Movie Night

So I watched two movies tonight – one of those nights. First was a movie someone got me because it involves people traveling around in a bus. It was actually a pilot for a tv series in the early 70s that never got picked up: In Search of America. First off, he has a really nice bus. For all they do to try and make it look like a ratty piece of crap, his bus is seriously sweet, and a hell of a lot more money went into it than my bus. Past that, the movie is incredibly predictable, and not especially interesting. It somehow manages to be preachy without having any message.

Later, I watched Shortbus. Shortbus is good. See it. Preferably with open minded people. It made me want to go to New York, or some big city, where you can actually interact with strangers. Somehow, that doesn’t happen at UConn. Even though I’m surrounded by twenty thousand people, the rules are different, and strangers aren’t welcome unless everyone is drunk. Even though we never really talk to our neighbors, they’re not strangers – they know us in their own way (“It was four in the morning and they were throwing things at the wall!“). That potential for interaction with radically different people is pretty well summed up in a story by Elna Baker that I listened to between movies (Yes Means Yes). So there you go – a very media rich night.