Catching up

Last night, we celebrated Chinese New Year with a trip to the Jade Garden in Carrboro. Amazing mongolian beef, and the best sesame beef ever.

Last Sunday night, I flew out to Park City to support Indiewire‘s launch of SF360. (Yeah, right. I went to gawk at Sundance, which I’ve heard about but never seen.) I slept on the floor in Paste Magazine‘s house high on the hill above Main Street. I saw Peter Coyote. Brian spotted Steven Spielberg. I met Heather and Jon and believe there’s some photographic evidence of our conclave. I chatted about blogs with Al Gore for 45 seconds; he reads them occassionally but seemed decidedly unexcited by the topic — or just about me?

The highlight came at the end of the Discovery party. I shuffled out into the sub zero night and began contemplating the climb home. I noticed an old station wagon with a small film projector poking out of the trunk, flanked by a man and a woman playing various small instruments. They told me they couldn’t get into Sundance proper, so drove down from San Francisco and pitched a tent off the back of their 10 year old mobile right outside Robert Redford’s restaurant in 5 below night to show their “home movies” (silent movie stuff with faux naive/evilish Mr. Bill style plots) accompanied by harmonic warbling, zylaphone thumping, guitar strumming, tinkling and humming on 60s-vintage toy pianos and organs. The 16 mm projector was powered by the car battery, which kept running down. So they had eventually had to crank up the car, which then shrouded the scene in carbon monoxide and steam. They’d spent their last $ on bread and cheese and a grilled cheese machine, but it wouldn’t work with their converter. I borrowed their video camera and shot some footage — see screenshot below. My debut as a documentarian was cut short after a couple of minutes when the cold killed the battery. I’m sticking to my day job. (More info about Ben and Libby here.)