I’m fat. I know it. I’m not ignoring the fact that my weight is incredibly unhealthy and probably will cause a myriad of problems with my organs and glands if I don’t rectify it sooner rather than later. I haven’t been living under a rock, so I’ve read all the studies showing how much obesity costs in the long run in healthcare costs and how life expectancy suffers for those who are unhealthy. I’m lucky so far that I haven’t been diagnosed with diabetes or any number of other disorders that afflict the obese.

Body acceptance is a way of telling myself that I am not a worthless piece of shit. It’s a way of accepting that this is how I am at this moment, and that I am a worthwhile human being, even though I haven’t made the best choices for myself in the last seven years or so. This wasn’t an overnight journey, and I know that. So, I am endeavoring to accept my body for what it is. It is a reflection of the last seven years of my life, and the choices that I made during those seven years. I  can’t deny that it happened, but I can choose to try not to hate myself for it. Hate and self-loathing in the past have only led m into a deeper spiral of poor decisions. It’s hard to decide to do anything positive for yourself when you hate how you look and think you’re worthless because you can’t manage to make good and healthy choices.

So, I have chosen to embrace body acceptance. I am embracing myself for what I am and also for what I can and will be. I’m making better choices for myself and for my future. I am a worthwhile human being despite my fat. I am beautiful and feminine. I am also obese. That last bit? That’s the one that has to go. The rest can stay. But I’m accepting the obesity along with the rest of it. They say the first step toward recovery is admitting that you have a problem. I’ve already done that. Now I’m remembering that beneath the problem is a person. That person is a human being just like any other. She’s one who has problems with portion control, a penchant for junk foods and a massive sweet tooth. Yep. Those are there, too. I’m me, and I’m learning to accept my bad along with my good.

What this message of personal body acceptance should not be misconstrued as is fat apology. I am not making excuses for why I got fat. I got fat because I made bad decisions. I am not saying that obesity is good in any way, shape or form. I have experienced many hardships as a result of being obese. I can’t shop in regular stores and half the time have to shop online. This leads to headaches for returns if things don’t fit or if the wrong item is sent. It’s not fun, let me assure you. I have to have a seatbelt extender on an airplane and in most theaters, I spend at least 30% of my attention trying not to encroach on anyone else’s space. It’s not fun, and I’ve ruined a number of situations for myself by sheer merit of being fat. I am not unapologetically fat. I understand that my fat has ramifications for myself as well as for others.

Fat apology has a tendency to be somewhat abrasive. It’s fat people fighting back against the public shaming that many of us have endured for (often) years and years. I’m not saying it’s okay to react in such a way, but it’s similar to other groups reacting negatively, defensively and abrasively to similar situations. These people have become so sick of being shamed for their fat that they have decided to buck the trend and instead of fighting against it, they accept it. They say, “It’s okay to be fat. It’s my choice after all, isn’t it?” I can’t get behind this mentality, even though I can understand some of the reasoning behind it. It is a form of body acceptance, but not, in my opinion, a very healthy one.

It’s not easy to be fat. Obesity rates are rising exponentially in western civilizations. We are getting fatter faster and younger. There is a huge backlash against those who are fat, as if we are somehow mentally deficient. Most of us have an unhealthy relationship with food; that much is obvious. The fat shaming that tends to go on from people who are thin either by their own volition (hard work in the form of exercise and calorie restriction) or by the blessing of biology does not help most of us abolish this unhealthy relationship with food. Teasing me or ridiculing me because I’m fat really only makes me feel worse about myself. As I feel worse about myself, I feel less like I’m worth the effort it would take to change the cycle of obesity. And then I get fatter. This tactic is not helping people. Walking around degrading fatties and teasing people who are fat is ignorant. Who are you to know what these people are doing?

I am obese. Yep. But in the last month, I’ve changed my diet and begun to exercise. I’ve started drinking more water and keeping an eye on the nutrients that I take in. If  I were to pass someone on the street, he or she might choose to ridicule me for being fat without knowing the changes that I’ve made. The fat didn’t go on quickly, so I know it won’t come off quickly. It’s a slow process, particularly since I’m actively trying not to over-fatigue myself or injure myself. Many of the fat people who are shamed could be making poor decisions. They may have already started making the change. Perhaps they’ve changed from a diet of fast food and junk to one involving lots of fresh vegetables and lean meats. Maybe they’ve already lost 20 pounds. There’s no way for a stranger to know that.

The looks that come with being fat are not easy to take. It’s embarrassing to have someone see me and cringe, as if I am a behemoth made of fat and ugliness, as if there are no redeeming qualities about me. I know there are, and the stranger does not, of course. But what if I were to look at them with the same disgust? That’s not okay. Of course it’s not okay. I don’t know them, or their story, just like they don’t know mine. The only part of my story that they know is that I’ve made some unhealthy choices about food and that I’m not, perhaps, as active as I should be. The very idea that a person deserves the right to judge me for that without knowing me is offensive. The fact that these people can judge me and think that I’m not doing anything for myself or that I think the fat is okay or even great is offensive. The very idea that body acceptance is the same as fat acceptance is offensive to me.

I am accepting my body in its current form. I accept it for all of its flaws and for all of its fat. I acknowledge that I am unhealthy. I acknowledge that my unhealthiness has ramifications for others. I am beautiful despite these things. My body is okay the way it is, but it can be much, much better. From here forward, I am making the decision to do better for myself and my body for the sake of longevity and a more active lifestyle. It’s hard to be active after not being active for so long, so I’m taking baby steps toward being able to walk around Walt Disney World all day without feeling like I’m ready to keel over at the end of the day.

My body is okay the way it is. It could be much better, and it will get much better. I’m awesome the way I am. And now it’s time to become even more awesome.

The most heated topic on the MFP board is regarding “starvation mode.” There are people who believe that all women, regardless of height, weight or body type, should be eating a minimum of 1200 calories, and men should eat no fewer than 1500. This is, of course, one of those general rules for which there are always exceptions. Obviously someone who is 4’11″ would not need the same amount of fuel as someone who is 5’11″. A person with a small frame would need less fuel than someone with a bulky frame. But this is a good rule of thumb for beginners to pursue. It can be difficult to ascertain without the assistance of a licensed nutritionist and doctor how much food one should eat per day to accomplish weight loss. And, let’s face it, bodies are not mathematically perfect. What might work for me one day is not necessarily going to work the next day or long term. It’s just how it goes.

This 1200/1500 baseline is in place so that people can avoid going into so-called “starvation” mode. This is when your body stops consuming fat and instead stores it, because it is not getting enough nutrients and believes it is heading into a time of less available food. As such, it will put up stores just in case things get worse. This does happen to some. It can stall weight loss or even create weight gain, even though people are eating relatively little food. What can also occur when eating too few calories is that the body will consume fat and muscle, thereby giving weight loss, but the metabolism has slowed to a point of being able to accommodate the smaller amount of calories. Then, when these folks who have been eating so little start to eat an amount that should help them maintain the weight loss, it piles back on. The body has been sabotaged into believing that this new amount of food is excess, and therefore stores it as fat for the next time that food is scarce. It’s a biological response to aid in ultimate survival. Our brains might know that we’re well-off enough to be able to get a meal next time we’re hungry, but the bits of the body that control the weight loss are not that “smart.” They do what they’re biologically programmed to do.

We can’t know at what point our body is going to start storing instead of burning. Height and weight are a good way of estimating how much a person should eat for weight loss, but all the same it’s difficult to know where that line is. Even an expert nutritionist with the assistance of a doctor and a myriad of tests may not be able to ascertain that. Bodies are fickle things. The drama comes because what is right for one person is not necessarily right for everyone. But, when people seek to give advice, they most often draw on their own experience. It was that way for them, so it must work this way for everyone, right? I would wager that a majority of the people giving advice on MFP are not experts in any way. And if they are, they’re not posting their qualifications. This leads me to believe that they are not. (Just like me!) So, advice in these cases should be taken with a grain of salt, as each person’s experience is different and can’t possibly apply to everyone.

What really bothers me about these posts (and please don’t ask me why I read them – I’m apparently a glutton for punishment) is not that these people are sharing their personal experience. Those experiences are absolutely relevant, particularly for someone who has a body type similar to theirs. However, these posts often claim that their way is the Right Way. They claim that science can’t be proven and that starvation mode is a myth. These claims can ultimately be harmful to a person who is new to the weight loss process and hasn’t done excesses of research on the subject the way I tend to do. (Often it’s more confusing the more I read, yet I do it anyway.) People often believe the first thing they’re told, especially if it sounds convincing, and many of these people are. I worry about the damage that could be done to people who eat a minimum of calories per day (for instance, 1200) then exercise every single one of them away. There are people who have ended up in the negative digits for their calories in vs calories out goals. It’s not healthy to burn so many calories without putting in a sufficient amount of fuel, and it’s definitely not healthy to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time. That’s a fact that these folks seem to pointedly ignore.

I’m not claiming to be an expert in any sense of the word – I am categorically not an expert at this (or anything else, for that matter). I’ve done a little bit of research and found some truths which I will stick to. I’m not going to give advice where I am unqualified to do so, and I’m certainly not going to feed the trolls by suggesting that starvation mode is actually real, thereby getting into a war of words over what happens to one person’s body versus another’s.

I don’t know why I keep reading the threads on MFP. It’s not beneficial to me, and only ends up frustrating me more often than not.

Science can’t be proven? Seriously, people?

Johnathan and I made the decision that we couldn’t afford our all-access passes this year, and we truly thought we wouldn’t even miss them. We weren’t able to take the whole week off, so I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal. Oh, I was so wrong. We bought tickets for 25 films this year, which locked us in for those films. There were a few that, if we had the ability, we would have skipped on the day. So, we came away having learned a lot this year. Instead of reviewing the movies (especially because I only remember the really good ones and the really bad ones, and that’s not very fair), I’m going to give a rundown of what I learned this year:

• We need passes. Next year, we’re going back to our director level passes. (Or the executive ones if we manage to win one of the drawings! Not holding my breath on that one, but it’s nice to dream.)
• Staggering the evening blocks made it difficult to plan our schedule but it made an incredible difference in traffic. I hope they do it for weekends and Fridays next year, because it was a madhouse the first Friday and on the weekends until the blocks started to stagger.
• I don’t think I will ever really understand Second Life.
• Even when people are prompted to agree that there is no talking during festival films, they will talk anyway. I’m contemplating a shirt for next year that gives a warning that I throw hard candy at talkers. I’ll bring a bag of peanut M&Ms and throw them with abandon if I must. I don’t like peanuts anyway.
• Good films can be made based on books. I thoroughly enjoyed The Hedgehog at the festival, only to learn that it’s based on a book. I purchased it for my nook and I’m in the process of reading it now. It’s a necessarily different experience, but so far just as enjoyable. If it weren’t for the film festival, I might never have heard of this book.
• Holocaust subject matter is always devastating for me, yet I continue to be drawn to it. I came away from The Roundup quite literally sobbing. I would see it over again, because I think sometimes I need to be reminded that there are people who extraordinarily bad and also those who are extraordinarily good.
• Our method for picking films worked well for us this year. We were able to minimize the number of films that ultimately disappointed (although I expect there will always be some). It needs improvement, though – next year subject matter needs to be taken into consideration. No more starting or ending the day on a heavy film. Too rough.
• I need to avoid anything that’s labeled “thriller.” Even if I think it’s different than horror, others may not. (I’m looking at you, True Nature blurb writer.)
• The CIFF staff is incredible, from the core staffers down to the volunteers. If my biggest complaint about the festival is the talkers, that means they did their job in spades.
• It’s okay to cheer and clap after realizing you never have to see the year’s trailer again.
  • Side-note: It was then that I discovered that I wasn’t the only one not so enamored with the whole theme. Clearly others agreed!
• The relief that the festival is over only lasts a little while, and then I’m back to wanting to watch tons of movies. Thank goodness for Netflix!

My top films:

1. The Hedgehog
2. Matchmaker
3. With Love, from the Age of Reason

Runners up (in order that we saw them): 2030 – Revolt of the Young, Here Comes Lola!, These Amazing Shadows, The Rowan Waltz and The Roundup. Okay, so I liked a lot of the films we saw.

I love the film festival, and I’m glad to be a part of it, even if some of the others who also attend the festival can be trying at times. Just like in past years, there were some hallmark films that I’ll continue to remember and think about for years to come. That’s a successful festival for me.

What I have learned over the last year or so is that there seems to be a battle between the main fiber arts. Knitters seem to think that crocheters pursue an inferior craft. As a result, crocheters are very combative toward knitting, often overcompensating by saying nasty things about knitting in return. It is not a pretty sight. In fact, today I read a comment on the Knit Picks staff blog, where a crocheter took issue that the new crocheter hired at Knit Picks would want to learn to knit as well as her admitted ability to crochet. The person went so far to say: “I still will refuse to buy yarn from you because of your bad attitude.” That is, of course, her own choice. But she assumed in her comment that the crocheter in question would be entering into a hostile environment for those who enjoy crochet, which the Knit Picks staff have endeavored to show is far from the case. Over the year that I’ve been buying from Knit Picks, I’ve seen more and more crochet items showing up, and the staff seems to have taken a greater interest in crochet as a medium, including writing many posts on the blog about it. Yet, this crocheter still feels that her craft is not only underrepresented but also reviled on the site. It is a sad thing to see.

Why does this rivalry exist? Many of the same things can be made with both knit and crochet, often to incredibly similar results. The fact, however, is that each craft is used differently to create different results. A crocheted hat is just as beautiful as a knitted hat, but it is different than a knitted hat. And that is part of what makes it beautiful and special. Crocheters, as far as I am concerned, have a magical ability to create things which completely baffle me. I did try to crochet, but what I ended up with was a wobbly-looking uneven scarf… thing that I couldn’t bear to give to its intended recipient in the end. I admire crocheters for their ability to take a hook and some yarn and make things. I can’t figure it out. (I’ll need to take a class someday.)

I do not understand why people who crochet are so hostile toward people who knit. I do not understand why some people deride crochet as inferior. It makes no sense to me. The crafts are different, but equal. The people who pursue each are no different – they are people who like to use fiber and hooks or needles to create lovely things. I hope to see this warring subside. However, much like everything else in the world, it seems there will always be combative people who choose to make issues where there are none.

This issue still exists, and it may be that there will never be a time where all knitters and crocheters will respect each craft equally. In the meantime, I’d like to extend the olive branch to those crocheters out there who have ever felt slighted by a knitter. I think your craft is fantastic and I wish I could pursue it. Instead, I will look at your lovelies on Ravelry and instead continue to knit things which I believe are lovely as well. Your craft is nifty and I plan to learn how to do it someday (when I ever have free time again).

The knitter and the crocheter should be friends!

Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing whatsoever about motorcycles. I’m happy for people who enjoy riding them even though I have absolutely no interest in riding one myself. It isn’t people who ride motorcycles in general I have problems with.

The ones who are troublesome are the ones who think they own the road. Just like anyone in a car who thinks that they’re more important than everyone else on the road, the people on bikes are creating dangerous situations as I try to safely drive to work. Last week, I saw someone on a bike with no helmet or any other protective gear that I could spot. This isn’t too unusual, and I wouldn’t really make a big deal of it if he had been riding safely and respectfully of the other people on the highway. He wasn’t, though. He decided he didn’t want to deal with the traffic which had slowed to about 5 mph below the speed limit (really slow, right?). He zoomed into the emergency lane and drove down it for a good half mile, then wove in and out of the cars until I couldn’t see him anymore. I presume his behavior continued as he drove down. I saw him drive in between two cars who were driving in their own lanes. Nobody in this scenario was doing anything out of the ordinary – just this guy on a motorcycle decided he had more important places to be and used his bike to his advantage.

That’s just one example of the crap that I’ve seen driving to work. (Interestingly, it mostly happens when I’m on my way to work, between 7 and 7:40AM on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday every week – I rarely see it on my way home.) I see this all the time and as I’m mentally calling these people jerks, or worse depending on my mood that day, I have to wonder what it is that motivates them to do things like that. If I were on a vehicle such as a motorcycle, full well knowing that there are other vehicles on the road which weigh thousands of pounds and won’t be able to stop as quickly as my bike could, I don’t think I would want to be swerving in front of vehicles or going in between the lanes to get farther up in the lane.  I guess I’m also a little more safety minded, too. I’d be wearing a helmet, for sure, and at least long pants and sleeves. I mean, one more layer between me and the pavement, right?

I imagine most people with motorcycles understand the risks and know that there are options out there to keep them safe. Why, then, wouldn’t they employ these things? In a collision, the car has the advantage. It’s bigger and has a ton of safety features built in – airbags, seat belts, crumple zones, etc. I can’t imagine many situations in which a motorcycle would survive intact, and the rider is also likely to suffer some high levels of injury from such a collision. The fact is that there are a lot more cars on the road, and they are bigger, heavier, and are a direct enemy of the motorcycle when it comes to collision.

Seeing these people act so recklessly irritates me. It’s disrespectful to the people using the roads as they’re supposed to, following traffic laws and giving reasonable distance to their fellow drivers. When these people blatantly disregard the law in this manner, they’re putting themselves at risk and spitting in the face of those who do abide by the law and try (mostly) to follow speed limits and don’t do things like driving around other cars in the emergency lanes to get places sooner. I am not wishing for someone to get hurt. I want people to be safe. I just really wish that some of these people riding these motorcycles wanted the same thing.

People feel very strongly about what the “right” way is to give birth (natural versus with the assistance of drugs versus c-section), and what the right way is to nurse your child and bring them up. There are the people who feel like breastfeeding should be out there in the open for all to see, arguing that the baby shouldn’t have to be hidden just because it eats “naturally.” The people who think that those who bottle-feed for any reason are lazy and gave up on the natural way. There are people who very obviously look down on anyone who had to have a c-section for any reason, or who had drugs to assist the very painful process of vaginal birth.  The more I read, the angrier I get, not because people aren’t entitled to their opinions about what is best for them and their child, but because they are projecting those beliefs onto everyone else and making bad situations worse by making women feel guilty who, for one reason or another, did not or could not do it the way that the advocates believe is the best.

I am not an expert when it comes to having children. The closest I come is having a monthly period, and that’s, well, exactly the opposite of pregnancy. So I’m as close to it as the north pole is to the south pole, really. I do, however, have some strong opinions about it, despite not having done it myself. I was around for all of my step-mother’s first pregnancy, and also around for the early stages of my older half-sister’s life. I witnessed the nine months of morning (noon and night) sickness, the changes that she went through, and then the “aftermath”, so to speak. (She was born by c-section because she was breech and they couldn’t turn her, so right there, her pregnancy gets discounted by a lot of people online. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, you know?) I was there when the lactation specialist visited, and I was there helping when we made baby food for the baby. She wasn’t my child, but I was a major part of her life for her first ten months or so until I moved out after my graduation. So I was there for that part.

It doesn’t take a genius to take in the norms that emerge when it comes to having a baby. For instance, babies are going to poop. It happens. They spit up, they pee, they poop, they drool, they snot, they make messes with their food. It’s normal. They pretty much control the schedule for the first part of their lives, too. The fully-developed humans work around the schedule of the baby and go through sleep deprivation and lack of showers in order to facilitate the normal growth and development of this tiny, in development human being. These are the things which seem to be standard across normal early parenthood. And that’s where the “norms” stop. After that, everyone has their own way of dealing with aspect of it. Cloth diapers or disposable? Breastfeeding or formula? Jars of baby food or homemade? Do you do baby swim lessons? Do you listen to Mozart for hours to facilitate development? At this point, I have to shrug and say, “Hell if I know.”

What really bugs me is that it seems to me that parenthood is a very personal thing. I can understand giving advice and anecdotal evidence when requested to do so, but there are so many people who are willing to give out advice without being asked, or going far beyond the request so as to be pushy about it. The thread I was reading devolved into a bunch of people going back and forth about what they experienced and what was the “right” way of doing something. All of this, of course, without taking into consideration that there are plenty of reasons that it might not work or be able to work that way for any other person. It takes all kinds of people and situations to make up the world, and for as many pregnancies there are, that’s how many different parenting and child-rearing styles there are likely to be. I feel like as long as the child in question is growing up as healthy and strong as possible, it shouldn’t matter whether mom is able to breastfeed or whether she used disposable diapers to catch the refuse.

This kind of advocacy bothers me more than any other kind. It is the same as evangelism in that it doesn’t consider what the audience wants, instead pushing its own view of what’s right regardless of extenuating circumstances or differing opinions. I’m not saying that these people aren’t entitled to their opinions and views. They are every bit as entitled to theirs as I am to mine, but I should be entitled to feel differently than them without feeling persecuted by them for the difference. I guess this comes down to my dislike of someone touting any one idea as the only truth and asserting that all around them should agree.

Ultimately, I had to stop watching the thread. I ignored the user who was pushing the hardest and who started the “argument” (it was very civilized, but I didn’t understand why it had to happen at all), but that doesn’t stop the conversation from happening. I wish the lady who started the thread all the best, and I sincerely hope that she has a smooth pregnancy and that parenthood suits her perfectly. I can’t read the preaching and pushing anymore. That particular user, it seems, is just not willing to let the subject drop until she has somehow proven that she is in the right on each issue on which she believes herself to be an expert. And maybe she is an expert – I have no way of verifying or disproving this claim. But whether she is an expert or not, she is giving her expert advice in a venue that is really inappropriate, since she can have no way of seeing whether her advice is the most appropriate for the people in question. And frankly, it comes across as very judgmental for those who do not adhere to the way of behaving during pregnancy, of birth or of child rearing that she believes is best.

Opinions are all well and good, as is active and healthy discourse about those opinions. It can open up people to ideas that they maybe hadn’t considered before. However, I think we should draw the line at making actual statements of how things “should” be and what is the one and only “best” way of doing anything. Whatever happened to live and let live?

Later, news articles started to show up stating that the epicenter was in Ontario. Or else it was Quebec. Nobody was really sure yet. But they were pretty sure it was either a 5.0 or a 5.5. Really specific, right? Still later, they finally narrowed it down to the Ottowa area on the Ontario/Quebec border. The consensus seems to be that it was a 5.5. It is amazing to me how far away the quake reached. Down to Cincinnati! That’s quite a distance.

Earthquakes aren’t totally new to me. We got a couple in Oregon when I lived there. It was, of course, nothing like what is experienced in California, but we got a few. I remember one that was strong enough to merit evacuating our school until they could assess whether there had been any damage that could endanger our precious teenage lives.  It was otherwise unremarkable. We stood on the football field, whining and bored until they deemed the school safe for us to re-enter. This one wasn’t even that remarkable. Being on the third floor, we experienced some swaying, but people who were on the ground floors of buildings sometimes felt nothing. Johnathan was driving at the time and didn’t feel it at all.

The little earthquake was kind of a fun diversion. There was no real damage to speak of, even, apparently, closer to the epicenter, and nobody died as a result of the shake. We did get a little excitement with people texting friends and relatives to find out whether they felt it or not, and scouring twitter and google for results that would tell us the epicenter and more about how far-reaching it was. Nobody was scared; we all got excited instead. It was kind of like a birthday distraction from the average humdrum of everyday working.

One laundromat was in a city a couple of miles away. It was… okay. Sketchy and old, but cheap. Unfortunately, our very first time there, we ran into disaster with one of the machines. We ended up with some snags on some of our work clothes. The clothes were salvaged, but that was the last time we ever went to that laundromat.

The second is one that Johnathan went to relatively frequently before I moved, and it was our laundromat of choice for a while, for being 24-hours and less expensive than the machines at our complex. It seemed that there were often many broken machines when we were there, though, which made things hard when you need three of washer size A and only two are functioning, particularly if someone else is already using them. So we kept looking for our perfect laundromat.

Johnathan found Leo’s.  We gave it a shot because it seemed newer than the other two places and, hey, it was worth a shot, right? They had a card system which served to simplify things as far as needing quarters. The washers were newer and faster, and there were more of the larger sizes. The dryers were faster. Heaven? We thought so. We saw their ads for laundry drop-off service, and an idea started to form. It seemed extravagant, though, so until a post on Get Rich Slowly about outsourcing parts of your life, we didn’t really consider it. The post talked about how outsourcing daily tasks (cleaning for some, cooking for others, etc) could be financially beneficial in the sense that it frees the person from the hated task, and he or she regains the time that would otherwise be spent on that task. It seemed like an endorsement for us to go ahead and try the laundry drop-off service that was offered. So we did!

The first time we tried it, we had to buy the bag. That was $5, which isn’t really so bad. Then it was about $25 to have the load done. We left it with them and went on our merry way, intending to pick it up the next day. We picked it up and took it home. We were met with a bit of an unpleasant sight when we started to unpack the clothes. A lot of the clothes had mysterious stains on them that looked like grease or oil stains of some kind. We had some irreplaceable shirts stained and some of our work clothes. I was not happy. In fact, I was livid. We took the clothes in, or rather Johnathan did, and talked to the people there. Ultimately, he ended up on the phone with the owner of the place, who offered to send the clothes off to be claimed for insurance (which meant we’d get a lot less than they’re worth and be out the clothes), or we could let one of the attendants try to get the stains out and he could offer us some credit. We took the latter since it meant we might be able to wear the clothes again. The girl was able to get the stains out for the most part, so that was a satisfactory resolution.

The next time we brought in our laundry, nothing went wrong. Hurrah! Unfortunately, the next time we brought the laundry in, we were informed that we couldn’t drop laundry off after 7PM. Really? That seemed odd. The attendant explained that his coworkers would accuse him of not doing his work if we brought it in after that, because he wouldn’t have time to complete it before closing. Well, we thought it was a stupid rule, but accepted it and went home with our full bag of laundry. We dropped it off the next day and got a clean bag of clothes back. A person could get used to that!

Then we had another problem. We dropped off and paid for our laundry to be done and got back… a bag of unwashed clothes. It didn’t get done. This was apparently due to a miscommunication where one employee put the bag in the wrong place and the other didn’t bother to check whether the work had been done. So, more fussing to make sure that the load got done. Then we would get our clothes haphazardly folded. Overdried. Not even folded at all, on occasion. Smelling like no detergent was used.

The last straw came in two parts. The last time we dropped off our laundry, the lady asked Johnathan if he was “the one who tips.” He kind of gave her a funny look, and she went on to say that, oh yeah, people tip all the time! This statement doesn’t jive with the first, since the question was, “are you the guy who tips?” He said he would talk to me about it. I should state now that I think tipping for a service that we are paying for is stupid, so I was absolutely against tipping these people for the consistently inconsistent service we’ve been getting. I tip servers at restaurants because I know they don’t make even the minimum wage that everyone else is paid. I think tipping as a rule is stupid except for when exceptional service is given, and the people at Leo’s Laundromat were certainly not giving it. I mean, we still haven’t gotten all of our credit for our original problem because apparently only one employee even knows how to use the computer. Our name is in the system something like ten times because nobody knows how to use it and apparently nobody cares to learn, either. These people were not helping their case.

We were going to drop off a load of laundry on Monday, and the same lady with the tip comment was there. The first words out of her mouth were not “Hello” or “How’s it going?”, but “Did you talk to your wife about tipping?” Johnathan restrained himself from saying what he really wanted to say (“HOW RUDE!”) and just said, “You know what? Nevermind.” And then we became former customers.

Being expected to tip for a service that we are paying for is a bit ridiculous. I don’t tip the guys who change the oil on my car or the service technician who comes to install internet service at my apartment. I am not tipping for inconsistent laundry service that I am paying for. It is an advertised service that they don’t even do very well. We won’t be going back except maybe to use up the rest of the money on our cards if we absolutely have to do that. We won’t be going back otherwise. We’re going back to the 24-hour place with the creepy lady who asks too many personal questions because at least we know what kind of service we’ll get there.

I’m sad that it happened this way. I still don’t like doing laundry because it takes so long and, well, I just don’t like doing it! But if it means we know our clothes are cleaned, unharmed, unstretched and we don’t have to tip someone for a service we’ve already paid for, I’m for it. We’ll look out for another service, but I’m not hopeful we’ll find any reasonable alternatives. The owner of that laundromat was so nice, but I have to think he must be really disconnected from his property because things there are not exactly running smoothly. It’s a great idea, and their machines are nice, but would I recommend it to anyone else? Not a chance. The swank machines are not worth the headache of dealing with the staff.

Until the release date of Toy Story 3, it was at 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes according to the professional reviewers (T-Meter Critics). Enter a few contrarian jerks. On the release date of Toy Story 3, long after many of the reviews had already been posted, a couple of stray reviews were posted, stating that Toy Story 3 was rotten. This has ruined Toy Story’s perfect streak on the website, with both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 remaining at 100% fresh ratings, robbing it of the chance to be the only trilogy ever with a perfect 100% rating. Another negative review showed up on Sunday, making Toy Story 3′s rating a sadly imperfect 98%.

If the reviews were genuine, if they had real criticisms about the movie, I wouldn’t be so incensed by this. I admit, the Pixar fangirl inside of me would be annoyed, but if they were real reviews, that would certainly mitigate the fury that I feel right now at these three men, who can only really be characterized as assholes. Yeah, I said it.

One reviewer, Armond White, has a history of giving contrary reviews. If everyone loves it, inevitably, he hated it. He criticizes Toy Story 3 for having too much product placement, though he gives no explicit examples of how Toy Story 3 has any more product placement than either of the other Toy Story films. The blurb on Rotten Tomatoes reads: “Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination — the usefulness of toys — and strictly celebrates consumerism.” In the full review, his main point seems to be that the movie is about toys, and that’s just not a good movie! Wow, how useful. He has gotten a lot of attention for his negative review, something I suspect was not on accident, and has managed to say absolutely nothing about why he has cursed the movie with the “rotten” rating. What is the point of a review if the reviewer cannot actually tell his readers why he did or didn’t like it? That’s left for us non-professional reviewers, who are allowed, by dint of not doing it professionally, to have an opinion of “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.” We don’t have to ascertain whether the movie is good, merely whether we enjoyed it or not, and those are two vastly different things. He has cheated us all out of a real review by preferring to have a different opinion than everyone else on this and other popular films. (It’s not the first time he’s panned a fan and critic favorite.)

The second reviewer who posted his negative review on Friday is Cole Smithey. His blurb is this: “Once you get past paying the inflated price for an animated “3-D” movie where nothing floats in front of your eyes as with quality 3-D films, the story that unfolds is more sad than joyful.” I am amazed at how he has managed to say absolutely nothing critical about the movie itself other than the fact that it was sad. Really? A movie is sad? This makes it bad, apparently. His opinion of the 3D is equally ridiculous, since it seems like he wants the gimmicky 3D with things “flying” at his head. (That’s the first time I’ve seen anyone other than a kid want that experience.) Smithey’s website claims he’s the smartest film critic in the world. For a man that smart, one would think he’d be able to come up with more than a couple of short paragraphs about why he hated this otherwise universally loved film. “‘Toy Story 3′ is about neglect, betrayal, and the planned obsolescence of plastic toys that end up as so much toxic landfill.” And this is a bad message for the film, apparently, to have. Maybe if he spent his time focusing less on the fact that Andy had enough sentimental attachment to keep his childhood toys until he was 17 (I still have  my Holly bear, and I’m 25 in two days. What does that say about me, eh?) – Smithey implies that Andy can’t possibly be getting any dates as a result of his emotional attachment to toys that he’s had since he was a small kid) – he would have seen that the movie is less about the sad reality that eventually we all have to put away toys and do grown-up things for the majority of our lives. His review is forced at best, and he says nothing about what makes the film other than it includes themes like abandonment and the danger of planned obsolescence. Gee, definitely not things that people have to deal with in real life! And he totally ignores the ending, claiming that the film is sociopathic and promotes the wrong message to kids. Definitely don’t donate your toys to daycares or other smaller kids, folks! Definitely don’t do what you can to ensure that your old toys don’t end up in landfill, but instead go to other kids who will enjoy them as much as you did! Definitely don’t form emotional attachments to your toys that give you fond memories of your childhood, or you’ll never get any dates! Yep, I totally see it.

The third negative review that Toy Story 3 has been smacked with is by Jeremy Heilman. I’m not really sure what I can say about his review except that he totally pans Toy Story 3, calling the plot threadbare and accusing it of being a rehash of Toy Story 2. This man gave a more favorable review to a movie called The Human Centipede, in which people bite the butts of a person in front of them, forming a long line – in essence, a human centipede. What the hell? How can a movie like that garner more favor than Toy Story 3? He accuses:  “Toy Story 3 frequently indulges in the cheap brand of crass humor that has defined that series, with fart jokes, ethnic jokes, and gay jokes throughout its run time.” I’m not sure what movie he was watching, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Toy Story 3. This smacks of attention whoring to me – giving a negative review late, destined to be on the front page of Rotten Tomatoes, and scarring the reputation of an otherwise well-loved film.

These men do movie reviews at least semi-professionally. They are the ones that the rest of us look to (in theory) to help us decide whether a movie is worth our time and money. How are we supposed to trust any reviewer when there are those who are willing to give negative reviews simply for the sake of doing so, or for the attention that will inevitably follow for being in such a minority? There ought to be a level of integrity expected from those whose job it is to tell us whether something is good or bad. These reviewers should have some kind of check and balance to keep them from habitually panning fan and critic favorites for the sake of being contrary. You like a specific genre better than others, yet you review all genres? You are not a reviewer whose opinion should be broadcast to the general public, because what you are spreading is a false representation of the truth. Perhaps you don’t like this film (and that goes for any film), but if you have a history of disliking specific kinds of films, how is that a real review? It isn’t a criticism of the film itself, it is a criticism of the genre, disguised as a review for a specific film.

In the case of Toy Story 3, these reviewers have gamed the system and gotten away with it at the loss of something that Toy Story 3 and the Toy Story series deserve: a perfect record. The people at Pixar have poured their hearts and souls into this film, and it shows, just as it has with all of the ten films released previous to this. They strove to tell a good story, and they did. The only people in the world who disagree are these three assholes who can’t even manage to say anything real or valid about why they don’t agree that it was a cinematically well-told story.

Roger Ebert called Armond White a troll last summer for his inconsistent review history, and I’m going to go one further: Armond White, Cole Smithey and Jeremy Heilman: You are all trolls of the worst order. You don’t deserve to write reviews that other people are expected to take seriously. I hope Rotten Tomatoes yanks your T-Meter Critic status.

Disclaimer: I loved Toy Story 3. I am very incensed by what these men have written, but I think you should know that my bias in the other direction regarding this single film may affect your view of my thoughts here.

Fifteen years ago, the very first Toy Story film came out. I was ten years old, and I remember going to the theater to see it. I remember being amazed at how real everything looked, and loving the story. I thought Woody was the best toy ever, and Rex was one cool dude. I remember getting toys from Burger King, of all places, and playing with them a lot. (They were hand-puppets. Possibly the coolest kid’s meal toys that ever existed.)

In 1999, I was 14. Toy Story 2 came out and my mom again took us to see it. I remember being amazed that not only was it good (and sequels had a bad reputation by that time), but it was just as good if not better than the original! How could they manage such a feat? And then they released it with bloopers a couple of weeks later, and back to the theater I went, for the sole purpose of seeing it with the blooper reel at the end. It probably didn’t hurt that I loved the movie.

For the last eleven years, I’ve been enjoying both Toy Story and Toy Story 2, thinking that was all there was to the franchise, and thinking that was just fine. I was okay with Andy staying a kid in my imagination. And then I heard that there was going to be Toy Story 3. I was immediately skeptical. I mean, Pixar managed to capture lightning in a bottle twice with the Toy Story, erm, story. Could they really expect to do it a third time? Some of my fears were put to rest when we accidentally got to be part of a Q&A with Lee Unkrich, the director of Toy Story 3, at a screening of The Pixar Story at the Cleveland International Film Festival in March, 2008. He was so excited about Toy Story 3, about 3D, about all the things that both Disney and Pixar would be doing in the future, that it was impossible to decry the company as an imminent failure and the movie as dreck. (Not that I would ever, ever say such a thing! Perish the thought! Ahem.)

Since I now follow Lee Unkrich on Twitter, it was only natural to get excited as I heard him enthusing about the various stages of production over the last year or so. He posted countdowns, letting us know that Toy Story 3 was only months away, and then weeks, then days from release. How could I not get excited? Excitement, however, only leads to more worry, as it can often lead to the horrible feeling of anticipointment. (See: Ponyo.) I knew that we would have to see the movie on opening day, though. I couldn’t risk having the movie spoiled for me, and I definitely wanted to enjoy this movie without any expectations as to what the plot had in store (other than as seen in the trailer, of course).

On release day, we showed up at Crocker Park for our 9PM showing maybe a little early. We’re talking two hours early. Whoops. Radio Disney had a booth set up outside the theater where they were giving away prizes and encouraging all the kids to come and dance. I’m sure it was a major boon for the theaters those kids were in that they’d been dancing in the hot sun for a while and were likely to be slightly more subdued by the time they got in to the movie. Or maybe it just riled them up even more. Who knows? We hung out in the Borders next door for a while, and then about an hour ahead, walked over to the movie theater. We got a drink, and sat for a few, expecting to be let in probably forty to forty-five minutes early. We tried to go in, and the boy said that it would be about twenty minutes before he could let us in. Oh! Eventually a line formed for the Toy Story 3 showing in 3D, theater 6. We got let in at around 8:45, and some people ran to the theater as if all the seats would run out before they got there. We got seats in the back and settled in for the start of the movie.

First, I’d like to commend those who worked on the short. I loved it. Day & Night was charming and interesting, and while it’s obvious that it was Pixars traditional computer animation, it also had a feeling of some of the drawn cartoons that I watched as a kid. The combination was really neat. I loved the use of sound effects, too – it was clever and well-done.

We saw Toy Story 3 both in 2D and 3D. We saw the 3D first, so that factors more into my thoughts about the film at the moment. The opening Pixar logo in 3D was really fun. It had such depth, and the way that it was rendered wasn’t gimmicky at all. Really – one of the things that stood out to me was the opening logo. Weird? Maybe. But it was cool! Then, after waiting for three years (since hearing of the film at The Pixar Story), it was finally time to see Toy Story 3.

The movie starts with an action-adventure feeling, featuring all of Andy’s toys. It’s difficult to know why this is going on at first, but it was exciting to watch the toys in action sequences more fitting for the kinds of characters that they are. Wild west, anyone? We find out later that it’s Andy’s imagination as he’s playing with his toys, and then he gets interrupted by mom with her video camera. It’s a sweet opening sequence, reminding us of the Andy that the toys (and we, by proxy) loved in Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Then we come to real time. Andy is grown up. He has graduated from high school and is off to college in a matter of days. The toys make a last-ditch effort to draw his attention to the toy box in which they have languished for years, waiting for him to realize how important they are to him. And it doesn’t work.

Andy’s mom shows up and gives him an ultimatum: he needs to sort through his stuff before he leaves to college. College, attic and trash are the categories he has to choose from, and with a heavy sigh, he decides to make some hard decisions about his toys. They’re going into the attic, with the exception of Woody, who’s going to college with him. But then – disaster strikes! Of course it does, it’s a movie! Andy is silly enough to put the toys into a trash bag to put them into the attic, but he is distracted by Molly, who is taking a box of her own old toys downstairs to be donated to Sunnyside daycare. He helps her take the box downstairs and leaves his bag on the floor, right under the stairs to the attic. Mom finds them and assumes the bag is trash. Because … it’s a trash bag. And it’s on the floor. What else is she going to assume?

The toys are being thrown out! They start freaking out! They manage to use Rex’s tail and escape from the trash bag, just in time not to be picked up by the garbage man (cameo: Sid Phillips! I love how self-referential Pixar films are). They do their usual “hide under something and run” trick to get into the garage, where they get into Andy’s mom’s car and deposit themselves into the donation box. Woody tries to talk them out of it, assuring them that they were meant for the attic, not the dump, but nobody believes him (as usual!), and they all end up en route to Sunnyside.

Now we have the plot and the conflict, and I’ll leave you at that. I don’t want to summarize the whole movie because it feels much more clinical than actually watching it. No amount of summary could do justice to this movie.

Toy Story 3 is really a celebration of everything that Pixar is capable of, and of how far it has come in the fifteen years that they’ve been producing feature films. It’s amazing to me to watch and see that the screws on Buzz look so real that they could have been film instead of animation. The attention to detail is, as always, incredible. It’s a beautiful movie as far as the rendering is concerned. But the beauty doesn’t end there – it also has a beautiful story. Andy grows up and goes to college, but the toys are given new hope for the future; hope that they’ll be played with and enjoyed for years to come by a kid just as wonderful as Andy himself. (I know, I spoiled that bit. I gave a warning waaaaaay up at the top that I would!) It was so sweet to watch her, and also to think about the precious toys that I have had packed away since I grew too old to play with them and also too old to have them on display. (It’s maybe weird for a married alm0st-twenty-five-year-old to have her stuffed animals out for viewing.) I pulled Holly bear out of her box when I got home after seeing the movie on Friday night. I slept with her for the first time since probably high school, maybe longer. She smells the same as I remember – like whatever fabric softener my mom used to use when she’d wash the bear for the umpteenth time. I thought about Andy giving up his toys, and it made me emotional all over again. Could I do that with Holly? Not a chance.

Two days later, I can’t even adequately describe how the movie made me feel. I laughed, I cried (3D glasses are good for hiding the tears, but they do nothing for muffling the sniffles that accompany), I got nervous and excited. It was 103 minutes of movie bliss. We saw the movie again yesterday with Johnathan’s mom, and I’m going to suggest we go to see it at the drive-in next weekend (we did the same with both Wall-E and Up), so that we can talk during the film and nobody will get mad at us for it.

My favorite moment while watching the movie for the first time came not from the movie itself, but from the two or three year old girl who was sitting next to us. She really didn’t have a whisper voice, or even an inside voice, which was pretty annoying most of the time. She redeemed herself only by saying possibly the most funny thing I’ve ever heard a child say at just the right moment. In reference to a scene with Mr. Potato Head: “He looks more like Mr. PoTaco head!” I had to stifle my giggles because the moment onscreen was definitely not as funny as what I had heard. Yes, little girl, he did look like Mr. PoTaco head!

I loved Toy Story 3. So much. There’s really nothing else I can say in praise of this wonderful movie. Can you believe that Pixar has done it eleven times now? Eleven successes! Way to go, Pixar!

I do sometimes wish that he had lived somewhere other than Cleveland, though. I’ve really tried to like it here. The summertime is pretty, but so hot and muggy that it’s almost impossible to enjoy it. The winter is cold and gray. Spring and fall seem to have identity crises where they’re really not sure whether they’re maybe actually winter or perhaps summer instead, rather than a smooth transition into the next weather swing. I cannot deny that Cleveland has some beauty and charm to it. I mean, there’s charm in the cottonwood fluff that made the grass look snow-covered a couple of weeks ago, and I like seeing the leaves turn in the fall. But there’s just something about the fact that the Cuyahoga river has caught on fire more than once that doesn’t scream “ecological mecca” to me.

Cleveland has buildings. They are not the tallest buildings, or the grandest, but a few of them are very nice to look at. I especially like Terminal Tower, which has a stateliness to it that I find very appealing. I love the Playhouse Square area, with all of its theaters and bright, shiny signs. I can’t help myself. I love the lights. (And the theater that goes on inside isn’t so bad, either!)

But ultimately, I have a feeling of vague antipathy about Cleveland. I’m not alone, it seems. A few months ago, there was a news article – one of those “Best of/Worst of” kind of lists that everyone loves to read but nobody really believes because some of the info seems so far off of what we know. Forbes named Cleveland the most miserable city in the United States. I seem to be the only one who was not surprised by this. In fact, afterward, the Cleveland tourism folks and some Cleveland-centric magazine started a Twitter meme: #happyinCLE+. (The + doesn’t stick, so it has since morphed to just #happyinCLE.) People were encouraged to tweet about why they were happy living in Cleveland. It came off badly, I felt, because it looked like people were just trying way too hard to find ways in which one could be happy in Cleveland. And, to be frank, a lot of them were cases of being happy and also being in Cleveland, so it totally missed the point anyway. It did get me thinking about my status in this metropolis, however. I’m happy enough. And I am, in fact, in the greater Cleveland area. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I am happy to be in Cleveland.

Cleveland has a kind of self-loathing that people here seem to almost hold as a badge of honor. Nobody really seems to actually like Cleveland, except for odd moments when something nice is happening and they’re there for it. Nobody really admits it, but people are proud to have bumper stickers that say “Cleveland: At least we’re not Detroit”. That doesn’t exactly scream civic pride. There seems to be a pervading attitude of distrust of your fellow person, too. People will stare you down, just to ensure you know that they are aware of your presence, so don’t try anything funny. I witness this everywhere in this area, not jut the more active parts of town. We could be going into a store to pick up a gallon of milk, and someone might end up giving us the fisheye of suspicion.

There seems to me to be a lack of things to do. “No!” my coworkers insist. “There’s lots to do in Cleveland!” So I ask them what. And then there is a very pregnant pause. And after exhausting the museums, the zoo, Playhouse Square and the West Side Market, everyone seems to be stumped. And then, do you know what the next thing on the list is? Bars. That’s the best thing people have managed to come up with. “Well, I know this great bar over by…” And food. “Have you been to the Cheesecake Factory? I love that place!” I admit that I have not yet been to the museums, but I’ve managed to do everything else on the list, save for the bars. We’re making our way through Little Italy, one restaurant at a time, and we’ve tried a few local Thai and Indian food places, but for the most part, the chains are way easier to find than the independent, local places. (Unless you want to pay an arm and a leg to eat down on East 4th at Pickwick and Frolic or one of Michael Symon’s restaurants, which I’d like to do, but isn’t exactly in the budget for now.)

So, what is life in Cleveland for me? It is surviving. Chicago opened my eyes (and Johnathan’s) to what life could be, and to what a city should be. We realized that there’s just something lacking here in Cleveland, and that ultimately, we’re settling. We’re not really living, just surviving, and that’s no way to be. I want to move somewhere, and we’re still talking very seriously about moving next year to Portland, but who knows at this point. We’ve both realized that it is not an option to stay in Cleveland. Cheap cost of living is no reason to stay in a place that feels like it is perpetually heading downhill. I’m sure someday Cleveland will come back and thrive, but I’m not willing to wait it out here until it does.

I know that Cleveland will always be a part of our lives. Johnathan’s parents are here, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be coming back for the Cleveland International Film Festival in the future, but I can’t see it remaining our place of residence. I’m sad that Cleveland hasn’t turned out to be quite what I expected, or even something that I could grow to love after two years and nine months. Life in Cleveland isn’t living, though, and I can’t keep putting off life forever.

Time Warner, I was going to write a letter to you detailing how much trouble we’ve had over the last month and a half trying to get our service to work consistently. However, having worked for the company, I know that any information I could get regarding where to send letters would go off to some possibly mythical person whose address, if I recall correctly, is somewhere in North Carolina, and who never actually makes return correspondence. Even when I worked for your company, I was pretty sure that he wasn’t a real person. I felt that I shouldn’t have to deal with that, and that leaves me with a few options. I can try to call up the food chain, but I know for a fact that will do absolutely no good. It’s easier to contract Creutzfeld-Jakob disease than it is to get a supervisor on the phone. I know that sending a letter to the walk-in centers would do no good. They can’t do anything but hand the letter to their own supervisors who will probably not do anything about it, and to be honest – what we want is someone who can do something about this to be able to fix some of these problems. And they can’t. It’s just not in their job scope to do so.

So where does that leave me? The internet. So, here is my little letter to you, detailing our frustration with all of the brick walls we’ve run smack into while trying to rectify the issues with our internet service.

Very early in May, we started having recurring issues with our internet service. It started to go down for long periods of time, and modem reboots most certainly did not help bring it back. At first, it was happening between 9 and 9:30PM on an almost nightly basis. That was pretty annoying, but it did eventually come back. We called once while it was down and the person on the phone sent a hit to the modem and was ready to call it good. Of course, I know that didn’t really do anything since by the time she sent the hit, our service had already popped back in. But, since it did come back, we were willing to say “okay” and let it go. Then it continued to happen. A few days later, we called back. We were able to get a trouble calls for a few days later in a late enough window that we would both be home for it. The tech checked our signal levels (because of course it wasn’t down while he was there), and took a filter off of our line that had been put on when we got our cable in September 2008. He said we were all better.

Everything was fine for a couple of days, so we thought maybe he was right. I wish. It started happening again. We called in to customer service and this time we were able to “escalate” our issue to tier 2. Tier 2 did some looking around and couldn’t find anything wrong. Go figure. So we scheduled another tech call. Our second call was about the same as the first. He monitored our lines and determined that as far as he could tell, everything was fine. He checked the lines outside and declared that they were a little loose. He said that was probably the issue and that we were all better! We were, understandably I think, skeptical, but we took him at his word. He was very polite so that helped his case.

Within days, the issue began again. We called and managed to get up to tier 3 this time. Once again, nobody could find any problems with our service, but a ticket was opened anyway after we explained what happened. It took Johnathan showing his technical savvy to get them to take us seriously, which is an entirely different issue. We were getting pretty frustrated by now, and since the next tech call would be our third, we wanted to ensure we would get a senior technician. The first problem with this was that we were given an up to three-day window for a supervisor call-back to schedule the call. So not only would we have to wait up to three days for the tech supervisor to call, but we would also then have to wait until whenever s/he could schedule our service call. We were willing to wait, because we just wanted the issue resolved, but also requested a service call in the meantime so that the tech could replace the modem.

The tech showed up on time, although didn’t call (none of them ever did call ahead of time), and we figured it would be quick. Little did we know that this call would be the biggest disaster yet. First of all, he wanted to crawl into the closet where our line came in. That was fine. He decided that a splitter that was put in at our installation was probably at fault, so he took it out. Whatever, as long as it works in the end. He checked our signal and declared it fine (which was never in doubt, as when the internet was working it was at normal speed, but the issue was that it would not always work). He decided he wanted to pull up some diagnostics. So he asked to use Johnathan’s computer. I thought that was strange, but Johnathan acquiesced. Then there was a moment of horror for us – he was unable to use the keyboard because some of the letters had rubbed off. And since I was booted into Linux and in a game that I would not be exiting out of, he was forced to have Johnathan type things in for him. So … he gave Johnathan the URL, ID and password to a tech diagnostic tool that the area techs used on calls. It seems strange that he was so willing to give this information out to customers, not least to put it into their personal computers. Then, he was prepared to leave after “proving” that there was nothing wrong with our service. We insisted that he replace the modem, which was the whole reason for the call in the first place. We like to cover our bases, so wanted that done – just in case. He did so, but begrudgingly and it was very clear that he did not think it was necessary and was only doing it because we insisted. Then he proceeded to condescendingly explain how to plug things in and in what  order they should be plugged in. We explained to him that not only do we know what we’re doing, but he was being rude and we asked him to leave. It was that or do something more drastic, and nobody needed that.

We continued to have problems with our service and called customer service several times to update customer service of this fact. Our most recent call was on Thursday, June 3, after our internet went down the night before and still was not back as of 7AM. I was scheduled to work from home that day and it was the first time I needed the internet to work since we’d started having that problem. Johnathan called because I was so angry that I would have said mean things to people who don’t deserve it, and after assuring the girl on the phone that we did not need any troubleshooting, that no, a hit would not fix it and neither would restarting our modem, and would she please just schedule a trouble call for us, he left for work and I wandered up to Caribou Coffee to do some work for there. Our call was to be that day between 2 and 4PM, so I planned to work from the coffee shop until I was able to wander back to the apartment. Thankfully, the internet came back at about 11AM so I was able to work from home for the rest of the day, but I knew my afternoon could be interrupted at any time, so I tried not to get too involved in anything. 2PM rolled around and I started pulling back on the number of things I was involved in. 2:30, 3PM, 3:30, still no tech. I know the window means that the tech can arrive anywhere between 2 and 4, and that it does not mean that he has to be done by 4. Prepared with this knowledge, I waited until 4PM until I got angry. No tech showed up. I checked our door – no tag. There was no van on the street and no van in the parking lot, so I surmised that I would not be seeing a tech.

Later that night, owing to the still inconsistent service and lack of tech during our trouble call, Johnathan called Time Warner, this time to cancel. We’d had enough. He called AT&T, our only other option (unless we’re willing to deal with dial-up), and scheduled service to start. To our dismay, we got an incredibly helpful rep on the phone this time. Her name was Kim and she was easily the best representative we spoke to during this whole fiasco (the online support via Twitter being second-best, only because they had no way to get us in touch with anyone locally). She was able to assess the problem and discover that there was an ongoing problem with our node dropping people between – you guessed it – 9 and 9:30PM on a regular basis. Well. Color me shocked. We asked her to disconnect our service effective June 10th, at which point we would have new service installed and our DSL modem would have arrived. We also asked her to tell us the details of the trouble call that never was. This was the best part of the call, I think. She told us that the call had been canceled at 2:20PM. Right during our window! The reason listed was “outage”. We were given no notification whatsoever of this cancellation, and as a result, I was fairly unproductive for two hours of work. If I had taken the time off, I would be even angrier, since it meant waiting around for that whole window, only to have the tech not show up. I also know that had I called any time during that window, I would have been told that I had to wait until after the window had passed because the tech had the whole window to show up. So there was no way for me to find out.

Our internet went out shortly after we got off of the phone with Kim, but at that point we had just resigned ourselves to not having consistent service and consoled ourselves with the knowledge that we would be getting service from another provider shortly thereafter. We had very little connectivity on Friday (a minute now and then, but nothing lasting), none on Saturday, Sunday or Monday. Tuesday, we’d had enough. What was the point of paying for service if you had none? So we called Time Warner. Only to find out, as it were, that our service had apparently been end-dated as of Thursday the 3rd, which meant we’d really not had any service that whole time. I’m not sure how to explain the small pockets of uptime that we had, but I’m taking the person on the phone at her word. We’ll be returning the modem this weekend and finally be done dealing with Time Warner Cable.

I have tried to be nice about this. I used to work for the company, and while it was a major relief to me when I no longer had to deal with the red tape and bureaucracy, I have been a major defender of the cable company. I know how things work and which things are under their control and which are not. I know what to expect from customer service and what to expect from the techs. I won’t claim that our issue was routine – obviously it was not an easy fix or it would have been fixed, I have full faith in that. But the ability for so many people to drop the ball and continually accuse the same things (our router – which was not and is not the issue) of causing the problem, including a tech supervisor, is unacceptable. On Wednesday, we received a call from a tech supervisor who claimed to have monitored our signal for thirteen days and saw no issues. He defended the technician who we asked politely to leave our apartment, and implied that the tech who canceled our call was that selfsame person. Somehow this was justification for why he canceled our call with absolutely no notification. I’m not sure. He also let us know that the problem had to be something that was outside of Time Warner’s control (implying, once again, that our router was at fault – or worse, that we, who work in IT and are up front about that, would not have verified that our computers were functioning properly).

Something that has really bothered me through this whole process is that no matter how polite, no matter how calm we remained on the phone, we were often met with surliness and defenses of varying sorts. The people on the phone are apparently so often harassed that even those who are not irate are dealt with as if they are about to say something completely inappropriate. And continually, the third-party router was blamed as the problem. Even when we were getting no signal to the modem, even after unplugging the router and plugging directly into the modem and the signal did not return, the router was blamed. Third-party routers are the scapegoats of all internet issues with Time Warner Cable. I knew that when I worked there, but I did not know the scale of this fact. We will be connecting our third-party router to our DSL modem, and I guarantee that it will work without consistently dropping our signal at the same time nightly. I’m genuinely shocked, given this behavior, that our browser of choice (Firefox and sometimes Chrome) and our operating systems of choice (Linux) weren’t called into question as well.

All in all, Time Warner, you can see that we have been dealt with very badly. We were treated like idiots and it was implied at one point that the problem was essentially imaginary. I have realistic expectations of the level of service that we would receive. We don’t expect perfect customer service on the phone, but we do expect a reasonable level of uptime with our internet. I do not expect 100% uptime – that would be unreasonable. I don’t expect for Time Warner to credit me for power outages or because I go out of town and don’t use my service. I do expect the service that I am paying for to work, especially at $40/month. AT&T costs a little bit more and the max speed is a little bit slower, but so far our interactions with them have been pleasant.

I am disappointed that my relationship with Time Warner Cable ended the way that it did, both as an employee and as a customer. There were a lot of problems with the customer service and tech support that we received and we do, in fact, blame the corporation for all of it. There is no excuse for the attitude of the people on the phone, of the technicians and certainly of the tech supervisor, whose behavior I find the most reprehensible.

We have terminated our relationship with your company and plan to do everything we can to avoid getting your service again. This is a shame, because you have some interesting ideas and some good services. But if they don’t even work then what’s the point?

Your company could do with a major customer service overhaul. I won’t hold my breath.

Sincerely, and with the hopes that you will take this seriously,

Laura, who really just wants working internet service

The interaction got me thinking (and talking) about what feminism means. I have heard a lot of people refuse to identify themselves as feminists, usually while enjoying the freedoms that feminism has awarded us over the years: voting, working at whatever we like, heck – wearing pants! So why not identify as a feminist? It seems that the people who refuse to identify as feminists are misunderstanding the message behind feminism. They believe that it is about women dominating, about women being on top instead of men. This type of feminism tends to be very ugly. It is often about hating and reviling men, about insulting them and proclaiming (frequently) how women are so much better. This is not feminism as I know it. I’m not even sure what to call it that isn’t insulting to anyone. But it sure as heck isn’t feminism.

Feminism, to me, is the idea of perfect equality. It is the idea that women and men can have equal opportunities that have nothing to do with their gender. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter what our chromosomal makeup was, but rather what our skills are when it comes to finding a job. It wouldn’t matter what we look like – we’d just be people. Male, female, whatever we identify as – doesn’t matter. I’m a person and you’re a person and the rest is just details. That’s the ideal, and it’s one that I don’t expect to see in my lifetime, although I will continue to hope for it.

The trouble that’s easy to run into with any “wave” or form of feminism is that the message is easily distorted. Some have distorted the message in such a way as to believe that in order to be equal to men, we must act like men. So, we wear trousers and act gruff and aggressive, and because of sexism which has persisted through the years, these women who act masculine are ridiculed for it, especially if they find successful careers in doing it. And by changing themselves in such a way, they have taken a step back in for the feminist cause. They have confirmed that to be successful, one must be male, or at least behave in the way that males are expected to behave. A woman, therefore, cannot succeed unless she sheds all that is feminine about herself. It is a very discouraging outlook. The ones who try to retain their femininity are often looked over as being too soft. Any woman who wants to have a family as well as work is ridiculed and likely to be left behind her male counterparts because in some way or another, she is expected to balance the demands of work with the demands of home, whereas men are expected to ignore the demands of home. If you ask me, this is a disservice in expectations for both sides.

Men and women both suffer while we are unable to find a fairness and equality that is sustainable. Men are expected to behave in a certain way, to want certain things. And these things usually do not include the pursuits of home. I don’t know any stay-at-home dads, but I’m sure if I did I would know that they were ridiculed by others who believe that they are doing something that is somehow considered unnatural. It’s okay to expect a woman to stay at home to care for home and children, but if a man were to want that for himself, he would be considered a freak. A woman who doesn’t somehow want that very existence is too masculine. If she wants pursuits outside of the home, she is doing a disservice to her family and causing the ruination of society. But if she does want to stay home, she is an empty-headed drone who doesn’t do any real work. There is no winning situation here that I can find.

Feminism is not about deciding that one group of people is better than another. That is the complete reverse of the purpose of feminism. Feminism began as a movement to give women equal standing in the government and social life. It was intended, not to put men down, but to lift women up. It was not to make everyone the same, but to make our differences less of a factor in decision-making and in the distribution of legal and social rights. Feminism is then, to me, the basic rights of all people to have the same thing as everyone else. It has less to do with women being better than men and more to do with women wanting a voice in government and the right to work if they want. Men should have the right not to have a traditional career if that is what they want. Should, of course, being the key. It is not the generally accepted way of life yet.

I suppose what I’m getting at is that I think there are people out there who totally don’t get it. Feminism is not about avoiding things that have previously been considered tasks or jobs that women did. It’s not about one gender being better than another. It isn’t about what we wear or how we act. It’s simply about our equality as human beings. Not pursuing a hobby or career because women used to do it is completely missing the point and is really taking a step back as far as equality goes.

Feminism goes far beyond the simplicity of gender equality (which isn’t so simple at all). It extends to careers, hobbies, interests, preferences, politics… it’s about being willing to accept that people don’t always fit into prescribed roles, and that’s okay. It’s definitely about accepting that hobbies and interests and politics are not governed by gender. It’s absolutely about an open-mindedness that allows us to understand that not everyone’s life experience will even come close to our own. It’s about being allowed to be whoever we want to be and not be ridiculed or denied rights for it. In reality, the term feminism means a lot more than “women’s rights” or voting equality or workplace equality or any number of other things that feminism has had to actively campaign for in the past.

I identify proudly as a feminist. I will continue to knit because I enjoy it. I will continue to read books branded as “girly”, not because they are for girls but because I think they are good books. I will continue to watch the so-termed chick flicks because I like them. It has nothing to do with my gender, and it doesn’t make me in any way inferior to the man or woman who happens to enjoy slapstick humor and action movies and shoot-’em-up video games. We are, at our core, the same. We are human. We just like different things. That’s cool with me. You let me like what I like, I’ll let you like what you like, and we’ll all get along better for it.

Feminism shouldn’t ever be about hating anyone else. It should be about acceptance and ultimately about understanding that there are people who do and like different things than we do. Feminism is love, open-mindedness, acceptance and absolute equality.

And then sometimes, I just want to not care anymore. I want to be that person who doesn’t think too hard about anything, and who can take everything at simple face value. I want to give in to belief in stereotypes and become one myself. I want to believe that the world really is as simplistic as other people would like it to seem, that everything and everyone can be neatly categorized and that people work in specific behavior patterns, regardless of upbringing and societal influence.

It’s a hard line to walk sometimes. I get so frustrated with the world sometimes over things that I have no way of changing, and that’s when I swing back toward the urge not to care. Ultimately, I know I can’t just stop caring. I can’t unlearn the things I’ve learned, and I certainly can’t change myself to the point of being willing to ignore such big social issues. So where in this is the balance? I have a really hard time finding it. I don’t want to stop caring, that’s for certain, but how do I find that level where I’m caring enough, but not too much?

I don’t know. It’s something to think about. I feel I have a social responsibility to stand up to stereotypes and social double-standards, but it’s not easy to walk that path, and it’s not easy to stay rational, sometimes, while doing it. It is too easy to swing too far in one direction or the other, either shunning all responsibility and giving in to social mindlessness, or caring too much and trying to govern the thoughts and actions of others.

For now, I will have to settle for not knowing where that happy middle is. I will continue to challenge the ideas of those around me while also trying to challenge my own ideas as often as possible, checking and re-checking my beliefs for truth and conviction. And I’m probably going to be damn confused while I do it for a long time. I suppose that’s normal.

I’m learning that social responsibility is not for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of courage to really stand up for something – even the typical gender stereotypes that are so easily believed. I have a goal in mind and I think it will take a long time before I find out where I’m supposed to stand in the “scheme” of things when it comes to responsibly defying social norms in favor of what is right.

We were cleaning up the apartment, rearranging furniture, doing dishes, etc. We had just started the dishwasher and were wrapping up the cleaning we were going to do. I opened the fridge to put my leftovers back in, and poof. Pure darkness. Lots of quiet. I thought maybe we’d blown a fuse because my desk lamp was on in the computer room, but that wasn’t so. It was the only light on, and as it turns out, it was plugged into my UPS so was still being powered. Whoops. So no power. The whole building was down. Once we located flashlights, we found out that not only was the building down, but it looked like the whole street was out, too! The two big cross-streets were dark.

It turns out that pretty much everything that we want to do requires power or at least light. I’ve gotta say, it doesn’t sound fun to try to play Scrabble or Monopoly with flashlights. Reading a book would be fine for me, but Johnathan’s not much of a reader, so what would he do? Impasse. Naturally, our next solution was to go for a walk! Well, it wasn’t the next thing we thought of, but it was too eerily quiet to do anything that the neighbors might potentially hear. I mean, there was no ambient noise at all except for the cars on the nearby streets and the apartment tenants chatting to each other, postulating what might have happened to cause the outage. No dice there. So we went for a walk.

Despite it being May, it’s been really chilly lately, with our highs back down to the low 50′s Fahrenheit. We donned our coats and I put on my lovely Signe hat and a-walking we went. I took the Maglight that my dad gave to me about ten years ago. It’s a nice long one. I had a weapon in case someone got a little too pushy or something on our usually-pretty-safe-looking street. It was strange how dark everything was when we were walking up to the street. We could see who was still awake and making due with whatever they had that didn’t require electricity to light up and who had just given up and gone to bed already.

When we got up to the intersection near our apartment, we decided it would probably be best not to try to cross the four-lane street. People were having a really hard time with the concept of the ‘four-way stop’, since the stoplight was out. So we turned right and proceeded down the street. About a quarter mile down the street, we met a man who was just standing watching the traffic. He was able to tell us the scope of things as far as he had heard from others. Down the street into the next town, there was no power, and in the other direction, there were people without power a few miles down the road. But the street up past the highway, reportedly, had power. Interesting! We still, of course, hadn’t heard what happened, so we kept walking. I’m not sure where we thought we were going – we just kept walking, using our flashlights to check down the little alleys to ensure we weren’t going to die unexpectedly because someone decided that was the best time to clobber a random pedestrian.

We got up to a little storage facility a couple miles down the road (I’ll never be able to think of one of those without shuddering after seeing Storage at the film festival) and decided to turn around. It was late, we’d been cleaning for a few hours and I was getting pretty tired. As we walked back, I reflected on the way the area seemed to change with the power out. There was a feeling of lawlessness as nobody obeyed traffic laws and the only stoplight that I saw where people used the four-way stop behavior was the one right near our apartment, which is generally pretty busy anyway. The rest? Well, people just blew right through them. I’m surprised we didn’t witness a car accident. Everyone was suspicious, more so than they would have been in daylight or even if the power had been working. It was interesting to see that none of the businesses had generators, and few even seemed to have emergency lights. So, it was an interesting walk!

We got back to the apartment, and I was really tired. We took care of our evening ablutions and got into bed. I was just starting to drift off to sleep when a light in our computer room came on. Power was back. It had gone out for about an hour and a half in total, and we’d done a pretty darn good job of getting everything turned off. Johnathan sweetly retrieved my cell phone from his car, where we had stashed it to charge for a while since it was almost dead when the power went out, and then we both collapsed and went to sleep.

The next day, I decided to look up what happened. I found an article that reported that First Energy had a piece of equipment fail on Sunday night which took out power in our city and a few of the ones surrounding. They estimate that over 10,000 homes were without power on Sunday night. Big deal! Not like the multi-state outage of 2003 that I was told about several times. (“Don’t you remember?!” people kept asking. No! I was in Oregon! And heck, I don’t remember any major Oregon weather things from then, either. I turned 18 that year. I probably didn’t care.) But it was a pretty big deal for us and people in our area. I’m glad power came back on, because we were charging Johnathan’s cell phone with his netbook and praying we’d both wake up to his alarm when it went off. I’d hate to call in and tell my boss I’d be late because we lost power the night before!

All in all, it made a pretty exciting end to the weekend. I suspect that Johnathan and I revel in disaster situations when clearly nobody’s hurt because of it and we’re not having to work to correct it. They’re pretty exciting in those circumstances!

There’s one track on the album called Be Careful [Lyrics]. The first time I heard it, I was deeply offended. I even skipped it for a while if I recognized it coming on my media player. Then I started to let it play through, and realized it wasn’t as revolting as I had thought it was. I got to thinking about it. And now I’m just confused.

The song starts out telling the story of the character’s date with a girl named Juliette. She is quite forward, so much that she gets the check, holds the door for him and walks him home after getting his coat – everything that is “typically” expected of the male in the scenario. He goes on to say, essentially, for things to work that way. The song continues in this fashion, and at one point the lyrics state, “I like equality \ but if you’re tellin’ me \ that equal means the same, I disagree.” Well, that’s a good statement. But then what of the implications?

I’ve grown up in an era of “girl power,” where being equal to the boys still really means acting like the boys. It means using their same tactics to succeed in the same ways. Equality to me means having to fight for it – like a man. It means being willing to shed the feminine and embrace the masculine. I don’t think anything has really changed on that front, either. And the lyrics seem to say that he’s expecting the women he goes out with to be his equals, but still to embody femininity. On the surface level, I do agree. We should be able to be whatever we want – and that includes feminine – and still be able to be equals.

Then it’s time to get into gender politics. What makes a woman more feminine than a man? Is she conditioned to want to be that way and naturally follows to make herself that way? Is that something we should perpetuate. I’m no expert on the subject, but I think that there’s a lot of nurture in how we view ourselves when it comes to gender. I am female, but I think a lot of my inner drive to be feminine (which I struggle with on a regular basis) is fueled by the media – movies, TV, ads. So, is it fair to expect that the women in this hypothetical scenario would be the feminine angels? “Girls are sugar, boys are spice \ mix ‘em up, you pay the price,” the lyrics say. I don’t know about you, but I kind of like sugar and spices mixed up. Sugar’s pretty bland all on its own, but put a little cinnamon in it and it’s heavenly on some toast. Spice by itself can be overwhelming. Gender is not either-or; men can benefit from a little of what is considered feminine, and women can benefit from a little ‘traditional’ masculinity.

My main disagreement with this song seems to be rooted in my own internal gender war. I don’t know what I should expect of myself and what I want to be, so I can’t feel okay with a complete stranger’s music having expectations on me based on my gender. I like to challenge peoples’ beliefs about gender and what it dictates on a regular basis, but the truth of the matter is that I’m not even sure myself how much of my opinions, of my likes and dislikes are based on the natural inclinations I have because I’m female. I can usually pinpoint the hormonal parts – things that naturally happen to me because of the estrogen that naturally occurs in my body. But what else of my longings and interests is designated by that estrogen, by my chromosomes? Probably not my interest in purple nail polish or bright red lipstick (which I’m never brave enough to wear). Probably not my attraction to pretty, dainty, frilly things (which I almost never indulge in because they just seem too girly for me). So, is he encouraging women to give in to the media’s calls for resolute femininity? Is he even saying anything at all except that he prefers to be the more dominant one in the relationship, and prefers women to be a bit more feminine?

I’m probably reading more into this song than was ever meant. It got me thinking, though, and I listen to it over and over sometimes, just to see if I can glean anything else from it that will clear up the confusion that I feel after the song has concluded. I probably won’t get any more clarity of feeling about it until I sort out my own internal struggle of being okay with a little femininity.

Day 7 started with The Baby Formula, a Canadian “mockumentary”-style saga about a lesbian couple’s journey into dual-motherhood as they both become pregnant through ground-breaking technology which allows sperm to be created from their stem cells, thereby allowing their children to truly be of their own flesh and blood. The concept of the birth was very interesting – especially that the two could only have female children. It wasn’t something that would have occurred to me. I liked the film a lot. It gave me a bit of baby mania, but that went away, as it always does. I thought the film was very interesting, and it certainly got me thinking.

Once we got out of that one, we headed to the food court where Johnathan’s mom was waiting for us. As far as I know, she’d never gone to anything at the film festival before, so it was a new experience for her. We got something to eat, then walked her to the ticket holder lines. Johnathan stayed with her while I staked out some seats in the theater for Three Days with the Family. As far as a first experience goes, I don’t think it was the best one. The film seemed to lack plot and any driving force behind it. There was a lot that went unsaid and unexplained, and maybe I was too dense to get it, but I felt like if this was Maria’s only experience with the festival, it would not have been positive. I think that was what bothered me the most.  The characters were undeveloped and too much was left unstated for it to be a satisfying film experience.

We were seeing Chameleon next, and there wasn’t a lot of time to dawdle. We walked Johnathan’s mom to the line, and then repeated the process from the previous film. I found seats, and Johnathan joined me not long after since the ticket-holder line was getting pretty long. The film was pretty good! It was a little bit suspenseful, a little funny, a little thrilling and overall pretty entertaining. It was a film about a con-man’s latest swindle. It was interesting to watch his plan progress and see what truly can happen when someone very good at what he does loses sight of his goal and gets distracted by something else. (In this case: love.) I think it redeemed the film festival for Johnathan’s mom, so even though she didn’t see any more at the 34th CIFF, maybe she’ll come back and see some next year.

We had a reasonable break after that one, so we sauntered up to Hospitality Headquarters for a while and enjoyed some snacks. The next film we saw was The Girl on the Train, which was… disappointing. I could see how it had the potential to be very interesting, but the main character had a very low affect and very little range of emotion. That made it hard to identify with her or even develop any level of feeling for her. By the end of the film, I really just wanted to smack her. It wasn’t a very good way to end our day at the festival. We had originally planned to stay for Small Crime, but had opted against it, owing to our bad experience with last year’s Greek film, and given that we’d seen two not-so-great movies already, we just went home.

The next day started with Best of Times – a change from our original schedule. We stayed home and slept in instead of getting up at 8AM and going in to see the 11AM round of films. It threw off the whole day, but I don’t regret not going to the first film. It didn’t really interest me. Best of Times was charming and sweet with a hint of bittersweet. It was from Thailand and the way the story unfolded was paced well, and the characters were developed enough for the audience to want them to succeed. The ending was realistic – not like many romantic dramas tend to be in American cinema. I quite enjoyed it and felt it was an excellent start to our film day.

The next originally was to have been The Last Days of Emma Blank, but we swapped it for another showing on Saturday and instead saw Small Crime after hearing that it was pretty good. I don’t regret making that move, either. Small Crime turned out to be interesting and engaging, if a bit slow to develop. The story was interesting and didn’t unfold too quickly. I was afraid it would end up being too predictable, but as more and more elements were added to the story of small-town drama, the possible endings changed and the story did not end at all as I had expected. I was glad we re-arranged our schedule to fit that back in.

We had originally planned to see Mrs. Moscowitz and the Cats, but after talking with some folks before Small Crime who hadn’t heard good things about it, we changed to The Last Train Home, which had also been on one of our lists. I kind of wish we hadn’t changed. It was a documentary about the mass migration in China for the new year. It focused on one family throughout, and while it was interesting from a familial standpoint, I thought it would address the trials and hardships involved with parents having to go to big cities to work and leaving their families behind a little bit more. Instead, it really seemed to focus on the unique hardships of one specific family, and it didn’t do anything to analyze it or even tell the audience exactly how it impacted their lives. It was just shots of the family talking, traveling, things they were doing. I wasn’t overly impressed with it. I was just expecting more from it, I think.

Afterward, we had some downtime in the Hospitality Headquarters, where I had to admit that I hadn’t loved The Last Train Home to the lady who we had been talking to (who had also seen it at the same time). The last film of the day was a Slovenian film called A Call Girl. It was about a college student in Slovenia who starts to work as a call girl so that she can afford the “finer” things in life, while simultaneously avoiding her other financial responsibilities and letting her schoolwork suffer. She runs into a number of difficulties – some pimps who want to “protect” her, an ex-boyfriend hell-bent on exposing her, and pursuit from the government and the press after her peripheral involvement with a German diplomat’s death. It was an interesting story and interesting to see how her life spiraled out of her control largely because of her own decisions. I thought the film was interesting. Once again – very slow to develop. I’m sure my patience for slow development got shorter as the week wore on, but I think a lot of the films rely too much on filler shots of walking instead of engaging story developments. Then it was time to go home. Day 8 began and ended on a high note.

The first film of day 9 was Protektor, a film set during WWII in Czechoslovakia. It was interesting stylistically, but I found the characters lacking. I’m not sure if I was missing something, but it seemed to lack some cohesion. I still found the style to be very interesting, and the muted colors helped to set the tone for the film, even if the plot didn’t do much to sustain it. Overall, I wasn’t terribly impressed with it.

Next was Father and Guns. This was a French Canadian comedy about a father and son who both work for the police force and have to go undercover as, well, father and son. This was probably our most interesting film festival experience. First, they had trouble with the screen – the curtains wouldn’t widen out. We all noticed that the start of the film was most certainly not in either French or English. It was in Russian. It didn’t take very long for people to figure out that they were trying to show us Hipsters! But it seems they didn’t notice, because when the snafu with the curtains was fixed, they started it again. We got partway into the first scene before the film was stopped. I mean, I really liked Hipsters, but that wasn’t what we were there to see! After another delay while they rewound the film and threaded the right one, we got started on Father and Guns. Not five minutes into it, the film melted. It melted! At that point, we were a solid half an hour delayed, so I was already suspecting we’d miss the next round. No matter, though. Father and Guns was Johnathan’s pick, but I ended up really enjoying it. It was subtitled well so that I forgot they were speaking French and not English because it was so smooth. The film had a humor in the same spirit as Hot Fuzz but with less of the gory violence. From start to finish, I really enjoyed it. It would be one I could see owning on DVD.

Sure enough, when we got out of Father and Guns, we had about one minute to get to the other side of the cinemas into the theater for Convention. We ended up having to skip it, because we were hungry and needed a bathroom break. So we went upstairs to the Hospitality Headquarters and sat for a while. While we were up there, we encountered someone that Johnathan compares to a certain group of roller coaster fanatics. He was going on about films and how he “knows” people and can put him (the gentleman he was accosting) in touch with all the right people to get his film promoted well. He probably went on for fifteen to twenty minutes while we discreetly watched with amusement. He finally left to catch the film that was starting last in the round, and the gentleman moved to the table on the other side of us, nearer to an outlet to plug in his laptop. It was then that we found out that he was the executive producer of Ivory, which we had scheduled for our last round that day. He talked to us about the film festival and how many films we’d seen, then talked a little about his film. We had been discussing skipping it earlier in the day, but after talking to him, I sort of felt obligated to see it. He kind of struck me like a lost puppy. He didn’t totally seem to know what was going on around him, but he was very friendly! We spent the break between films redoing our weekend schedule to oust some films that we weren’t sure why they made it on the list and to add some films that we hadn’t even planned on seeing to begin with. Then it was time to go down for another film.

I Am Love looked interesting on paper. It was another film where the plot seemed meant to focus on relationships, and unfortunately, it wasn’t very well developed. Tilda Swinton was beautiful, as usual, but her character was bland. The only character that seemed to have any depth at all died near the end of the film. Well, that sucked! It wasn’t a horrible movie, but I think Johnathan might have fallen asleep during, and I know I had a few moments where I drifted a bit. It just wasn’t as good as I expected it to be. Once again, I expected more.

Since we promised the executive producer that we would, we went to see Ivory. I figured I’d be interested in it – I’ve been in music basically my whole life, and I’m aspiring to be a classical musician professionally (someday). It seemed right up my alley. Johnathan also understands, having also been in music for much of his life. The film started, and not a full ten minutes into it, I was sick of hearing about how famous and amazing the main character’s grandfather had been. Who cares, man? You’re you and he’s him. You can’t ride his coattails to success. Then his “friend”, who really seemed more like he was meant to be one of those “frenemy” things, was a really flat character, and really only came across as a jerk. The girl was, meh, okay, but boring. And the other characters were just… there. Not even worth mentioning. After 45 minutes of wankery, we walked out. I couldn’t take it anymore, particularly after the main character, a pianist aspiring for big fame, dismissed Mozart as insignificant. Oh no you didn’t. Mozart is one of my favorite composers, and while I get that Brahms was his, it seemed like a crutch, and honestly – who would do that? It seemed to be a means of showing how much he knew about classical music, but it really only showed a lack of understanding. I wanted to scream. I was offended by the portrayal of all the musicians and by the implication of the movie that unless you’re pursuing the big dreams, the big fame, you’re not a true musician. My big goals in life revolve around a position in a city opera – and not even the Met! Does that make me less of a musician? I don’t fucking think so. Then, of course, the statements about music teachers, which I suspect is the “conflict” that the main character is meant to get over by the end of the film. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stand to sit there for another long, painful hour to find out exactly how the prick with no personality fared at the Liszt competition. Sorry, guys. I don’t think anyone in the process of the film actually went to Oberlin for music. If they did, I’d like to know who the fuck they were in classes with, because that’s not a wide cross-section of musicians in my experience! As you can see, I’m still steaming about the film a little bit. The older folks, apparently, really loved the film, though the executive producer said that we were its target audience. You’re way off the mark here, I think. Sorry guy. After fuming our way home, we sat together and tuned Johnathan’s guitar. Then it was time to go to bed and call an end to day 9.

After totally rearranging our schedule for the weekend, I honestly went through the day not knowing what the heck we were seeing next, with the exception of a few films. The first on Saturday (day 10) was Will Not Stop There. It was a film from Croatia and Serbia. I know very little about that area and its politics, which made some of the understanding of the film a little bit difficult. It wasn’t a big enough part of the film to stunt the understanding completely, though. I thought the film was a little bit quirky and kind of sweet. It wasn’t amazing or life-changing, but it was pretty good. It wasn’t a total waste of time, which by that point in the festival I viewed as a major plus.

The next film was Serbian and Albanian. The correlation of the two films was totally unintended. Honeymoons seemed like a good idea on paper, but Johnathan most definitely fell asleep during, and frankly, I don’t blame him. The film didn’t have a lot to drive it, and it spent a long time working up to the conflict and climax, which then happened and “resolved” in about ten minutes total, it seemed like. That, in combination with some folks talking created a not-so-pleasant situation. We left the film feeling disappointed at another “dud”.

Afterward, we had just enough time to get a refill on our pop and take a pit stop, then we were on our way to see Storage, which Johnathan had picked up. The film was a definite thriller dealing with murder and crime. It was a very interesting experience for me. I don’t do very well with graphic violence in film, and this one had it in spades. About halfway through, I started feeling a little sick to my stomach and thought that maybe I should leave the theater. I wanted to see how it ended, though, and I thought that it might be good for me to try and tough it out rather than run away from it. Well, afterward, I realized that I should have left the theater. It didn’t get any better and I certainly didn’t feel any better by the end. It was an exciting move and had quite a few unexpected plot twists to keep the audience on edge. There was even a scream from an audience member at an unexpected moment. Johnathan came out of the film raving about it. I think it took me a full five minutes to calm down enough that I could say anything about it. Despite the horrible feelings I was experiencing, I still gave the film a 3 out of 4 rating. It seems really odd in retrospect to do that, given how badly I was feeling, but I still think it was a good movie, even if I don’t handle films like that very well. We went up to the hospitality headquarters after that, and I downed a beer in near record time while I tried to calm down from the nausea I was still experiencing. I know Johnathan felt bad about choosing that film, but I still maintain that any of my discomfort was based solely on my own willingness to stay in the theater rather than leave. I’m glad he liked it, and I think I learned something from it: LEAVE if you’re made that uncomfortable! I’ll remember that for the next time I might happen to end up in the theater for a terrifying film.

Next was My Year Without Sex. I couldn’t honestly remember what the film was about, except that it was about, well, someone’s year without sex. It was an Australian film, which brought our coincidences that day to two (Storage was also out of Australia). The film was sweet and funny and a little bit heartbreaking. In many ways, it was just like any other family comedy, but in others, it got me thinking. Mostly, it got me thinking about faith (or lack thereof) and about what would happen if I died now. It reminded me that we have to create wills and living wills. I enjoyed the film – and I think I enjoyed it even more because it helped bring me back from the desolation and horror I felt after Storage.

The last film of the day was The Last Days of Emma Blank, which we had moved to Saturday in order to accommodate Small Crime. The only word I can really use to describe it is… weird. It was really weird. It was funny, but incredibly, indescribably weird. It was puzzling for a while, because we, as the audience, didn’t know why the family was acquiescing to Emma’s demands without much complaint or resistance until close to the end of the film. Really, the film was very interesting and it had a few unexpected twists and turns of plot that kept me engaged and interesting through the end, in addition to the delightful weirdness which I thoroughly enjoyed. I know others in the theater probably didn’t like it as much as I did, but oh – did I love it. I was pleased that the night didn’t end with a whimper.

Sunday, the last day of the festival, started out kind of slowly. We were both very tired, but I wanted to see some of the films we had scheduled for the day (well, all of them, really). The first was Mid-August Lunch, about a man caring for his elderly mother, when he is put upon to care for the elderly mothers of others in his acquaintance. The weekend for them moves forward sometimes painfully slowly as the group of ladies adjust to one another and to the new environment. It was a sweet film, but not overly engaging for its length. I felt like it needed more conflict to drive it. Perhaps I was becoming blase about the films at this point, but I did enjoy it. I just didn’t love it.

The next was another almost immediate turn-around to get in to the film on time. It was The Enemy, out of Venezuela. The subtitling on this film was a bit annoying because not everything was translated, in particular the text at the very end of the film. I have no idea what they were trying to tell me because nobody bothered to put it into English for those of us not able to speak Spanish. I found The Enemy to be quite engaging and interesting. It explored the idea of good versus evil and how easily those lines can blur, even where one might think they were very clear. Johnathan didn’t like it as much, but I thought it was an interesting concept. It was about twenty minutes longer than it absolutely needed to be, though, and that contributed to my increasing boredom by the end of the film. I’m sensing a trend with myself that I would rather have a shorter film than artistic shots. Oh well.

Splinters was our next film. It was not on either of our lists, but in trying to find a film for that block so that we wouldn’t end up sitting around for a couple of hours while waiting for our closing film, I checked out what was available. This one seemed very interesting on paper. It was from Poland, and I was interested to hear how much the language sounded similar to German in spots. The film was divided into three parts, which seemed like it might work in theory, but it seemed to stop the film where it might have flowed seamlessly from one part to the next with clever editing. I wasn’t thrilled with the film, but I was even less thrilled by the talking going on around us. The woman two seats down from me was a chatterbox, and then there was the couple in the row behind us, and the large group at the other end of our row, and then the elderly couples in the row in front of us. Seriously, one would think that by day 11 of the film festival, people would have known not to talk! It can totally ruin the experience for everyone else. Thankfully, that was the worst talking experience we had for the whole festival.

The next (and final) film we saw was Paper Man. After a final sojourn in the Hospitality Headquarters, we headed in and got seats near the back. I forgot about the bucket for change, and I never have any cash on me anyway, so we had nothing to contribute to the final push for the challenge match. The film was interesting. The concept of imaginary friends is interesting to me, since I never had one myself. (I think my brother was a pretty good playmate, so there was no need for an imaginary friend!) It was interesting to see the concept explored of a relationship with a man and a teenage girl that didn’t have to be lewd or inappropriate, but more like a father-daughter relationship, which clearly both of them craved. It was sweet and a little bit sad. I’m pretty sure when it gets wide release, it will get an R rating. It’s probably merited. I wouldn’t have dealt with it very well as a kid, that’s for sure. It’s not a “kid” movie.

We ended up not staying for the closing reception because, as previously mentioned, we were both quite tired, and considering ours was the last film to get out in that final round of films, we never would have been able to see anything. We chose, instead, to leave and get some dinner. We stopped at Applebee’s and rather than standing around straining to see and possibly to hear, we sat in the comfort of the restaurant, enjoyed tall beers and watched the twitter feed for the award winners and the final numbers.

With 71,500 people visiting the festival this year, we could feel that it was more crowded on some days, particularly in the evenings, than last year. Since we had passes, we didn’t have to worry about getting into any films, only about whether we would be able to get decent seats that weren’t in the very front of the theater. We got free beer several times, and enjoyed free food for most of the festival in addition to what the food court had to offer. We weren’t the best when it came to eating (and I can feel the water retention because of all the sodium we ate this last week), but I feel like we had a good week nevertheless. Now it’s time to get back to real life – work, cleaning the apartment, exercise and errands. CIFF is over for another year. I’m already looking forward to next year.

TiMER was an interesting film. The concept is that every person can get a device – a timer – implanted into their wrist, and it will count down the days and hours until that person will meet their soulmate for the first time. If the person meant to be your soulmate hasn’t had a timer implanted yet, yours is blank. The main character has this very predicament. The movie explores the concepts of true love. Does it only happen once? Can a little device really determine whether you’re meant to spend the rest of your life with this one person? And if it can, do you wait around for that one person, or pursue other relationships in the meantime? Essentially, if you know you’re meant to be with one person for the rest of your life and your timer says you haven’t met them yet, how do you then go about living the rest of your life?

I really enjoyed the film. It was quirky and funny, with a touch of surreality and sci-fi. It got me thinking, too. (I love it when a movie makes me think.) After the film was over, I asked Johnathan, “Would you?” He wasn’t sure. I know at this point we both feel it’s moot. If this relationship isn’t the forever one and we’re not meant to last, would I want to know? Would I have wanted to know a few years ago? I don’t know. How would it change your relationship to know that you’re supposed to be in love with this one person? What’s to stop a person from bucking their one “true” path and going down a different one? There are so many questions inspired by this movie. I love it.

The opening gala was nice. There were a lot of people in a very little space, but there was good music and made some great people watching time. I had the first beer that I’ve had since we started this process – so my first beer in 2.5 months. It was very good! But then, Great Lakes usually is.

A few anecdotes:

• The man behind us kept ruining the moments in the film by stating what everyone KNEW was going to happen just seconds before it did. Dude, you’re totally killing the anticipation when you do that. And you’re doing it at full volume! Don’t be a jerk. Don’t talk during movies!
• The lady next to us seemed like she was maaaaaybe a little drunk. She couldn’t find her pop and instead of verifying that the one in between her and Johnathan was hers, she just drank from it. It was not hers. I gave mine to Johnathan and he kept it on the other side after that. (Then they left their cups in the theater! I hate it when people do that! We took them to the trash with ours.)
• A lady tried to walk off with our beers. It was pretty funny. She had ordered two Eliot Ness and we ordered to Dortmunders. He put up the Dortmunders first, and then grabbed the others – but hadn’t removed the caps from any – and she started walking away. It was kind of an amusing madcap moment.
• We got egg timers as our parting gifts! So cute. Now we have two egg timers. I guess one can never have too many timers?

Today is the second day – the first full day. We’re seeing six films today. See you tomorrow!

One example that really sticks with me is an anecdote from a recent conversation at work. I was lamenting to my supervisor that some others don’t take any personal responsibility and that they seem to expect others to constantly feed them the information that they need to know, rather than being proactive and acquiring the information that they’re lacking. My boss just laughed at me and told me for what must be the fifth or sixth time now that I’m “such a Type A personality.” I’m sure she didn’t mean it in a negative way, but after searching the internet for the true meaning of “Type A,” out of sheer curiosity, I came across site after site of lists that were full of largely negative traits. (Or at least, traits that I would classify as negative.) For instance, Wikipedia says:

Symptoms of Type A Behavior

1. An intrinsic insecurity or insufficient level of self-esteem, which is considered to be the root cause of the syndrome. This is believed to be covert and therefore less observable.
2. Time urgency and impatience, which causes irritation and exasperation.
3. Free floating hostility, which can be triggered by even minor incidents.

If you ask me, these don’t sound like positive things to be associated with. I’ll admit that it’s a different set of traits than I learned were associated with the personality type when I was in middle school (where it was simplified that type As were outgoing and proactive as well as incredibly organized), but even so, it’s a typing that frustrates me. It’s oversimplified, and sways to focus only on the  negative. After all, I’m sure Type As have some positive traits with the negative, as Type Bs will have some negatives with the positive. It’s a very skewed way of looking at things.

The same can be said of astrological personality typing. While there doesn’t seem to be a marked focus on the negatives of personality traits, it’s another way of trying to fit people cleanly into boxes. Perhaps this is motivated by a need to identify as a certain something and share that identification with others. But how far should it be taken? Surely this shouldn’t be a way of cleanly categorizing people so that we can decide whether they’re worthy people to be doing X, Y or Z.

An inherent problem with the need to sort people into categories by personality is that it simplifies things to the point that it makes it okay to judge others. One day when I was working at one of the offices, we had a rather… exhuberant customer in who was trying to tell us what kind of personalities we had based on our astrological sign. He and the other girl I was working with had the same sign, so it was easy for him to extol all of the good traits that she supposedly had in common with him. He decided to describe me, and I played along. The second I told him that I was a “cancer,” he went off on me. He started telling me how evil, conniving, underhanded, moody and bitchy that I am. He told me that cancers are never to be trusted and that they’re the worst people to be friends with or associate with, ever.

Well, then. I don’t know if I’m evil and conniving – maybe I am; but how would he have known that? We hadn’t had any real interaction up to that point, and even if we had, I don’t think a five minute conversation is enough to guage how someone truly is as a person. Perhaps I’m moody, I could be bitchy and evil, but thanks to his view of the cancer sign, that’s all he’d see if we’d spent any amount of time together. He’d judged me as he thought I should be rather than as what I am.

I’m pretty sure that my supervisor didn’t mean anything bad by putting me into a category. She and I get along really well, and I think her point was just that I’m incredibly organized and proactive when I’m at work. It’s just how I need to be at work to feel like I’m doing my job to the best of my ability. I don’t think that means that my self-esteem is suffering, that I’m generally hostile or impatient.

I know that this is something that I’m just not going to be able to change, but that unfortunately doesn’t ease my frustration at the simplistic way of classification.

The first film we saw was on day 2 of the festival: La Belle Personne. As a starting film, we found it was a let-down. The characters were on the whole uninteresting and undeveloped, and there was a lack of emotion that seemed to ruin many of the potentially poignant moments in the film. We left the film feeling decidedly disappointed.

We started out fairly early the next morning to get to the first film of our second day, Welcome to Farewell-Gutmann.  I really enjoyed this one. It was kind of intense in spots, but it had some good laughs and an intriguing plot. The characters were well-established without excess information being shoved in our faces, and the plot propelled itself without needing to be forced. After the movie was over, we had planned to take a block off for lunch, not thinking about the fact that we would be able to eat fairly quickly. We then had three hours to kill. (I think I nearly killed my phone by using it for normal internet browsing during that downtime.)

After that, we lined up for Children of Invention. The film was so charming. I really became emotionally involved in the life of each of the family members, even while the mother was struggling with her own “addiction” to get rich quick/pyramid schemes. The children were so adorable and winning.

After the film was over, we turned around and got in line for the next one, which was Night and Day. The line for this one wasn’t long at all, as compared to the line for Children of Invention. We got fairly good seats – actually in the middle section, too! (We tended to stay to the right side of the house and sit all the way against the wall; more guaranteed seats that way, and that way nobody had to climb over us if they wanted seats farther in.) I have to say, this is one of the longest movies I’ve seen without much plot to show for it. The main character started out interesting, but as the movie progressed, I was unimpressed with his demeanor. The surrounding characters were mostly flat. The story moved too slowly to hold much attention, and while there were some amusing moments, the movie just felt bland. The inclusion of a random dream sequence that accomplished nothing did little to improve my opinion of the film. This one was our second disappointment.

Fresh off of one of the longer movies that we saw at the festival, we turned around and got straight back in line again to see Tokyo!. It was… strange. Bizarre. I will say that it was the perfect midnight movie. I didn’t dislike it, but I don’t think I would have liked it at all had I seen it the next day at the 2PM showing instead of at midnight after having seen three other movies, slight lack of sleep, hopped up on caffeine and jittery. I’m honestly still on the fence about this one. I can’t decide whether I liked or disliked it. I think it was just middling for me, and it was certainly weird.

Some poor planning on my part meant that after getting out of the movie the previous evening at about 2AM, we had to get back downtown to see Cherry Blossoms at 11:20AM the next morning. Whoops. Thankfully, the movie was good and successfully captured my attention. This was the runaway hit of the festival; people couldn’t stop talking about it to the point that there was another showing added on top of the two that had already gone, and all three sold out two theaters. I thought the movie was good. It may have even qualified for very good. (I believe Johnathan thought it was excellent.) It was poignant, emotionally charged and interesting. The landscapes were well-captured and the characters sufficiently established in their lives so that the audience became invested in their lives.

Once again, we scheduled downtime for ourselves that we didn’t actually need, so again, I found myself playing on my phone and draining the battery for several hours. (Needless to say – we learned our lesson. Don’t skip movie blocks if you can help it! Or else, bring a book.) Our next film was Eldorado. I will be the first to admit that I really didn’t understand what the plot was meant to be. The movie seemed to go on in its fun and games vein without really establishing anything by way of plot, and then suddenly it was over. There were some entertaining moments, but that’s about all that could be said of this one. It was just not great.

Thankfully, we had another one that we were pretty certain would be good following right after so there wasn’t really much time to dwell on the disappointment. Prom Night in Mississippi was next on our itinerary, which we were both pretty excited to see. It was a documentary about a town which, until 2008, had always held segregated proms. I liked seeing the various students express their sentiments about how the felt regarding the separated proms and how they felt about the possibility of finally having an integrated one. I really enjoyed the story and the way it was shared. It was a little slow in spots, but I really enjoyed it otherwise.

Monday, it was back to work (with my groggy, sleep-deprived self!) and looking forward to seeing Crude after work. I thought that one was good, but not great. It was slightly preachy, which I thought was probably natural given the subject matter (the damage that Big Name Oil Companies have caused in South America by unethical and reckless drilling habits). It was good, but I couldn’t go so far to say it was great.

Tuesday night, we saw Forgotten Transports: To Estonia, which was a documentary about a group of women who had gone from camp to camp together during the Holocaust. I enjoyed it because instead of focusing on the travesty and making a point of giving out the numbers to further illustrate the tragedy, this focused on the relationships between the women. There was laughter, and they shared some happy memories in addition to the sad ones. It was a more emotional story in that it more humanized both those who had been in the camps and the Nazi soldiers who were purpetrating the crimes against them in the camps. I was really glad that we saw this one.

I had Wednesday off, and since Johnathan has an earlier work schedule, we were able to see three movies on Wednesday instead of the one that we were seeing during the rest of the work week. The first one we saw was Correction. We got settled into our seats easily because the line wasn’t long for this one. An older couple sat down in front of us, which isn’t an issue ordinarily – seats are for sitting. The problem was with the woman’s perfume. (Or maybe her hairspray – it was hard to tell; it was overwhelming.) I tried to tough it out, but any time I’d move or readjust, her perfume would come at me again and I’d have a wave of nausea. Coming off of food poisoning, that feeling is twice as bad as it’s ever been, so I definitely didn’t want to cope with that for the whole film. We moved down a few rows, behind a single movie-goer which seemed promising. He wasn’t emitting the foul perfume. Much to my dismay, his female counterpart, who joined him just moments before the lights went down for the movie to begin, was wearing the very same perfume as the lady two rows back. Needless to say, I was not impressed. I was also unimpressed with the audible talking and the singing that went on at one point. The movie itself was nothing worth talking about. It could have used some dialog to maybe establish a semblance of plot, and perhaps a steadicam so that the audience wasn’t prone to motion sickness. It was bar none the worst movie that we saw at the festival. I think it’s the only one that I gave a rating of “poor.”

After Correction, we saw Dunya & Desie, which I thought was really great. The characters were endearing, and their journey had a purpose. The turn of events was interesting and there were enough comical moments to keep the mood of the film light. Johnathan classified it as a “chick flick,” and I suppose he could be right. It was definitely focused on relationships and the journey of said relationships rather than anything… I dunno, exploding. I thought it was poignant and emotionally interesting.

Straight after this was over, it was back in line for yet another film: An Alternative to Slitting Your Wrist, which I was pretty excited to see. It was filmed by a guy who grew up in Cleveland, and it was just an interesting premise. He had ended up in the hospital after a breakdown, and while he was there, he wrote a list of 52 things he would do in the next year instead of committing suicide. The documentary was basically an account of what that year of things. It was very emotional, but also amusing as he showed clips of some of the sillier things on his list (squirrel fishing, for instance). There was a Q&A with him afterward and I was really glad that we had both seen the movie and gotten to see the documentary. I’m thinking we might have to buy it on DVD; I think it’d be worth having around.

The next day it was back to work, then yet another trip downtown immediately afterward for a movie. Parking was absolutely horrible that day, and people were being crazy in the garage, so after work, I was grumpy enough that the parking situation made it worse. No matter – we got in line for Between the Folds with plenty of time to spare and headed in. Our seats were about midway down, as we liked them, and the theater filled up completely.  Preceeding the movie was a short film called Sing Opera! which was very cute. We should have realized at this point that we had inconsiderate neighbors, because they kept talking during the short. I thought that it was maybe because the short film wasn’t what they were there to see (despite it being advertised in the program guide with Between the Folds). I was getting increasingly annoyed as the movie began because the woman began saying “Oooh!” and “Ahh!” at every interesting piece of origami that was shown on the screen. They were all neat and intricate, but I didn’t think it merited the volume that she was using. She and her husband continued to talk throughout the film, discussing the different techniques, the different pieces and making comments to each other about it. Johnathan shushed them twice. Someone from across the aisle shushed them. Someone from behind us shushed them. Nothing kept them from talking – it didn’t even slow them down. I was livid. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was someone in the front row who kept having strange sneezes about every two minutes or so, which just added to my anger at the situation. I couldn’t even now tell you how the film was. Much of my time was spent trying not to lean over and hit the man or his wife for their inconsideration to those around them. This was the by far the worst audience experience that we had throughout the festival.  I left in a rotten mood and if I’d had the guts to do it, I would have asked the couple next to us to give us $20 to pay for the movie that the had just ruined entirely for us. Unfortunately, I wasn’t brave enough to confront them about it.

The next day, I worked again, and I was hopeful that perhaps we would be seeing a better movie with a better audience. First off, though, we were heading down for a “Tweetup” at Houlihan’s at Tower City. We had been planning it since about day two of the festival, and we’d had a total of seven people from Twitter RSVP for it, including us. One of the people who was planning it with us got sick, so he couldn’t make it, and we assumed his female counterpart wouldn’t make it since he wasn’t going to. One of the people who had RSVPed was working at the festival and I’m pretty sure he just got tied up and couldn’t make it up there. The other two who were supposed to come? We have no idea. Johnathan and I were there, and there was one other lady from Twitter who did make it, so the three of us sat and ate dinner, then we headed down to see our next film.

Alexander the Last had looked interesting in the guide and I was hopeful. The audience for the film, we discovered, was a younger crowd. I was a bit worried to see that, but figured that wouldn’t hopefully affect our audience experience. I was also maybe over-sensitive to the noise that they were making in the queue because I had developed a headache over the course of the day and by that point, my head was throbbing. I took something for it, and by the time the movie started, it subsided, so I’m confident that my feelings about the movie weren’t influenced by that. I guess it goes without saying that I didn’t really enjoy it. Actually, the guy at the end of our row summed it up perfectly after the film: “I don’t get it.” I felt like there was little by way of plot, and if I hadn’t read the summary in the guide, I probably wouldn’t have had any clue what the point was supposed to be. What’s even stranger to me is that others seem to have absolutely loved this film, so I’m wondering if maybe I missed some incredibly important moment that made the whole thing make sense. The chemistry that was supposed to be there was one-sided, and I found it difficult to care much about the characters because they weren’t very well established. It was disappointing because this was one of the ones I was looking most forward to.

The next day, I worked from 8:45 to 1:45, then came home, only to head right back out. We went to Red Robin for lunch and had the worst experience that I’ve ever had there. We were taken to a table that didn’t look like it had been wiped down yet. The manager was a bit surprised at that and quickly got someone over to sweep the floor, though nobody came by to wipe down the still-sticky table. Strike one. Our waitress showed up just seconds after we arrived at the table and started basically demanding our drink order before we’d even had a chance to sit down at the table. I said I didn’t know what I wanted and she just stood there expectantly, forcing me to make a quick decision about what I wanted to drink. Strike two, and we hadn’t even sat down yet. Strikes three through whatever happened when we had to deal with a smug waitress who did very little by way of service. She took our order but asking questions made her surly toward us, which was unpleasant. We had no silverware, no napkins, had to ask for refills. I was totally disgusted with the whole experience. If we hadn’t been in a hurry, we’d have stopped to tell the manager how the experience went.

Our first film on the second Saturday was White on Rice, which was a late addition for us. The theater filled up quite a bit, so I was hopeful that it would be a good one. The film itself was quite entertaining. I thought it would be uncomfortably awkward, but the main character was endearing enough that it took the edge off of it some. It had a lot of funny spots, and I liked the way that it ended. It was one of those endings that isn’t quite clean, but in a way that is still satisfying. The only aggravating thing about the movie was the people behind us. The girl behind us had no concept of what it was to be quiet in a movie theater, and her laugh was loud and shrill – and she laughed often, sometimes in places that weren’t actually that funny to the rest of the audience. Her friend next to her was what we called a leaky tire. He put his finger on one side of his now then slowly and loudly breathed out through the other nostril. It was quite loud and we weren’t sure what he was trying to accomplish by doing that. They also talked a bit during the movie, but it only took turning around once or twice for them to get the hint about that. Thankfully they weren’t near as bad as the sneezer and the talkers during Between the Folds.

Next up was  Shall We Kiss?. After a little something to eat, we headed to the queue for that film and got into line. We were there quite early, but that worked out well. We got in line behind someone who was really nice. She and her boyfriend were seeing 39 films this year, and we’d seen many of the same films and also quite a few different, so we had a lot to talk about. It was great finding someone willing to chat in the line. It made the time before the film pass so much faster. Next thing we knew, it was time to go in. If the audience for this one was bad, we didn’t notice. The film was engaging and well-paced. I never felt like things were moving too slowly, though it wasn’t moving quickly. This one ranked up among my favorites in the festival. It was very good.

After that, it was time to get back into line again for Sparrow. I wasn’t as taken with this one. It was okay. Not great, but not bad. The pacing was off, and there were things that went unsaid that I think needed to be established to actually fuel interest in the characters. It felt like it was trying to be a Chinese Ocean’s 11, and it failed at that.

It was sad to go home that night, knowing that there was only one day of the festival left. We still had two movies left to see, though. Lemon Tree, which we decided to get on stand by since we weren’t able to get tickets earlier in the week, was the first one. We arrived at Tower City early, thinking we’d be able to avoid the crowds at the parking garage for the Cavs game, knowing there was one that day. What we didn’t realize was that it was actually a midday game so we’d arrived after the garage was filled. It took us a little while, but we did eventually find a spot to park and headed inside. We got down to the cinema and Johnathan asked where we should line up for Lemon Tree stand by. They told us that they thought there were still tickets being sold. … Oh. Apparently more tickets had been released, but the film had still been listed as stand by on the website, as well as still being shown on stand by in The Daily. We bought our tickets then found ourselves with an hour and a half to kill before we needed to actually get into line. I settled in to read my book, and Johnathan wandered around taking pictures. About forty-five minutes before the movie was set to start, we got into line. The theater filled up quite a bit, but I think everyone who was on stand by got into it. This one was excellent. It was emotional and I liked that it gave a more personal look into the conflict in the area. The characters were rich, and even without fully understanding the culture of the area, I felt like I understood what was going on and the motivations behind the reactions of the various characters. This one was up among my favorites for the festival, too.

After Lemon Tree, we did our last turn around and got in line for The Brothers Bloom. I had heard good things about it. The theater was completely filled (as, I think, was the second theater that this film was showing in). I was not disappointed. The pacing was good, the characters were interesting and the plot never got too heavy on us without something to break it up. I know I’ve said this before, but this is among my favorites of the films during the festival. It was really very good.

Afterward was the closing night reception. Everyone who was in a film during that final block was invited to attend, and we figured we would go. They were serving champagne and coffee as well as cookies and brownies. I snagged a brownie and Johnathan got a couple of cookies and we staked out space toward the front to watch the ceremony. They announced the winners for the various categories (we’d only seen one of them – the one that won the audience choice award: Cherry Blossoms), as well as the final attendance numbers. From the first Friday of the festival on through the last day, every single day exceeded previous attendance records. The overall attendance for the festival exceeded last year’s by 27%, coming to almost 66,500 people. It was amazing to have been a part of all of that record breaking, as well as to have helped out with the challenge match which also far exceeded the goal. They hit $52,000 which was almost $20k more than the goal of $33,000. The ceremony was emotional because of how emotional the CIFF staffers were and also because it was really punctuating that it was over for this year.

I can’t accurately put into words how amazing this festival was. Thanks to the involvement of the marketing director on Twitter and the other people at the festival (for the most part) being so wonderful and friendly, I really felt like a part of a community. I actually felt like I was a part of Cleveland, and that’s a new feeling for me – I’ve been here a year and a half now and never felt like I was a part of Cleveland. I’ve felt like a transplanted Portlander. I’m still a Portlander at my core, but now at least part of me is invested in what goes on here, which means I’m not just coasting through my time here.

We’re already looking forward to the 34th Annual Cleveland International Film Festival. We’ve decided that we’re going to take the week off and also become passholders so that we can just walk into films without having to worry about work or schedule obsessively. We won’t have to wait inline as much and we’ll have the advantage of the Hospitality Headquarters where we can get a snack if we need to. This was such a great experience; I can’t wait until next year so that we can do it again – plus some.