AUSTIN, Texas, Mar. 12, 2005 — One could wish that we weren't having our entire cool, sunny spring while we were diving into dark caves to see movies. Nonetheless, we are committed. Or should be. We work up to our long day of lines and entertainment by going to the gym. I do a fifty minute battle on the recumbent bike. I think I'll finish Fortress of Solitude but I don't. I go home and get ready for the day. We've decided to try to see a shorts reel, a documentary, maybe a panel. We dress, go downtown and part on W. Fifth and find a little line developing outside the Alamo Downtown.

I didn't think shorts would get people up in the morning. I'm wrong. Forrest turns to the girl behind us who is dressed in an animal print dress and tall purple chunky boots, maybe Doc Martens or the like. "Nice name," says he, or something like that. I look at her tag. "Trixy Sweetvittles" it says. "What's your real name?" I ask, impressed that she got this on her badge. "Shelley," she says, smiling sweetly. Turns out Trixy is her nom de cine for the six minute animated plus live action mixture on this shorts reel.

First, let me say, that I liked Trixy's offering. It had a lot of message coming out of crude drawings in motion over some plain footage. But mostly I liked Trixy. The whole reel was amazing. Usually if I see one short I like and several I can tolerate in a reel I consider it unusual. I wasn't that impressed with one that overlaid home movies and stills (some repeated) with a sensation of burning or burnishing. The rest were fun, high concept romps or deadly serious material presented brilliantly. Highlights were a short about asylum seekers refused in Germany told largely by one man's stories of his African homeland with visuals of the fixtures and grafitti of a prison where such prisoners were detained before being returned to their fates. (All White People are French.) And a short story brought to life about Northern Ireland. (Everything in this Country Must.) After the shorts we listened to the Q&A and then stopped for a sandwich and coffee. (FFP had a salad at AD, but I'd only had the foccacia off his salad and a coffee.) When we got to the convention center, there were already huge lines. (Three lines are formed at these things: badges, passes and tickets.) There were apparent technical difficulties. The movie, A Life Without Pain, is about children with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. Does a crowd like this for a documentary portend an oversold festival? It isn't the Wilson Brothers, after all. That was last night. Although we saw one of them walking out of the convention center as we were walking in. Luke, I think. We also saw Harry Dean Stanton. Only I couldn't come up with his name. I kept thinking Dean Stockwell. I kept thinking Paris, Texas. Later, looking it up, I was amazed to see that Dean Stockwell was also in that flick. I can't remember his character. Oh, well. Celebrity spotting is not my best thing. During the long wait, we talked to be people around us and tried to keep a line organized that broke around a refreshment stand. Volunteers at SXSW film are notoriously clueless in my view. They want badges. They want to see movies. They don't get paid. Who among us would do much? Finally, we file in. The filmmaker and one of the families she profiles are there. But we are getting a late start. The movie is well-done. It makes you glad you aren't the parent of a special needs kid. (Or maybe glad that you aren't a parent.) The parents are fantastic. The older siblings, in two cases, seem to be such perfect, model kids that you worry about them.

It's too late to go to a panel so we decide to go home and let the dog out and do a few things and come back to see the Enron movie (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). As we are walking away from the convention center to go retrieve our car an earnest young man comes up to us asking for a ride to Dobie. Heck, that's on the way if we take the scenic route. We warn him that we are a few blocks from the car. Turns out he acted in a movie. He gives us a card touting the movie and we vow to try to see it.

SuRu calls and then comes by while we are home. So I don't really get anything done. Then it's downtown to queue up again. Another big crowd. I wonder how many of the people lost money on Enron. (Yep, I did. Bought a corporate bond they defaulted on.) The movie indicts the guys with their own internal videos. Oh, and it indicts Bush, too, of course. Afterwards, someone asks if Clinton was complicit, too, and the filmmaker and the writers of the book indicate that corruption knows no party boundaries. Nevertheless, as these movies pile up you'd think they'd convince us to vote in a Democrat and prove that to ourselves. It's sort of like the popularity now of blaming Viet Nam solely on Nixon. It's so funny. There was also blame for deregulation. That's ridiculous, though. Laws were broken and people successfully prosecuted eventually. Bush could have stopped the mess in California by enforcing laws that we have. Traders who colluded to restrict access to energy were eventually convicted. The SEC could have enforced its authority. Corruption is rampant. Many have fallen but much corruption continues. Perhaps not quite as far in the ozone as the Enron deal. Anyway, great movie for the internal corporate footage. And the congressional testimony. While Skilling testifies an assistant (or somebody) smirks beside him. I'd love to know who that was and what happened to him.

We listen to Q&A and head to the Hilton. We set ourselves up in the bar, get a bottle of wine and order some tasty raw oysters and some entrees.

We ate in the bar to people watch. There weren't many customers, actually, while we were there. A few folks from the festival. At one point a couple sitting at the bar, a black man and a white woman who keep adjusting their seats to get closer. Another couple, similarly racially split in bright conversation...have badges and seem to be work colleagues.

A table next to us acquires a woman in a sparkling outfit showing some cleavage. She has a corsage which she unpins and pushes away from her on the table. She orders a wine. She is joined by a man in a suit. He has a boutonniere. He doesn't remove it. He orders a martini with multiple olives. And this pair proceeds to provide a movie of their own. Probably they were participating in a wedding as parents or step parents or something. Their conversation is mostly nonverbal although once words from her drift over: "but you chose to...." She gives the thousand yard stare, stoic. He puts his hand over his eyes, shielding them from her in a Anthony Hopkins gesture. Finally before FFP and are are through stuffing ourselves, finishing the wine, sharing a dessert, she is daubing at tears, delicately, trying to save the makeup. The waitress doesn't want to get near them. They seem toxic. But she does ask and they order another round. These people have provided us with a little movie themselves. And a noisy group of parents and teachers has occupied the table behind us, in good cheer over a victory in Texas Boy's State Basketball.

Home. A little reading. Bed.