June's first film ends in a parade and free banana

The plan was not to take June to a film premiere. The plan was to go to a film premiere, maybe meet some famous people, have some drinks, maybe get famous... Instead, I ended up trying to take a 20 month old to the premiere of my brother's first film "Found." I helped him by writing some music for it. Oddly enough, I'm an award winning "director" at the film festival that his film was showing at. I put my piece Untitled 17 to some public domain film of the 1939 World's Fair and it was screened at the 2007 NYIFVF I think. It won "Best Experimental Film."

Now, here's where I help you understand where the bar is for this festival. Here's the title and blurb for the feature film shown after my brother's film:

KRACKOON

Synopsis: A Bronx town is terrorized by a crack addicted Raccoon.

However, June and I never made it to Krackoon. We will never know. Our night in Manhattan ended as soon as Ryan's film started. The first scene in "Found" actually takes place in my actual bedroom with the main character waking up. Even though I had shown June the film a number of times during the day, and even though she had told me "mommy... bed," I didn't put it together that she thought that was her mommy in the bed. It wasn't, it was an actress. As soon as the film started, June thought that something really, really, really bad had happened to her mommy since katie wasn't with me. I was mostly able to control the damage by slinking out the door, but I think that this was the most upset that I had seen the her in months. If the government wasn't so busy eating its own young, I would probably get a call from child services for this fiasco tomorrow.

Since June had a perfectly reasonable reaction to the situation we headed home after I calmed her down. When we got off the subway train, we heard a snare drum and a bass drum a couple of streets over and June was saying "Daddy. Drum." We went to check it out and it was a parade with a small band and a group of people carrying a small ornate lady statue on their shoulders. I think it was related to the Dancing of the Giglio festival here in Brooklyn. June immediately became convinced that this statue was Batman, as we have been talking about Batman lately. We listened to the band play for quite a while while also listening to the older folks in the neighborhood complain about how the parade gets smaller and smaller each year. Every time the band stopped playing and it went to just the drums, June said "More, More" and we followed the whole group for a while. I'm always struck by how soft and how loud drums are outside and how much I like watching smaller groups of people playing non-electronic music. I really feel like electric amplification has done more harm than good to music and sound over the course of time. Making something unnaturally loud is just not easy or something that should be taken casually. It's also nice to hear music being played by people who've memorized their parts. I feel like reading music is a double edged sword.

Once we were finished, I stopped in a deli and June was starting to get tired which usually shows her crankier side. This night was no exception, but in what I have found to be typical fashion in NYC, the store clerk said to fussy June "Why you so sad little mommy? You want a banana?" and gave her a banana. We went home and June ate her banana in three bites after whacking it into her high chair while screaming with joy and for some reason sticking it into her ukulele. We had a quick bath and June fell asleep in her Batman shirt.

never leave a banana in a hot NYC apartment

My wife and I accidentally left some bananas in our apartment this weekend and took off to New Jersey. There was an amazingly putrid situation that we had to deal with once we got back.

Also, I almost died on a Delta flight this week. We boarded the plane, then had to deplane because of mechanical problems. Once we reboarded, there was water leaking from the air conditioning of the plane. It was half spraying half dripping on me, giving me a sleek coating of nasty rusty water. The guy sitting next to me was named Romeo and he was quite incensed by the whole situation. Did I mention that he was a professional dancer? I think in his profession there is little margin for error and if he danced like a late leaky plane, he wouldn't be able to feed his family. He eventually flagged down a flight attendant who was so tall she almost didn't fit in the plane and got her to wipe the bubbling brown water off the ceiling. The guy who was to the right of me was reading William F. Buckley's "Men, God, and Yale" or "God, Men, and Yale" or whatever. He was upset that we were upset that the plane was leaking on us and proclaimed "Isn't it just a marvel that we can travel what used to take weeks and weeks with a horse and buggy in a couple of hours. Are you guys really complaining about a little bit of water leaking from the ceiling." Romeo said "It's just disgusting" and I said "I wouldn't take a horse and buggy across the country if it was leaking water."

The rest of the flight was without incident.