Watch-A-Thon: finish line!

Got back from the Hong Kong a little while ago. That's where the Brattle held its Watch-A-Thon "finish line" reception. Ticket stubs and 'thon registration card stamps were tallied and pledge sheets were summed up, and in the end...

Thanks to everyone's support, my Winter 2007 Watch-A-Thon run raised over $1,500! That amount won me the honor of most funds raised this time around, and a fabulous prize showcase featuring a party at the Brattle! Pretty frickin kickass. =)

Zany thanks also to Ned, Ivy, and Caitlin, the fine film fiends behind the Goodness of my favorite theater! =)

Fellow Brattling man Ryan won the award for most films watched, which comes with a Chlotrudis membership for two and free admission to a session of the Brattle's Sunday morning Eye-Openers (at one of which I got to see BUBBA HO-TEP before its wide release). It's funny, I first met Ryan at the "finish line" last winter, and we talked movies and the Brattle a little, but didn't cross paths again for a long while. The next time I met him was thru work, and it was months later, and both of us were doing the "Y'know, you seem awfully familiar..." It took a couple days, but it came to me when I was walking thru the Square to a Brattle show—I'd met him thru the Watch-A-Thon! And, a week or three later, I ended up running into him at the theater after a screening. Kooky, no?

That's not all, tho. While I was talking to Ryan at that run-in, this woman came up the aisle towards me, stopping beside him, and said, "Hey! Brian!" It was Darcy, this kickass volleyball player with whom I'd played outdoor pick-up at M.I.T. a few summers back. How frickin random, no?

Wait, it gets better. Ryan turns to Darcy and asks her, "How do you know Brian?" And Darcy asks Ryan the same thing right back. How is that possible?

The doctor is the boy's MOTHER, that's how!

Heh. They're married! Koooky. I'd met them separately thru pretty much unconnected sectors of my life and it turns out they're wedlocked. Maybe the math will say that it's not all that unusual or unlikely, but given the somewhat limited sectors of my life, it certainly feels odds-beating, and funny.

Hanging out at the Kong, still slightly fried from the schlockfest, with a really friendly group of people who love movies... it was wonderfully nummy. I don't know that I said all that much (not unusual, you know my M.O... the one the neighbors will give to the media after I... umm... implement my eventual exit strategy—"quiet guy, kept mostly to himself"), but there was a great mellow orange creamsicle vibe to it all.

I got some fun accolades for the ticket stubbing of my Far Side calendar. You can see photos I've taken of various months of movies collected on its pages in earlier posts. It's something I started doing a couple of apartments ago... I guess four or five years. For the longest time I'd collect my ticket stubs in shoeboxes, and then in empty Trader Joe's cookie bins. They're never really all that... well, *useful* or *readable* collected in gross like that, y'know? But hey, it's me, and these are things, so what else am I gonna do? I'm gonna collect them!

One day, tho. I just, for whatever reason, caught myself looking at my Far Side calendar, hung up on the wall over a short bookcase, on top of which was my latest bucket o ticket stubs, and I thought to myself, "There's *something* here..." and I started attaching my ticket stubs to the associated dates on my calendar. For a while at Blake Street, I'd keep two calendars up side by side, last year's next to this year's, open to the same month, so that I could see what kind of and how much crap I was watching a year ago.

I think it's a pretty good system for recording and displaying one's celluloid conquests... and embarrassments, I imagine. If ever I see something that would cause me embarassment. =)

Other stubs that have found spots on the calendar are for concerts (not so many these past few years, old coot that I am), plays, Amtrak and airline tix, parking stubs for the beach, receipts for interesting/important purchases, and business cards from unique restaurants. One should understand, tho, that depending on your how you discriminate amongst your stubs, and your frequency for film(or other event)-going, your calendar may quickly lose some of its utility for actually keeping track of the date at a glance. A little bit of math and that rhyme about how many days in each month will help compensate, tho.

Several people asked me about the schlockfest, and how I was feeling after making it thru from start to finish. I explained to them that I'm pretty sure I got some rest for half of BLACK VENGEANCE and half of MOTHER GOOSE. Ned asked me if I missed "the rape scene" in VENGEANCE, and I couldn't remember it. He told me I was the better for not seeing it. Caitlin said something about how that would be an excellent band name—The Rape Scene. Heh. Like I said, a good people.

After Caitlin's remark, in my head I was thinking of "scene" in more of the "hey, daddy-o" way, like, "Man, I'm totally digging the rape scene here in [some place with a really liberal and up-to-date rape scene]." Of course, in the alternate universe where this would fly, the word rape would refer to something that is not actually rape, like... mime... or something...

Y'know, don't chalk that up to sleep deprivation or the schlock on the brain. I would've thought that regardless. And yeah, it would still be Wrong.

Allright, I'll pick this up in a next post. I'm losing my focus right now and want to go soak in some BSG.

Keep on keepin on~

* February 19, 2007. Oh, hey! I forgot to include the final count of films. Each movie in the schlock fest counts as a film watched at the Brattle, so the accurate factored count is 67 films, with 24 films at the Brattle and 19 films at other venues. Thanks again for everyone's support—donors/sponsors as well as a few movie-going buddies!