January 2011 Archives

A perq of living in Salt Lake City is that some cool stuff happens here. Things other people consider international events are local for me. One such event is Sunstone; another is the Sundance Film Festival, the largest venue in the world for independent films. The 2011 Festival is happening right now.

OK, most of the really cool stuff happens up at the Sundance Institute, in/near Park City, about an hour up into the mountains to the east of SLC. But there are still screenings in theaters in SLC.

My first January here, 2009, I was mostly annoyed by Sundance, because it meant I got really bad service at my favorite tea house. My second January, I actually paid attention to Sundance; I really wanted to see 8:The Mormon Proposition, but I was denied.

However, one of my friends picked up tickets to two other films, and offered me a ticket to whichever one I wanted to see most. I wisely chose the one that actually had a narrative, and it turned out to be The Kids Are All Right. So I can say that I saw an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture back before it had a distributor, which is, if not exactly an accomplishment that says anything about me except that I'm lucky to have a friend with good taste and a generous nature, still cool.

Yesterday evening this same friend called to say that he'd scored tickets to a screening in SLC; did I want to go? He didn't even manage to tell me what the movie was before I said yes.

Given how often I've blogged about how much I love Tucson, I knew I'd have to post something eventually about the horrible shootings there, but I absolutely don't know what to say. This clip covers some of what I'd like to say, so I'm using it now.

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A day or two before Christmas, my dad and brother stood looking at a Christmas tree and began talking about how complicated it was to make sure a string of the old-fashioned lights, with large individual bulbs, worked, and how annoying it was to have to find a bad bulb that made that the whole string go out. Life was much easier these days, now that Christmas lights come with the lights all affixed to the wires and take decades if not centuries to wear out, though they're not perfect since the quality of LED lights isn't as warm.

I couldn't help it; I did my best impression of a Yorkshire accent (which I readily admit was pretty awful) and interjected, "Luxury! Decorating a Christmas tree with lights already strung on wires. When we were young, we had to set the tree on fire to make it light up!"

They turned to look at me like they suspected me of producing an unpleasant smell.

"Sorry," I said. "I know it's dumb. It just reminded me of that old 'Four Yorkshiremen' skit."

"What?" my brother asked.

"It's John Cleese and Marty Feldman and a couple of other guys from Monty Python talking about how awful things were in the olden days," I said. "How they had to live in a lake and lick the road clean every morning before going to work. You know it, right, Dad?"

"Never heard of it," he said.

Which of course required me to interrupt one of my nephews at the computer, so I could find the video on YouTube and make everyone watch it.