joel and i had to go through the formality of negotiating with the security guard to get the necessary clearance go upstairs to retrieve dan. 
i have not gone back to tsh since their last layoff with most of my friends no longer with that company. one of my life goals is to decrease the level of awkwardness in my life and visiting the shell of the company i use to work for certainly didn't help. but when joel and i got there, it wasn't at all that unpleasant a visit.
joel and i both had food from the big easy (cajun) (originally i wanted to try the new thai place, but the line was too long and how good can express thai be anyway?). i went out on a limb and got the spicy bbq chicken with brown rice and corn. 
i think they ripped me off, i didn't notice at the time but they overcharged me on the food, i ordered a small meal but they rang me up as having gotten a combo. was it good though? it was different, i usually get the bourbon chicken, but i think next time i'll try something else. 
joel on the otherhand swore of the big easy for the foreseeable future, the food not agreeing with his stomach. we sat by the window near the door, at the time i figured it'd be kind of scenic, but i felt pretty chilly everytime someone came in or out. they talked brazilian, dan planning for his eventual trip to the portuguese speaking south somewhere in the future.
after work, john miller (with dan already in the car) came by to pick elias and i up for the drive down to brookline for the festival. before he arrived, i got carrie to take a photo of the ex-tsh people working at srm 
(the only one missing was eliza hoover). that'd make it 6 people. and since john paid a visit to the office earlier today and we also had an ex-tsh employee come in for a pm position interview, that made it a total of 8 ex-tsh at srm today. and if you count dan in the car, that's 9! when did srm become the galactic center of xtsher world? you can blame rebecca for that: she's like a social worker for former tsh employees, singlehandedly hiring 4 xtshers within the past few weeks to be on her project through her pm powers. a statue or at the very least a plaque should be built in her honor, the fairy godmother of destitute and wayward forrmer coworkers.
upon our arrival in brookline center, the first thing we did was to secure tickets. the price for tonight's 6 hours' worth of viewing pleasure amounted to be $15 ($5 per seat, 3 separate and different showings). with an hour and a half before the first showing, we went to zaftigs for dinner, the exact same place we went to when we were here last year for the first found footage film festival. 
zaftigs is dear to my heart because before it was zaftigs it was called mandarin taste, the second restaurant my great uncle owned and operated back in the 80's (the other one being lucky garden in cambridge). 
my father actually had worked here for a little bit as a bartender. i ordered a root beer and a turkey pot pie. i now realize that the only good pot pie that i will ever have is the kind that you cook in a toaster oven. i've had several strings of bad luck with ordering pot pies from various restaurants, i've reached the point where i don't think good pot pies exist outside of the frozen food department in your local supermarket. dan had the most appetizing meal, what appeared to be belgian waffles of some sort.
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i guess the very first found footage film festival was so successful last year that the coolidge corner theatre couldn't wait another full year before having their second annual found footage film festival. i am fully committed in partaking the entire festival, 12 full hours of audio video sensory overload. 
we got to the theatre and met up with john's cousin sean. we went in and later brian and his friend greg showed up, only sticking around for two shows, but not the midnight show. for the midnight one, eric beacom was there, as well as elias' girlfriend amanda. tonight's showing were your friends & neighbors (weird cable access shows), moments with dora (weird music videos), and then the a/v geeks presented some short educational film loops for the midnight showing.
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the kind of stuff we saw tonight is just extra crispy weird. the kind of stuff that i can talk about for weeks and weeks, great conversation fodder. here is a incomplete listing of what we saw (and some of my own comments):
| tv john show (big hands!), greg antone's rock and roll show ("i ran out of fuel today...i had no fuel for my house", please don't molest those girls!), "god's cape cod", christian pirate puppets, big bad wolf booty shake, james brown on sonia in the morning, american music (this woman pretending to be japanese with her tiny dog miss tina, and this man who was suppose to be the minister of ho-land defense), salon de odums ("voyeur vision...come you chickens!...oh, i couldn't do that! i'm only 16..."), crispin glover reading a poem, german mystery meat video, lionel davis "candypants" (he's a minister!), treat her with care, "shooting star" video with thunderbirds are go puppets, christopher walkens dancing, john spencer in what can only be described as making mad love to a theremin for a kids show, solo cup dora videos, sunshine makers cartoon ("but i want to be sad!...no, you're going to be happy!"), pet rock video, malcolm mcdowell moment, spiderman vs. the vibrator, classic 1989 mtv commercials (freedom rock!), "dress me" from 5000 fingers of dr.t, brit ecklund gets naked and sings a pretty song, "sodomy" musical with more puppets, extra crispin glover moments!, sammy davis jr. loves to sing, dance, and shoot guns!, bmx bike dance off, teletubbies that was just an excuse to feature a gratuitously long segment of a large chested woman taking a bubble bath, raquel welch "california dreamin'" with trippy interlude, creepy milkman sidekick puppet, working at wendy's video, 1960's west germany videos, leonard nimoy sings "bilbo baggins" and william shatner performs "rocket man", testing how smart squirrels are, pamela wong's birthday for grandma, jim henson's crazy sound sync montage, santa claus' punch & judy, "check the neck" neck breathers, "shake hands with danger" construction site safety film |
and finally, today was my father's birthday but i didn't do anything special for him.