No maps for these territories

Tomorrow I leave for Boston; I am neither packed, nor set with my presentation, nor sure what time I am meeting people there, nor in possession of the phone numbers and addresses I need, enough information, a good plan, Ubuntu on my computer as it should be, or my wits. I suppose I will try to manage to catch the plane, at least; that will be one thing done.

Tonight I went to the Campus MovieFest, which is a program that gives laptops, phones and cameras to campus teams in order to make a short movie in a week. Tonight was the finalists matching off. I can’t quite figure the program out. It feels very slick, and very corporate; they are pretty clearly not a nonprofit or a grassroots group. But the movies were sweet, and fun; I even appeared in one, if you can count my back as I leaned up against the reference desk in the distance an appearance (they were filming in the library, which is part of why I was so curious. It turns out my vehicle for stardom was a comedy of errors/coming out story. All done in three minutes with soft lighting! Woo!)

I like movies a lot, but I especially like truly indie movies and shorts. There are not enough short live action films shown on the big screen, which is sad. It seems I like these things enough that I will happily sit through amateur hour in the auditorium, cold and hungry after work but intrigued, and happy to be around students who were happy to be there. It’s these things that make one feel part of a campus; and I thought about how a few years ago if such a thing had come to my school, how much pride and recognition I would feel at these shots of the library, the gym, the apartments around town. Working at a campus, I have sadly found, leads to no nostalgia whatsoever.

The best film, in my opinion, was about two stoners who accidentally knock out Jesus with a frisbee. They haul him back to their apartment and sit around trying to figure out what to do. Hijinks ensue with calling 911 (“Yeah, we have Jesus on our couch”) and going to their Christian neighbor’s house to borrow a bible to see if there’s any advice in there. They finally realize they need to do something righteous; so they haul out their skateboards and set up a jump across a swimming pool. They are triumphant; but when they get back, Jesus is gone! A voice comes down from Heaven: “It’s all good. You are some righteous dudes.” It turns out Jesus smoked all the weed, too.