I worked 9 to 5 again today and was so tired that I came home and went to sleep and decided just to skip seeing "Wah-Wah" at the Arbor. I slept until 8 or so and headed over to the Paramount for "The King."

Oh but during the day, my friend Oriah of the band Hobble came by and saw me at my work. He lives close by. Oriah brought his girlfriend Amy with whom he is truly in love. I think he told me she was a Satan's Cheerleader, which are these girls that wear cheerleading costumes and dance around at punk shows. I had never met her before and she seemed really sweet and nice. She had a lot of tattoos. She is going to school at the Paul Mitchell Salon and she brought one of her classmates, a gorgeous little fey rocker boy named Jordan who has a pierced lip in which he wears a small hoop. I'm hoping Oriah and Amy and Jordan will come over and be on Lube TV sometime soon. Hobble has some newer music videos that we could show and maybe Jordan can even sit on my lap. Oriah was wearing cute little boy scout khaki style shorts and a collared shirt and he look a little bit like an alt-rock Hitler Youth. Just a smidge. Just enough to be edgy. I asked if Hobble had gotten into SXSW and he told me that he turned in the application when the band was going through a rough patch (the guitarist Mike Flatten lives in the building where KUT is which recently suffered two separate fires) and he didn't pursue it very seriously and so they didn't get in.

Anyway I got into "The King" and sorta started remembering that it was an Austin film. I think it was made here about two years ago. I walked into the theater just as the end of the badge line was going in and I wasn't sure how crowded it would be.

At the Paramount, there's a cute young guy who always wears a hat like the guy in the band Fall Out Boy, so I always call him "Fall Out Hat Boy" when I refer to him when talking with Johnny Oh! There was an older lady finishing up her order when I walked up and she pointed to his cap and said, "Are you a sea captain?" Now most young guys would have some smart ass comment or sigh loudly or be rude but Fall Out Hat Boy just smiled and said, "Yes," cutely. No wonder I am in love with him. He's just a sweetheart. Of course, he's sweet to everyone, not just me, so I know I'm living in a fool's paradise when he is nice to me and I think he is flirting. The lady took forever to get her order together and leave and he had gotten my M&M's and made my change before she left, so I didn't even have time to flirt with him.

Oh, I also noticed when he waited on her that she paid with a credit card. They used to not take them at the Paramount concession stand, so that's good to know.

I went in and sat in the third row and made some notes. Someone asked the people to the left of me to move over and when they did the guy was sitting right next to me and I realized it was Karrie League of the Alamo Drafthouse and one of her friends. We said hello and began to talk about films. The guy she was with had seen a lot of films and we chatted about so many that I can't remember all of them. He told me that he liked a film called "Apart from That" quite a bit. He was a really nice guy and had a wonderful smile and I really dug talking to him.

Matt Dentler got up on stage and told us about how SXSW has a good relationship with Thinkfilm and it reminded me of all the great Thinkfilm product that played at the festival last year like "The Aristocrats" and "Murderball." Matt said that SXSW and Thinkfilm were "like-minded."

The lights dimmed and the SXSW trailer began (this was my 13th time to see it) and I looked over and Karrie had her head turned. She said, "I can't watch it." I guess she was as burned out on it as the rest of us. There's got to be a way to make this thing fun. It's all text with no dialogue so maybe the audience just needs to read it aloud. I told Karrie that my favorite trailer was the one at the Alamo for Open Screen night and I sang a bit of "Pizazz, pizazz, C'mon we're gonna give it to ya, pizazz, pizazz, c'mon.

After the film I was shocked and a bit mortified to find out that Karrie and her companion actually liked the movie. He told me that he worked with a film festival in Jacksonville, Florida, and was actually thinking of inviting the film there. I was flabbergasted. I was in shock. How could anyone like this film? I kept voicing my hatred of it in the way that I do in the review and the guy laughed at everything I said. How could I not like this guy? He laughed at my jokes about the badness of the film just like I hoped people would do when they read my reviews.

The filmmakers did the Q&A and they were just about the most pretentious gits to grace a film festival stage in many a moon. They really thought this film was thought-provoking high art. They took all the questions so seriously I threw up a little bit in my mouth. They Q&A was almost as unintentionally funny as the film. They told us the film had went through almost 50 drafts. It was also mentioned that the writer/director James Marsh had mostly made documentaries up to this point and had made one about Elvis' cooks. (Bernal's character in the film is named Elvis and the title is a reference to this as well as Jesus, the biblical king).

I walked outside with the Film Festival guy, who told me his name was Tim, and we looked for Karrie. I was still ranting and raving about the film and he was still laughing at my cinematic rage. I liked him so much. We agreed the filmmakers were pretentious asshole and he told me that he was going to invite the film but not the filmmakers to his festival. We finally located Karrie and talked in front of the Paramount for a few minutes. I was ranting and raving and I could tell Karrie was uncomfortable. She has so many friends in the film business in Austin and her business is wrapped up in it and we were in a public place so she couldn't discuss it freely. Thank God I don't have that problem! But I don't want Karrie to be uncomfortable around me. She's such a sweet person to me, I like her so much.

We started talking about what we were seeing the next day and Karrie mentioned that Rick Linklater's "A Scanner Darkly" was what was showing at the 4pm TBA slot. I knew it! But I had to work, so I didn't think I could go. It's coming out in March. I'll see it then.

We said our goodbyes and walked our separate ways. I went home and checked my e-mail and saw that "Americanese" had won the narrative film competition at the festival. What a lousy day for film in Austin.

Lodger @ SXSW 2006