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.
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