended the par-tay of the year last night (yes, I know it’s only January), and I talked to a number of folks about Anywhere, USA, including the film’s sound wizard, Bruce Sales, who recently opened a new biz here in Asheville called 2BruceStudio. Bruce told me there were a couple of people who had been at Sundance yesterday morning, then they’d flown in for the Hatch par-tay last night. What jet-set artsy lifestyles some of us are leading, no?
The party was a ticketed introduction to Hatchfest 2009, which will be held in our fair town for the next 10ish years. The festival is a mentoring and arts festival focusing on the disciplines of film, architecture, fashion, music, journalism, photography, design and technology. The festival has the potential, I hope, to bring in some creative, inspiring folks to work with young (and middle-aged) creative professionals. I’ve suggested Frank Deford for journalism. And, of course, Chusy Jardine for film. And he’s already in town. Although today he’s probably on a plane headed this direction. I hope he’s exhausted, hungover, and ectastic.
Again, I digress. I was introduced to Hatchfest about a year ago by the man who’s bringing it to Ashvegas: Sean O’Connell, owner of Music Allies (whose spouse, Amy Jones, is a freelance writer and mega-edgy mama. We somehow ended up in the photo booth together about three minutes after we met, making faces at the camera and giggling. Well, I was making faces. She was just smiling gorgeously).
The party was held at Echo Mountain Recording Studio (another biz I’ve profiled), which was packed to the rafters with beautiful people. Literally, to the rafters, as there were aerialists hanging from ribbons in the ceiling, contorting their bods sexily while wearing minimal clothing and exotic face paint. I did notice that only a few brave (or very dumb) party-goers were bold enough to stand under the aerialists while they flipped and shimmied.
There were 6-foot tall models sashaying around in Brooke Priddy dresses (Brooke, next time, let me model one of your works of art. After all, it’s mostly those of us middle-aged mamas who can afford your stuff).
There were fotogs with fancy cameras. I spent a good bit of time trying not to drool on Galen McGee of Peak definition’s new Nikon D300. I have yet to find shots on-line, but I’m sure they’ll be popping up soon.
There were Hatchinis, composed of pomegranate juice, vodka, and something else. There was beer from the boys at Pisgah brewing: their Pale and Summer Ales. There was food from Ophelia’s. There was a champagne toast. I imagine there’s quite a bit of party flu incapacitating Ashvegas’ beautiful people today. Anyone else feeling a mite headachy after the Hatchinis?
There was speech-making, a video presentation, back-slapping, and somewhere, fire eaters. Rather appropriate, don’t you think?
And here’s where I go off on my scree.
Why, oh why, do we let people denigrate Southerners and the South–to our faces–without even a murmur of “what the hell”? The Hatch organizer from Bozeman, Mont., spoke and the first thing that dropped out of his mouth was something to the effect of: “We thought that Asheville, N.C. might be a little too far south on the East coast for Hatch, but now that I’m here, this seems like a pretty cool town.” What? I looked around. No one blinked. Of course, maybe I was standing in a crowd of non-Southern transplants. Cause you know that people born and raised in the South couldn’t possibly pull off such a creative, alternative, stylish event.
Well, thanks for your condescension, Mr. Montana. I’m sick of people assuming that all of the South is a fricking third-world country. There are, despite popular belief, lots of highly intelligent, proactive, motivated, successful Southerners. And some of us are even blonde.
So back to our regular programming. If you could be mentored by anyone in one of these fields, film, architecture, fashion, music, journalism, photography, design and technology, who would it be?
Yep, our hilarious little film won the Special Jury Prize Dramatic and the Spirit of Independence Award: “Chusy Haney-Jardine, for Anywhere USA, easily the funniest movie of the festival that skewers NASCAR and pistachio nuts with oddball aplomb.”
Great news, and I assume, news that increases the film’s chances of being picked up for distribution. Hurrah!
Here’s a list of the Sundance prize winners.
Here’s the description of Anywhere, USA, from the Sundance Film Festival website:
“At 2:00 p.m. every Tuesday, Tammy beats Gene with a tennis racquet. It’s his penance. In retrospect, he shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions about the pistachio nut. Meanwhile, Pearl is having doubts. An orphaned eight-year-old in the care of her uncle, she has unwittingly eaten pot brownies and begins to suspect that the tooth fairy isn’t real. Finally, there’s Ralph, a man of privilege who, somewhere between bites 23 and 27 of his steak, comes to a startling revelation: he doesn’t know any black people. Don’t be alarmed. It’s just another day in Anywhere, USA.
Told in three parts (“Penance,” “Loss,” and “Ignorance”), Chusy Haney-Jardine’s wildly original snapshot of du jour America is such an audacious, personal expression of vision that you occasionally feel as if it’s being projected directly from his brain. Haney-Jardine delights in theatricality, burlesque images, and wonderfully mismatched devices (rednecks frolicking as Puccini blares or an entire story line narrated by two women gossiping at a tanning salon). And for all its humor, the film observes life with tenderness and humanity, finding an emotional center in Pearl and her uncle.
Here’s a film that takes real risks and reaps the rewards ten-fold. Shot in Haney-Jardine’s hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, edited in his garage, and featuring an almost entirely non-professional cast (his daughter, Perla, is the sole exception), Anywhere, USA, wears its independence like a battering ram that gently knocks at your door.”
That’s more information in one place about the film than I’ve seen about anywhere else. The film is being screened at least five times at the festival, and let’s hope it gets major kudos and is picked up by a distributor. Chusy and Jennifer deserve it. They’re putting up a daily blog with film clips from the festival here. Now that the movie’s website’s been updated, it rocks!
I cannot WAIT until the film is screened here. I’m still assuming I’m in the film, as it would be difficult to cut me out of Ralph’s pivotal scene where he finally meets a black guy.
I actually had a wacky plan to try to go to Sundance, but it was dependent on a number of factors that didn’t come together, including having a free place to stay at a nearby ski resort. As this will probably be the only time that my face graces the big screen at Sundance, I’m bummed I couldn’t get out there. But I’m still psyched about the whole huzzah! Go Anywhere, USA!
Me in early 2005
So, I just realized that I started this bloggie three years ago today–with a dead dull post about the problems I was having starting the blog.
In three years, so much has changed and so little has changed. Blogger is now owned by Google. I’m about to move to Wordpress anyway. This blog has gone through three templates. One major redesign. One minor.
I’ve transformed from at-home mom typing with a three-year-old in my lap to having both kids in full-time school. One of the nice things about having kids is that they change so much in such a short time–it makes the years seem longer. When I think about the lisping three-year-old who was attached to my right thigh, and I look across the room at the little boy reading actual words and jiggling his first loose tooth, I’m wowed. My girl child now reads novels and does multiplication in her head. Double wow.
I’ve gone from occasional part-time work (head hunting, freelance writing, nonprofit consulting) to having two consistent weekly freelance writing gigs, including a column that arose from this blog. I still have an entire unedited novel in a drawer and 15,000 words of another on this laptop. I’ve got some newish short stories that I haven’t pimped hard enough. But my writing muscle has been stretched, exercised, strained, massaged and pushed. This makes me incredibly happy.
I have darker circles under my eyes, more wrinkles, bigger triceps (not because they’re drooping, but because I’ve worked those babies), and slightly more drag on the behind. My trick knee has gotten trickier. I’ve given up on dropping my last five pounds of baby weight gain.
I’m still in the same house, in the same town, with the same fam–plus Biscuit the Dorkie Poo, who joined us in May. And I’m still blogging. Some of you are still reading. One of the biggest changes in my life has been the incredibly cool people I’ve met and friends I’ve made through this bloggie. You guys are what’s kept me here and kept me writing.
So happy blog day to me and to you. What’s changed for you in the past three years? Will we still be here three years from now? Talk to me.
My Mountain Xpress column this week gives further dets about my reintroduction to having a toddler in the house.
The evil ice storm of ‘08 has passed, leaving only a few small patches of the slick stuff and lots of steaming dampness. All the snow became mush the moment the sun came up, so sledding was like trying to slide through cold oatmeal. Yesterday afternoon I drove the kids up Town Mountain to their grandparents’ home to see if there was better snow up there, but to no avail. It was all wet slush. Great for snowballs, however. And snowpeople, although none of them lasted long. Remember when Frosty melts in the old cartoon and everyone cries and cries? But then the magic hat returns and all is well. I think I need a magic hat.
Anyway, I spent most of the snow day sitting on my widening heinie at the Buncombe County Courthouse. I got out of my traffic violation (passing a school bus from three lanes over on Merrimon when faced with the choice of slamming on the brakes and causing a multi-vehicle pile-up or coasting past the school bus, pulling over, and waiting for the two cops sitting behind the bus to come and get me). Yes, I was released, I assume because I have a perfect driving record, no felonies, and I pleaded guilty, showed remorse, and told my story concisely (including the fact that my kids ride a school bus up and down Merrimon Avenue twice per day, and that I’m fully aware of the law, and I curse at the oblivious people whom I watch pass my kids’ school bus daily ON the SAME side of the road).
The last time I was in court, I was 19, because I’d run a yellowish light which another teenager was timing the other direction, and we crashed in the middle of the intersection. Luckily, no one was hurt, in particular my roommate, who was vomiting out of the passenger window at the time, which might be why I wasn’t paying close attention to the light. This was in Atlanta, where there is actual traffic court. So, you sit in court with other people who have done silly things like not using their turn signals and inadvertently driving past school buses.
Here in Buncombe County, however, traffic violators are sent to criminal court. Which, I suppose, is much more exciting. For the first two hours, we just sat there, waiting for the judge to show up. No one ever said why the judge was late. In fact, the attorneys mostly ignored us criminals. Luckily, I brought a 700-page novel with me, Tree of Smoke. Amazingly, I seemed to be the only person out of over 100 accused who had thought to bring any reading material. So while I caught up on the Vietnam War, everyone else just sat, silently, pondering their fates. At one point, I started to wonder if books, like cell phones, were illegal in the courtroom. Would the baliff confiscate my book if he saw it? I guess it’d make a good doorstop.
But the baliff either didn’t notice or didn’t care that I was reading for two hours while we all sat, quiet and glum in the fluorescent bleakness of the courtroom. Then, right when I was in the middle of the Tet Offensive, the judge showed up. It was still another three hours before my traffic violation got dealt with, however, so I was able to get through the entire Offensive, while taking breaks to listen to some of the more interesting cases, which included assault with a deadly weapon, several DUIs, resisting arrest, lots of drug and drug paraphernalia possessions, and trespassing.
Here’s what I learned. If I’d paid a lawyer, I would not have had to sit there for five hours. Folks with lawyers seem to get taken care of first. I guess because those lawyers’ time is so valuable. Secondly, perhaps a lawyer could’ve cut through the differing tales I got throughout this process. The DMV gave me erroneous information, which ended up in my sending $11 to Raleigh to get my driving record, which the Assistant DA here was able to get on her computer in 30 seconds. The APA gave me erroneous information, telling me I couldn’t ask for a PJC (Prayer for Judgment Continued) for passing a school bus. Even the judge ended up being unclear on this one, and I had to stand in front of that table waiting while the clerk made a phone call. It turned out that PJC can be applied to passing a school bus but no longer works for speeding (so don’t speed–you’ll pay). I learned not to trust the court calendars that are published on-line. My name and date weren’t even listed, and I panicked, thinking I had the wrong day. I learned that the bailiff likes to yell at people, particularly those of us who don’t get all the old-fashioned rules of the court. Like when the APA told me to come here, and I did, but I passed some imaginary line that us criminals aren’t allowed past and got yelled at by the bailiff. Maybe he thought I was going to clock the APA with my book.
Finally, the court cares not for snow days. Luckily, E-spouse was in town, or I would’ve been begging my neighbors to care for my kids on mushy snow day.
Mostly, though, court was depressing. I know there are some bad people out there, but most of the people sitting with me yesterday just seemed poor and sad. Many of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time or made an error in judgment or just did something dumb. Most of them don’t have the cash to pay for court costs, lawyers, and fines. There did seem to be some compassion, on the part of the judge and some of the defense attorneys, though, which made me hopeful.
So that was my snow day. How was yours?
I know it’s mid-January, and I’m just now getting around to uploading my holiday shots.
That’s festive Biscy snuggling with his stuffed squirrel. Well, it was stuffed until he ripped the innards out. He still loves it though. The squirrel’s tail contains a squeaker, which makes the pup happy. Prey makes us all happy, doesn’t it?
It really is! And you thought I only wrote about parenting at Mountain Xpress (well, I’m supposed to, and I do mention beer’s significant role in my parenting life).
Enjoy! Happy Monday! Scroll down and buy a T-shirt!
