Get thee to the Rooftop!

An exciting new trend in filmmaking is the resurgence of the short film. Long viewed as simply a calling card for the up and coming filmmaker, short films now are really being made on their own terms. This is due in no small part to the internet and the whole mess of sites and broadband channels hungry for content. It is also now incredibly easy to post your film to sites like youtube or just host them yourself on a personal website. Actually, it's been going on for a while and it makes a lover of the short film medium like myself very happy.

You know what else makes a lover of the short film medium very happy? Or any film lover? Or any New Yorker? Or anybody visiting New York this summer?

Rooftop Films

This film festival - entering it's 10th anniversary summer series - is, truly, one of the best showcases for emerging filmmakers in the country. Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night this summer - starting this Thursday, June 1st - Rooftop puts together a program of independent shorts and features that is unrivaled in quality. That's what sets them apart. They are a discerning and principled film festival. They take care of their filmmakers, charge minimum fees for film submissions, and again, take great pains to put together their broad spectrum of accepted movies. It's not just broad or balanced - which can make for boring programming. It feels broad and balanced becaused the films are consistently good. They program themed nights which means you can tailor your summer nights to the stuff you'd be interested in seeing. But, I usually end up at a few nights that I wouldn't think would be for me and find a bunch of good shit there.

So, in closing, I recommend rooftopping as much as you can this summer. Their screenings run the gamut of cool locations and venues around New York and the vibe is extremely good at all their events. I've shown movies at Rooftop and am even now on the Board of Directors so my opinion - you could say - is a little biased. But the fact is, I'm proud as hell to be affiliated with such a productive, entertaining and short film celebrating, New York entity.

See you on the roof!

Terminology

My good friend Eric Z. has officially decreed that women's bathing suits shall now be known as:

Water Panties!

As this has given me great occasion to chuckle over the last few days, I felt it critical to share the news.

Better than I thought

I just swept/cleaned/looked behind my couch for the first time in 3.4 years. And you know what?

It wasn't that bad.

There were some quarters and a penny, a moderate amount of dust, a few toenails, a subscription renewal card for the New Yorker and some rubber bands. The dust was thick but in the end, it only amounted to one trip to the garbage can.

I had been putting this operation off for some time. I suppose I was scared of what I might find. The last time I cleaned behind a couch was two apartments ago when my housemates and I were moving out. We found forty oz. bottles, a previously thought stolen pair of my favorite sneakers (which I wore for a couple weeks before I psychologically buckled), gluesticks, copious amounts of grime (a term I reserve for moist dust), hardcover and paperback books, a t-shirt, tennis balls, an amazing spectrum of grey and brown carpeting, some spaghetti - the list goes on. It was almost like someone had been living under there.

That couch rendering resulted in a beautiful purge but I think you can see why I might have been reluctant to explore the same space in my current apartment. This time, It was indeed better than I thought it would be.

Despite conventional wisdom, on this one occasion, I take comfort in my laziness and procrastination being justified.