If there’s anything that can make you feel more like Jethrine Bodine than staying at the Ramada in West Hollywood, I don’t know what it is.
I enjoy a gym as much as the next person, but two on one block (plus yoga instruction over a loudspeaker somewhere) seems a little excessive, not to mention intimidating. The man on the street in the Ed Hardy underwear and baby T made me feel more at home (hey, Leslie!), if not more toned, however, and the bouncy attentiveness of nearly everyone I encountered eventually lulled me into a sweet Southern California stupor.
My Outfest 2010 adventure officially began with the seemingly routine registration and retrieval of badges, accompanied by the mini-devastation of not receiving a swag bag. Denied my due as a freeloading – oh, let’s just go with “journalist” (who was also double-freeloading on aforementioned hotel tab) – I could only console myself by art-directing the swaggery of pal/director Kerthy Fix, who is showing her docs Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields and Le Tigre: On Tour at the fest, and shooting it like it was a rock star.
What could I do but pretend I didn’t really give a flip if I got a Stella Artois goblet, the cardboard Christina Aguilera mask/fan, the nifty throwback stewardess travel bag (complete with HBO logo)? I knew I was going put in some serious one-on-one time with that Moose Munch later in the hotel room, after Kerthy drifted off to slumberland.
Slowly, I dug myself out the pit of rejection. I was in an okay place. The sunshine was nice and the films were promising. I was pretty sure I had seen Sarah Michelle Gellar at the airport. I was a worthwhile person.
It was then that I noticed that, according to my badge, I work for “The Austin Chronical.”
This article appears in July 16 • 2010.