—-

Friday Morning Phree and I wake up just in time for the 1pm-4pm free wine VIP/filmmakers lounge.

The VIP/filmmakers wine lounge is a lounge where filmmakers and VIPs can have wine and lounge with other VIPs or filmmakers, and guess what? It’s free. When? Why I’m glad you asked, from 1pm to 4pm. Leave your wallets at home.

The intended MonIFF schedule.

“Man, I think I could get into drinking wine.” says Phree, smiling. After absolutely no consideration I respond, “Yeah it’s a pretty laid back buzz, I can’t disagree.”

The MonIFF Schedule, all things considered.

We wake up just in time to head to the after-party (which meant we didn’t even have dinner) and find our friends so we can dance together in a giant circle because that’s how dancing works now as adults.

In middle school and high school there was plenty of “hey we’re embracing” dancing. It was necessary because, unlike today’s kids, we weren’t ALL listening to Spotify playlists while having sex. That energy had to go somewhere.

In college I remember going out to parties clubs, everyone was drunk so that meant that more or less everyone was dancing with other everyones. Emphasis on ones, singular.

Adulthood, I figured, would mean a bunch of parties that look like Janet Jackson videos:

A bunch of cool lookin people in dark clothing in a dark room while someone plays records, and if you assumed I thought that the people would be dark-skinned and the music on the record would be made by dark-skinned people then that just shows your racial bias (but okay really the music probably was at least popularized by dark skinned people no lie.) How did I get invited to this party? Maybe I own the record player, so what? I’m still invited even if I do call her Janet instead of Ms. Jackson.

Didn’t happen.

Instead we got this.

I have a theory.

In middle school we all have misplaced sexual tension, so DANCE.

In high school most people have ill-placed personal confidence, we all just dance.

College? Errybody drunk, errybody dance.

By the time you’re a few years out of school you’ve come to terms worked out an uneasy alliance with your sex drive, you aren’t that drunk because somebody -has- to drive. In your newfound relative sobriety you make a number of startling discoveries.

1. You aren’t a great dancer.
2. You might not even be a good dancer.
3. You’re probably a terrible dancer.
4. So are all of your friends.
5. All these years you guys have been making fun of other people on the dance floor,
   …they’ve been making fun of you  behind your back.

How to prevent this cycle of awkward shame? The dance circle.

Modern peer pressure technology has brought us a form of dancing where there are no backs.

It’s kind of like a mexican stand-off with kinesthetic arrhythmia instead of guns. Everyone’s facing everyone so everyone dances unmocked, Monadnock.

At one point I look over and Rae Dawn Chong, the daughter of (Cheech and) Tommy Chong is dancing in our circle, which is weird because the last time I saw her she was using a rocket launcher that Arnold Schwarzennegger taught her to use in Commmando.

The after-after party is at the festival supervisor’s apartment,  which is exactly like a cool Brooklyn apartment if a cool Brooklyn apartment could fit 25 people in it comfortably. Most of this night is also a blur, except I remember giving one crucial piece of advice to a girl at the party, after a guy came up and asked her something absurd which would’ve involved her sitting on his bed.

Life Lesson: 

If you’re at a party and a guy invites you to go see his CD collection, don’t go unless you want to have sex.

Her response:”Don’t you mean Spotify playlist?”

After telling those pesky kids to get off my lawn I roll my eyes at her youthful nit-picky response (old people are more forgiving with these details because we don’t want to waste what remaining time we have left clearing shit up that could easily be inferred)  I say “Yes. Or anything at all that exists in a room with a horizontal surface wide enough for one.”

I’m only trying to help, don’t be a smartass.

Thus ended MonIFF night two.

It’s not because Keene is better or worse than wherever you are, it’s just one of those places that if you don’t have a real strong reason to go there you won’t just happen to go there. It’s much like my relationship to your linen closet. Or paraguay. Both places are perfectly fine, I’m sure, but I will never, ever know. The thing is, is that the festival here actually might make Keene a place you absolutely HAVE to go so I guess the comparison isn’t the same.

I’m trying to avoid a lot of the Guy From Big Town Visits Small Town Then Immediately Sounds Like Smug Asshole thing which is really easy to do. Even when trying not to do that, you end up doing it. They don’t have ANY stoplights. Just a big roundabout.

Keene is about two hours from Boston, so in order to get here you drive through first Boston, then rural Boston, then rural Massachusetts, then rural New Hampshire and then you’re there. The whole drive here I was reminded of both how old everything in LA -isn’t- and how little I knew about colonial United states. “Is that Paul Revere’s house? That’s totally Paul Revere’s house. Oh wait maybe THAT’s Paul Revere’s house? Oh weird Paul Revere must’ve lived right next door to himself because both of those houses belong to Paul Revere. Maybe that one belongs to John Hancock.”

Also, I can only hear the name Paul Revere so many times before I think of the Beastie Boys, so there’s that.

There’s just so much space. I kinda feel like I could ask someone for an acre of land and they’d give it to me if I threw in a “pretty please.” Really though the amount of space is staggering. There’s enough space in between houses that if your neighbor was brutally murdered, the screaming would be JUST faint enough for you ignore it. If someone got murdered in Apartment C31 in my complex, I’d have to turn up both the bass AND the treble on my stereo.

The drive from Keene was nice. They had a couple of student interns drive us from the airport to Keene. It was cool because they were good enough to pretend that we were Important and that they wouldn’t much rather be driving (say) Ang Lee, and I remember what it was like when I was the student driver and how annoyed that the Famous/Important person wasn’t asking me ANY questions about me, so I asked our driver a ton about him, I don’t think I earned any points though and mostly I came off like an interrogating nosy parker. (That’s a British phrase I think.)

The Bed and Breakfast we’re placed in is called “The Carriage Barn” but my mind always hears “Carnage Barn” because it’s cute, and the proprietor (Dave) is old, charming, and is absolutely going to kill us in our sleep. He gave us an old charming tour of the place and said “If you ever need anything from us, rap on this door as hard as you can” (West Coast? East Coast? What STYLE Dave, what STYLE?) and also added that the front door was “new” and that it was “VERY IMPORTANT” that we keep it closed.  This building is older than our nation why did you suddenly need to replace JUST the door? Why is it important to keep it closed? What answer could it be other than ghosts?

My room ALSO has a door to the outside. He said “Don’t open this door.” When asked why, he said that “things come in.” Despite being old his hearing was impeccable because reacting either to my elevated pulse or my tightening sphincter he added “You know, bugs.” Because BUGS are that big of a deal that you would NEVER EVER EVER open a door. That’s the sort of vigilance I would normally reserve for, you know, demon spirits and psycho killers. I’ll risk the occasional mosquito (skeeter).

Anyway, I’m here with Phree, who has decided the best thing to do is google “Ghosts + Keene, NH” (Ed. Not the best thing to do), and we make our way to the film which is currently in progress. War Witch.

Here’s the world’s worst review of War Witch.

War Witch is a really good film that was nominated for best foreign picture. It’s about horrible stuff going on in Africa. The plot is absolutely more well developed than that, but the movie is so well made and emotionally moving that it basically triggers my flight-or-fight response so I instantly lose the ability to say things like “[War Witch] is a mesmerizing, cinematic hallucination”, which is what Stephen Holden of the NYT was (somehow) able to say. I mostly cringe.

My thought process starts whimpering and says “Wow, Africa blows. Someone should fix it. Am I a bad person because I’m not trying to fix Africa? Why do they all have guns? No one is weirded out by the number of guns? That’s an old station wagon. Do we ship all of our old guns and station wagons to Africa? That seems expensive. Why would we do that? UGH there’s not enough bactine or penicillin to make ANY of this okay.”

Then the movie ends and the director is wearing such a slick suit on that I’m like “Oh shit, you absolutely have to have a suit like that when there’s a chance that someone might say ‘And the academy award for best foreign picture goes to [you].’ because everyone will look at you strangely if you DON’T have a suit like that because really…did you not know you were going to the Oscars and that, oh by the way you’ve also been nominated?

You knew. You always knew.

{click here to read part 2}