Saturday, April 21, 2007

The Butler Brothers host the Slackers Film Festival/Odyssey

A life alterring experience, seeing the latest film by The Butler Brothers and Substance Productions, Confusions of an Unmarried Couple. Not to mention finally meeting Jason Butler or Jabutts - who I felt like I knew from his monologues in the film Bums. He seemed to know me too... I wonder what Brett said about me... hmmm. The night took me places that I did not expect, including a random 'celebrity' sighting.

So the Slacker Film Festival, held at the Reg Hartt Cineforum. Which is really just the home of Reg Hartt, a consummate film buff and eccentric by all accounts. My $10 ticket included a copy of the Special Edition DVD of the latest Substance Productions film, Confusions of an unmarried couple. It was a true slacker festival where you were invited to bring a case of beer. But for the uninitiated and unpracticed slacker like myself who does not have her priorities straight (no trip to the beer store planned), there was blissfully a supply of Muskoka Lager and Honey Brown for me. I think there was even pizza. And I do wonder if it's a coincidence that the "gala event" fell on 4/20 - planned or providence... no comment?

Confusions of an Unmarried Couple. Written and Directed and pretty much everything by the Butler Brothers. Cinematography by Jason Butler. Music and original songs by Ryan Noel. Starring Brett Butler and Naomi Johnson. 3 thumbs up - so good, i borrowed a thumb. Surprising, funny, brutally honest and yet more refined than the previous 2 'brews', and brilliantly acted. Brett Butler & Naomi Johnston put in consistently great performances as a couple dealing with the aftermath of infidelity and trying to figure out what it means that the infidelity coincides with a marriage proposal. The Butlers took home the Audience Choice Award at the Indiana University Film Festival, and are nominated for Best Film at the second biggest film festival in the UK (coming up in May) for this film.

In true slacker fashion, it took over an hour for the VIP crew to finally leave the theatre and make their staggering way over to Sneaky Dee's (just doors down from the house with the neon Cineforum sign in the front window) where Brett treated me to a pint of Waterloo dark and we destroyed a plate of nachos. (We definitely lost the competition for the most effective rationing of chip to dip in the Kingscrown Nachos race.)

As a slacker in training, I was not aware of the potential need for walking shoes, so I had some discomfort when it came time for us, at 2 am!!!, to try to find a barbecue party that this Californian filmmaker had been told about that was about 5 blocks west and 4 blocks south of sneaky's. Picture it, 6 drunken party hunters (some with VIP lanyards) wandering down an old residential area in little italy at 2:30. And there's the crazy Cali film dude talking to this poor blonde girl walking by herself up ahead... and then there's this cocky obnoxious redhead behind us yelling "um that's my girlfriend there, do you mind, thank you..." as he blows through the VIP posse and I realize that I know him and say "hey that's Christian" (the commercial guy from the listerine commercials among many things.) We never did find the party. But for me the fun was in the search.

The leather straps from my thong sandals are stretching out of shape from all the walking, so by the time we started walking east back along Dundas (or as the American dude named Scott who looked almost identical to Vince Vaughan and who was even funnier!!! said... DUNdis.) they were slipping off the back of my heel after about 30 paces. The butler brothers enjoyed making fun of me about how I didn't plan ahead with proper footware, but I like to think they were a little impressed at how I didn't complain. but that's just how I roll.

I finally arrived home in the Echo at 3:30. After dropping Graham off at his car, the 6 inches vaguely resembling a seat became free for Brett so I blissfully had time to recover from having him on my leg pretty much all the way home. That was a fun ride, I'm not complaining. I definitely think Brett had the worst of it, between the parking break on his left and the roof right at his head and having to lean on the headrests. Graham was also pretty squished in with all of the boxes of DVD's and equipment in the backseat.

So the moral of the story is that with those Butler Brothers, you can never know what to expect. But it will always be good times. And you should probably wear comfy shoes.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

same subject

He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never therefore make any progress.

Anwar Al Sadat

Monday, April 09, 2007

think happy thoughts. think happy thoughts. think happy thoughts...

life builds on itself. every day - if I'm doing it right - I learn something to help me grow from yesterday and the things I was trying to figure out. I feel good that today was one of those days. I got some solid answers about how to line up tasks and really saw everything working out for the best. And I see 2 more A's (or even A+'es) being added on to my repertoire...

Yesterday was one of those days too actually. The teaching at fellowship was very thought provoking and really rang true for my life. I can really see some concrete solutions to improving the quality of my 'lifespace' (a term I learned this week in Managing Change and Transitions).

So back to today! We were studying Coping Skills related to adapting to change and transition and the teacher mentioned a study she had seen about the internal monologue we have as we go through our day. Well you know that I pretty strongly believe that our life is formed in large part by our thoughts. So apparently there's this study that found that 90% of the thoughts we have in a given day about ourself, about the world around us and the impact we can have on it are NEGATIVE THOUGHTS. 90%. Dude. So pretend you have 500 thoughts a day. That's 450 negative thoughts. 50 positive (or just neutral analytical thougts every day. SJ, you mentioned the blue book. Those 450 negative thoughts imprison you inside a pattern of perception of yourself. Those 450 negative thoughts defeat you because you don't even try things you want to try, since those thoughts have convinced you that there's no point. You could never achieve that.

And actually it's controversial. From a very cursory bit of research I note that the average person has between 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day depending on if they are a 'deep thinker' or a writer. I daresay many of those thoughts are barely formed, some wordlessly made of images, some may be related to involuntary biological functions.

So say you had 11,000+ negative thoughts in a day. Some of those are angry thoughts. Some of those are thoughts about past failure. You are saying 11,000 nasty things about yourself every day. That's like 11,000 people each saying something crappy to you.

What would happen if you could train yourself to turn those all into positive thoughts? Oh my God. Just imagine how many things you would no longer be afraid to try? Just imagine how quickly your self esteem would soar into the heavens? Of course you know you can do that. There are techniques piling up out there on just how to do that. But you don't really need to spend money to learn them. Just have the courage to tell yourself to stop thinking that - and I mean this concretely, that for every bit of 'stinkin thinkin' you stop and correct it with a positive. Yeah. Replace it. Dude, imagine the things we can get done?

Sunday, April 08, 2007

may the force be with you

Yoda, and even Luke Skywalker would tell you that you do not need to give yourself over to the darkside for it to really ruin you, even just temporarily.

I have seen the darkside. I gave it a good once over. I examined it from the border; poked at the covering layers; explored the breadth of the border from coast to coast. I did not go in. I'm pretty sure it didn't notice me scanning and poking around, I believe I am safe for now. But make no mistake, it has invaded my thoughts and crept up by way of fears I should not have. Memories of heartache and betrayal that I thought were buried. But what I have learned is that if a memory gets you in the throat than you are still holding something that you need to let go of because it is keeping you from being who you are supposed to be. You can't be who you are supposed to be if you are still trying to be (or just can't let go of) who you were before. So if you are in between who you were and who you are going to be... who the hell are you? Who the hell am I?

Everyone knows - even Anakin, although he learned too late - that the only way to keep yourself strong and safe from the dark side is to call upon the force, to allow the force to be strong in you. The force. The light. It needs to be your guide from the inside out. So may the force be with me and with you.