scribble, scribble, scribble…

Late Friday morning, I headed to the Twin Cities to give Lovely Wife a couple of days with the house to herself. It was pretty low-key trip. Went to see my best friend that evening and had some beers. Although we did not each drink 30 in the course of a single night, as was his dream for us, we had enough that I had to ask, at least three times, whether this movie was old and sincere or new and a parody. It was confusing. Anyway, Minneapolis looked kind of like this when we went to bed:

And then on Saturday, I located my brother and joined him for Z Systems’ first Winter Film Festival. For the most part, the 19 short movies were really impressive, and several were flat-out good. If the festival happens again next year, as it’s supposed to, I think we’re gonna make this an annual tradition. I don’t watch that many movies, in part because they’re long and expensive and often disappointing. The festival’s competition format I can get behind, though: All the shorts were around ten minutes (I think?), they had a couple of intermissions, and it was both easy to see what the directors were aiming for and easy to forgive what they didn’t succeed at.

Then we stayed up too late talking, got up too early in the morning, and I got back on the road. By the time I got home, the Oscars had already started. Kelly and I had frozen pizza that was not as good as her homemade pizza, and I went to bed relieved that Avatar didn’t win for Best Picture but still not that interested in seeing The Hurt Locker. Maybe if they make a shorter version and show it at a festival.