(short) film news in 'park city'

Some great news for the Hampshire College film program coming out of Park City lately - two films (at least) made by alums are showing at Sundance and Slamdance. Sundance, one of the top film festivals in the US, and Slamdance, playing simultaneously in the same area, might be the queen of the ultraindie fests. If you're lucky enough to head there, here are some films to add to your screening list:

At Slamdance:
COVERED TRACKS: "an experimental documentary exploring the Freedom Tunnel, a fifty-block long train tunnel underneath Manhattan's Upper West Side." Directed by Nate Kensinger, Produced by Kensinger and Meghan O'Hara. this is playing some other fests, too, including SFindie (pic at left). meghan, nate and I are experienced media services librarians.

PANELS FOR THE WALLS OF HELL: " William, a pretentious, disaffected projectionist at a film festival, has high notions of cinema." Directed by Blake Myers and Takuro Masuda. Blake and Takuro aren't HC folks, but another of their documentary projects was in the IFP Doc Lab. Blake also makes bloody horror flicks in Atlanta. maybe this is one of them?

others i'm excited about
NEW YEAR PARADE: Divorce and the mummers parade in Philly. Dir: Tom Quinn - an IFP Narrative Lab alum
WESLEY WILLIS'S JOYRIDES - you know, Wesley Willis.
FRONTRUNNER - an IFP Market project, with music supervision by our friend Brian Liu, who has his finger in everything it seems

and, at Sundance:
THE DRIFT: "A 1960s space mission goes awry, resulting in a strange disappearance and cosmic transmissions. The fall-out of this journey forever changes life back on Earth and launches a counter-culture revolution." Director: Kelly Sears
You can see Sundance's entire '08 shorts program on Netflix, iTunes or XBox.com starting Jan 18. brilliant!

others at Sundance:
KICKING IT - homeless world cup soccer!
George A. Romero's DIARY OF THE DEAD. film students cleverly documenting the world of flesheating monsters around them.
Michel Gondry's latest: BE KIND REWIND. Jack Black is magnetized and he and Mos Def remake all the great movies - Ghostbusters, Robocop, Driving Miss Daisy.

That's my line-up. Hope I get to see some of these flicks, soon!

how to occupy time when marginally employed

1. make salsa.
now, i do love burritos, but from the amount of postings i have here about salsa, you would think that I have some kind of obsession. however, this is really just because we grew tomatillos in our community garden plot this year, and they exploded! i know of nothing else to do with these green paper-covered citrusy fruits but salsa. so with jen's goading and the feeling like we shouldn't let such bounty go to waste, I turned to tomatillo-roasted jalapeno salsa.

it was mostly home-grown, though not entirely by us. some jerk pulled an entire jalapeno plant, full of fruit, out of the ground, and left it, and all the peppers, in the compost pile. I greedily stripped the peppers off the plant, swearing about wasteful americans and trying to imagine what i would do with two pounds of jalapenos.
So, into the oven they went, (400F for 20min) until roasty and skins black, sneezing in the house because of the capsicum in the air.

Next, spent a long time online trying to find a salsa recipe that was appropriate for me for canning (tasty, and not giving me botulism). Ultimately bought Ball's Blue Book of Preserving at trusty Frager's Hardware. I was sure they wouldn't give my friends botulism.
spent about half the day making a double-double batch of tomatillo salsa, canned with the aid of some of dave's beer brewing supplies, and a veg steamer at the bottom of the pot instead of a canning stand. by about 10pm, there were 9 pints of salsa cooling on the table. expect to get some in your stocking.

The kitchen has been busy this week. Professor Burpy is gurgling again, filled with a lambic-like prickly pear cactus wheat beer. it smells sweet and is electric pink, flavored juice of the prickly pear, picked by the side of the Beach Rd. in Southern Shores, NC, thisby the thankseating. a loaf of vegan banana-raisin bread has already been devoured, and i may make some coffee cake soon, too.

other projects include: intense planning for hot new years dance party, knitting a balaclava, scheming on some xmas crafts, mustering the courage to ask for a tarot reading, yoga, bicycle-hunting, dreaming up other projects.

do you have a job for me that requires brain power ?