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6/20/2005
EAR PLUGS
After the rainy weekend full of festivals we don’t attend the previous weekend,
I was ready to get out and about and raise some hell this weekend.
Well it felt like hell at the Indie Craft Experience at Eyedrum Gallery. The
warehouse gallery apparently has no AC and with multiple vendor booths using
halogen lights to display their wares, and as the rooms got more and more
crowded, things heated up to intolerable conditions, even for a Georgia boy like
me who doesn’t mind a bit of sweat. Most folks seemed to make one pass through
the place then stood outside chatting.
But the people-watching alone was worth a dive into the sauna-like conditions,
particularly if you like an abundance of nerdy girls. The vendors sold a variety
of artsy crafts – jewelry, clothing, handbags, etc. and everyone got a free
goodie bag with a few samples, trinkets, coupons and lots of advertising for the
vendors and sponsors. There was live music and at some point there was going to
be a fashion show, but the hellish conditions drove us away. I hope they do this
again, but either get some climate control or move this to winter, perhaps in
December for Consumass gift shopping.
FILM FLAM
Sunday it was the monthly Mondo Movie night at Starlight Drive In with Convoy,
and Six Pack Annie. I hadn’t seen Convoy in 25 years or so and was surprised at
how much I enjoyed it. Kris Kristofferson plays Rubber Duck, the lead trucker in
a convoy that begins as a retreat from a crooked cop but turns into something
much bigger. Ali MacGraw comes along for the ride and Ernest Borgnine is perfect
as Sheriff Lyle “Cottonmouth “ Wallace.
There were many hilarious moments, some intentional, some not, and some I wasn’t
sure about. For example, when one trucker, who’s CB handle is “Big Nasty,” wants
to join in with the convoy he asks to follow along. With the CB/trucker slang it
sounded something like “This is Big Nasty wanting to slip into your back door.”
I know it gets a little lonely out on the road but I thought the truckers in the
convoy agreed a little too heartily with his request.
Sam Peckinpah directed the film and it shows in the excessive use of slow-mo.
Every car crash is dragged out with multiple camera angles in
almost-still-photography speed. There’s a truckstop brawl that seems to take
half an hour.
The film also feels slightly behind the times for 1978 with it’s “power to the
people” message, but I guess it took mainstream Hollywood a little while to
catch up. Sure, maybe they were just cashing in on the popularity of the song
and CB culture, but even that had peaked a couple of years before.
But almost thirty years later, do you care? No, just bask in the dream that is
Convoy, where truckers get all the pussy (and don’t even have to pay for it) and
break all the rules while chatting on CB’s in “a language all their own,” to
quote Sheriff Lyle.
We lingered through intermission and another batch of hilarious trailers to
watch a few minutes of Six Pack Annie. Its super-low-lowbrow humor was so
painfully unfunny it was embarrassingly… funny. But after 10 or 15 minutes of
teasing and no actual T&A I decided I’d rather be sleeping. If it weren’t a work
night I would’ve stuck it out but it’s tough to get to work on time even when I
get a reasonable amount of sleep.
On the way home I got pulled over by a cop, which made me giggle after all the
anti-police messages in both Convoy and Six Pack Annie. But unlike the movie
cops, the officer was incredibly polite and let me off with a verbal warning for
cruising up Moreland doing 45 in a 35. He was even quick about it.
Fucking pigs…
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