Wow. So, once again, Brenda & I spent part of a February weekend checking out various films at the Boulder International Film Festival, and once again, we were not disappointed. This year, we had a nice manageable program: a movie a day, Friday through Sunday. Two were at the Boulder Public Library and one was at the fabulous Boulder Theater. The surprise of the weekend was that the library has a great theater; we hadn’t seen any screenings over there to date, and I was expecting folding chairs and a temporary screen. But it turns out that the Boulder Public Library has a really nice theater, on top of everything else it has going for it. And on Friday evening, at the Boulder Library’s theater, we saw “Split Estate”, a decent documentary about the shit going on in northwest Colorado and other southwestern states with the oil companies ruining lives and land right here in America. Check your listings on Discovery Channel or Green Planet or whatever, because it’s airing on there now. Pretty good.

On Saturday, we saw “Ajami” at the Boulder Theater, and the wonderful venue was a stark contrast to the brutal setting and eventuality of the film’s subject matter and gutting plot. The final shot of that film is burned into my brain forever, Gallipoli-style.

Today, it was time for “The Misfortunates”, and this film, this film was the highlight of the festival for me.

It seems like every year since Brenda & I have been going to this festival, we have seen at least one film that has resonated with at least one of us, a film that renews your appreciation for why people make films in the first place. Films that strike a chord, films that make you laugh, and cry — with actual tears, and make you want to do the following: be a better person, call some people on their shit, take better pictures, and write more.

“The Misfortunates” was the film for me, this year, that did it all. A coming of age flick of sorts, set in Belgium; the protagonist, this poor kid, is screwed from the beginning by his situation: crazy family, surrounded by alcoholics and no supervision, no money, crazy uncles, general class angst. And yet this fuels both a fucked up childhood, and, well a fucked up adulthood, but an adulthood that ultimately makes the best of things. This is the best movie I have seen in a long time.

In past years, we have seen “C.R.A.Z.Y.”, “Sunshine Cleaning”, “Anvil; the True Story of Anvil”, and “Diameter of the Bomb”; for the most part, these ended up in mainstream theatres or on cable, but it was fun to see these years ahead of the rest.

I’d say this year was the best of all the years Brenda & I have been attending the festival, but every single year we seem to see at least one memorable film, one that sticks with us forever. I can tell you, “The Misfortunates” is one of those films that will not only stick with me, it will inspire me — forever.

Been a while, I know. Will have more to say later. For now, we are having us a nice little blizzard here in Colorado. The best part is that my favorite bar is on top of things. Here’s an email I received today:

From: mtnsun@mountainsunpub.com Subject: Cold Rain and Snow won't close us Down!! Date: March 26, 2009 5:47:49 PM MDT To: rpg@rumblestrip.org Happy Spring Blizzard Phamily and Phriends We ARE open today at the Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery. (11:30 AM till 1 AM) The Southern Sun Pub will be open regulars from 4 PM till 1 AM. The Vine Street Pub in Denver is open from 4 PM till 1 AM.(1700 Vine) Please DO NOT drive! Walk, Snowshoe, or ski in! Please tip well...Many of our folks are working doubles to stay open! If anyone got any extra Phish tickets...We have 100 hardworking employees looking for extras! Enjoy the snow!

(yeah, Phish; whatever. You take the good with the bad, right?)

Brent Graber was a guy I casually knew, a co-owner of a fun little dog named Delaney.

Brent and his brother were regulars at the ballfield near my house where Hooper & I spend many an evening. Last month, while Hooper was recuperating from his knee injury, Brent got hit by a car and had been in a coma ever since. I found out about Brent’s unfortunate predicament a couple weeks after the fact, when Hooper & I returned to the ballfield. Ever since learning of Brent’s unfortunate turn of events, I had been keeping tabs on him through a website his family had set up, and silently held out hope for a recovery of any kind.

But tonight, at the ballfield where I had collected all of my personal experiences with Brent, I learned of his death. His injuries proved too great for his body and especially his mind; he passed away last evening, after spending the last month in a coma.

I am mostly sad for Brent’s family and close friends, as I was but a peripheral acquaintance. But at the same time, I am pissed off about the way his death came about, and at the way it has been reported and dealt with.

Brent was hit by a car from behind while riding his bicycle a mere quarter mile from my house. He was hit at night, by an 82 year-old. The newspapers reported the age of the driver, but also mentioned that Brent was not wearing a helmet and that his bike did not have a taillight or reflector. What was not reported—in the initial story or the initial “death report” news story— is whether or not the driver was in the shoulder, or in the lane she was supposed to be keeping her fucking car in, when she plowed into this 30 year-old guy and killed him. The papers mention that the driver was not ticketed, in a single sentence paragraph. I would assume that is an indirect way of saying Brent was in the middle of the lane when he was hit, but based on the way most bike-versus-auto accidents are reported, investigated and prosecuted, I seriously fucking doubt it.

The age of the driver and cyclist, the lighting conditions, and the fact that the cyclist was not wearing a helmet or that his bike lacked a taillight are important points. But so is the location of the 2,000 pound motor vehicle when it struck the cyclist. I would argue that that last fact is the most important one in fact, and it really pisses me off that that little detail has been consistently left out of the discussion. Why is that? Seriously; why the fuck is that? Seriously.

Brent was always smiling at the ballfield, always laughing at his and the other dogs whenever they did something silly, which is to say Brent was laughing all the time. He seemed to be enjoying himself in his life, and at 30 years of age, his ended too quickly.

I am pissed off about the way his horrible ordeal has been reported in the local papers and suspect we don’t know the entire story, but knowing the way Brent approached everyday life, I’m going to simply toast him now, and say “salut”.

A wildfire is raging in the foothills just north of Boulder; it started this afternoon, and really high winds and lots of open (and dry) land have provided the perfect ingredients for disaster.

Already, several homes have been destroyed, and people are evacuating all over the place. This was the view from my front door when Hooper & I got home from our walk:

This is a view looking northwest; you can see the main line of the fire, and the trail of little fires left in its wake. At that time, the fire line is probably six miles from my house as the crow flies, but it’s a LOT closer to the edge of town than that! People I know have voluntarily evacuated their homes, and one of my co-workers is a Boulder County firefighter so I’m thinking of them tonight. Last time I looked out the window, the fire had died down quite a bit (as had the wind), so hopefully the firefighters will be able to get a handle on things, but they have a long night ahead of them.

So about a year ago Brenda bought me an “introductory lesson package” gift certificate from the soaring school at Boulder Municipal Airport. I finally got a chance to get on the schedule.

I have flown gliders exactly one other time before, back on the east coast. A friend of a friend offered me a chance to fly a Schewitzer 2-33 from Van Sant airport in Pennsylvania, and I had a ball despite the overcast day which meant no thermals, which meant we went up, and basically came right back down. Since moving to Boulder, I have pretty much stopped flying airplanes save for a few checkout flights, due to cost and time constraints. But apparently Boulder Colorado, in addition to being a veritable Mecca for cycling, rock climbing, hiking and trail running, is also somewhat of a worldwide destination for soaring. Boulder’s location, tucked up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, makes it a great spot to launch from. The summertime Colorado sun generates plenty of thermals and the wintertime wave action over the mountains creates conditions ripe for skilled pilots to take a motorless aircraft to altitudes above 20,000 feet. Naturally, I was intrigued. I guess Brenda got tired of hearing me say “I really need to go over there and try the gliders”, because she got me this really great Christmas present last year that I finally got to cash in on this past Saturday.

Unfortunately, the weather was rapidly deteriorating (a huge front swept in Saturday night and dumped a bunch of snow on us, and it’s 1 degree outside right now), so I only got to do one tow. My instructor was originally from Hawaii, and with me from New Jersey, we met in Boulder, towed to 2,000’ AGL and proceeded to get the shit knocked out of us.

But what a view!

This is us approaching our release altitude, with Valmont Reservior to the left and the Flatirons filling the windscreen. The turbulence was fairly severe, and several times there was an uncomfortable amount of slack in the tow rope as towplane and glider each got smacked around in their own little shitstorms of air. After we released, we were able to easily hover in place if we pointed the ship directly into the prevailing west wind, which was fun, but my instructor sensed it was only going to get worse and so we cut the lesson short and headed back to the airport.

I still have two tows coming to me and hopefully I’ll get those in sometime soon. I am in the enviable position of working a mere mile and a half from the airport these days, so a lunch hour launch is not out of the question.

Getting the glider pilot’s license is merely an add-on rating for me, since I already possess a private pilot’s certificate. Rental rates are cheaper, and since the gliders don’t burn any gas, after the tow, it’s a pretty sustainable activity. So, I’m certainly interested in pursuing the rating, but it’s still an expensive hobby. We’ll see. At the very least I can look forward to a couple more flights, and I’ll be sure to document the fun right here.

It’s been a while, but tonight I finally tried something new: rock climbing. More specifically, I took a belay course at the Boulder Rock Club, that included a little rock climbing. Brenda got into rock climbing about a year and a half ago, and at the time I had no interest in joining her. I was riding my bike around while she was hanging from tiny little pieces of plastic bolted to the climbing walls in the gym (and later, from chinks in the rocks of Eldorado Canyon), and that was fine with me; she had her hobby, and I had mine. Once she started her classes last year, Brenda absolutely fell in love with the challenges: the physical challenges as well as the mental puzzle-solving challenges that go with the territory. Still, I just thought rock climbing wasn’t for me. I’m too heavy, too klutzy, too weak. Too outta shape.

And then I saw some climbing movie, and everything changed. I want to do that, I thought. And so tonight I made the first tiny baby step towards becoming a rock climber, by signing up for the Wednesday night “Belay Basics” class taught at the Boulder Rock Club.

I showed up at the Boulder Rock Club after work tonight and met Joe, my instructor. Turns out I was the only person signed up this week, so I got one-on-one instruction for the whole lesson! He gave me some shoes and a harness; I thanked him for the gear and realized that he could have handed me a pair of Crocs and a garden hose and I would have thought I was properly equipped. I would spend the next hour or so becoming familiar with these pieces of equipment as well as the belay device, a simple piece of aluminum with a cable attached to it that allows the belayer (the dude on the ground) to stop a fall easily.

Joe gave me a tour of the place, a large complex of several rooms with ceilings over twenty feet high, with ropes everywhere, and all manner of hardbodies—men and women who could totally kick my ass—hanging from the ropes like they lived there, and others doing Spider Man impersonations all over the climbing walls. I was intimidated. But then we went upstairs to what apparently is the beginner room. A few nine year-olds were wandering around and doing their OWN best Spider Man impersonations. I was intimidated, again.

But no matter, I was simply here to learn to belay, this requires one’s feet on the ground. Baby steps.

Joe taught me the basics of checking your harness, how to tie the knots one needs, and the basics of belay jargon before he set off on his merry way up the wall, providing a real-live belay experience for me. Some pointers ensued, and after a few more runs up and down the wall, he said to undo the belay device and he handed me the other end of the rope and the next thing I knew I was standing in front of the wall and I hear someone going “OK give it a try, why don’t you follow the blue tape, that’s a 5.6 route, nice and easy.” It was Joe, and he was talking to me.

Right. Wait, what? Step on these little things?! Well shit, the nine year-old is halfway up the goddamned thing, so I guess I’d better get moving…

Next thing I know I’m at the top, and for lack of a better thing to do I tapped the bar at the top of the climb and then Joe said something and then apparently I needed some training to descend too. (I was trying to go down the way I came up, sort-of like descending a ladder, but you’re supposed to lower your butt stick your legs straight out, and enjoy the ride down.)

After riding a slide down to the lower floor, we looked for some more free ropes to continue the lesson. There were none free in the back room, so we headed toward the front, that room by the entrance. By now I had been all over the joint, and I had a decent idea of the lay of the land: we were now in the inner sanctum. The walls here often splayed away far from the vertical, the muscles on the climbers here were ripped. Chalk dust coated everything and everyone, and they all seemed to be in some sort of zone.

Joe set us up out of the way and I got some more practice belaying, lots of belaying. Taking up slack, braking the rope to arrest Joe’s falls, etc. I was getting pretty comfy with all of that. And then he decided I should try another climb. In the inner sanctum.

By now I had sort-of gone into a trance of my own, the end result of being exposed to so many senses and experiences all at once. So, up I went, following the brown tape. Encouraging words from Joe in a couple spots, and… tap. Twenty feet up, I start the ride down, looking at my neighbors hanging from their own ropes, and I smile.

Sensing we are wearing out our welcome, Joe retreats us to the back room again, where we find a free line this time. A harder route still. I finally run into a dead-end. I fall off the wall trying to work it out. Joe lowers me and shows me a couple things (after all, this was supposed to be a belay class, but since I’m the only student, I get some free climbing tips in the bargain). I try again, and this time I get past that first hurdle, and past a few more, but I never make it to the top. I am done for the night, tired, but really happy. I take a look around from fifteen feet up, and glide down.

I have to go back in a couple days to do a belay test with another instructor to make sure I remember everything, but then I can rent some shoes and a harness and start climbing!

Tonight was one of those nights I truly felt lucky to live in Boulder. Tonight, at the fabulous Boulder Theater, the Reel Rock Tour kicked off to a packed house, and Brenda, Leslie, and I were there.

The Reel Rock Tour is a traveling film festival celebrating rock climbing, in the extreme. Good god, it was fucking amazing. The only thing better than the photography was the amazing skill and daring of the people in the films. Well, that and the rocks; the rocks were amazing. From Eldorado Canyon—right here in Boulder—to Yosemite to Chamonix, France, these places served as playmates to people who tested their limits; their drive, determination, balls and boobs, as they climbed, slept on, and B.A.S.E. jumped off of some of the most amazing fucking rocks on the planet. It was awesome.

In case you didn’t know, Boulder Colorado is kind of a hotbed for rock climbing. More importantly, in case you didn’t know, Brenda (my wife) is really into rock climbing. I reveled when Brenda took a rock climbing course at the Boulder Rock Club, and enjoyed her stories every time she came back from the gym, and especially when she came back from Eldorado Canyon on a climbing adventure with her classmates from the gym.

So when I saw this film festival advertised, I jumped at the chance to check it out, and I ended up being totally sold on the idea of rock climbing.

By the time the feature event rolled, I was totally engrossed; the beautifully brilliant mountainous landscape projected on the screen was wonderful to look at, but then the reflected light from the screen revealed an amazing thing: the Boulder Theater was totally packed. Every seat was full, and people were sitting in the aisles and standing in the stairwells, to catch a glimpse of these amazing athletes groping their way up the most impossible of routes.

The alpine hikers were my faves, but there were so many characters both in front of and behind the lens that you just wanted to be your best friends, and the fact that half of them were in the audience watching the show (and occasionally tossing out swag, including climbing legend and Rob’s girlfriend Beth Rodden’s husband Tommy Caldwell tossing out shit like ten feet from us) just added to the drama.

All in all, a good night. I am so going to try rock climbing now!!

Ahh, Boulder. Scott Carpenter Park, just around the corner from our house, has a public municipal swimming pool that keeps the kids cool all summer. Now that summer is over, the pool is officially closed for the season—to people. Boulder being dog-crazy Boulder, that does not mean the pool is yet closed for good to all creatures, though. No, after a de-clorination process last week, the pool was officially open to dogs starting this weekend and extending to next weekend. Yeah (woof)!

Naturally, upon hearing of this insanity, we made plans to participate.

We arrived at the pool parking lot Saturday afternoon—surrounded by vehicles with filthy pickup beds and festooned with decals like “my Border Collie is smarter than your honors high school student”—and headed into the melee. Once inside the gate, we paid our five bucks, took Hoop’s leash off, and the games began. Now, Hooper loves to swim in the reservoir by the East Boulder Dog Park, but that has a sandy beach and a nice gradual slope into the water; this is where he learned to swim. But this pool business, all concrete and with an abrupt transition from land to water, well, this took a second to adjust to. Seriously, like, a second.

Watching the dynamics involved with roughly forty dogs running around, all overloaded with the sensory stimuli of having an entire human public pool at their disposal, was thrilling, amusing and hysterical. A co-worker appeared, with his wife and their dog Winnie. They were trying to get Winnie to get over her fear of jumping into the water. With Hooper obviously over his fear of jumping off the pool coping, we decided to see if we could tackle the diving boards.

There were a couple of dogs over by the diving boards who were seemingly chanelling Greg Lougainis, showing no fear of the bobbing board or of leaping off the end. One dog actually pushed off the end of the board so well that he managed to get the board to bounce a few times after he departed. It sounded really professional, the “boing—splash, boing, boing”. I figured Hooper would be a natural, but he displayed a lot of anxiety about jumping off the end. He happily jumped up on the board, and would follow me out to the edge if I showed him the ball, but no matter how I threw the ball into the pool, he just couldn’t be enticed to jump off the end. You ask me, he’s just showing everyone how smart he is. But the pool is open for dog swims next weekend too, and I think I’m gonna bring him back for one more try at diving before winter arrives. All in all, it was a great day and it was fun to watch Hooper take in the newness of the entire experience.

Last night, my friend Leslie & I went to see Cake play at the Chatauqua Auditorium, as the title of this post suggests. Cake is another one of those bands that thrived when I was in musical denial during the ’90s and early ’00s, but I guess I discovered them for myself a few years ago. I love their sound, their lyrics and their “whatever” attitude. Their lyrics touch on so many of my cares and beliefs that it’s uncanny. They mock music groupies in “Rock & Roll Lifestyle” (and interestingly they probably hurt their own t-shirt sales in the process; read the lyrics, you’ll see what I mean), the insanity of war in “I Bombed Korea”, and, in what is probably my favorite Cake song from a lyrical/message standpoint, “Tougher than it is”:

Well there is no such thing as you It doesn’t matter what you do
The more you try to qualify
The more it all will pass you by
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Well the more you try to shake the cat
The more the thing will bite and scratch
Its best I think to leave its fur and to listen to its silky purr
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Well there is no such thing as you
It doesn’t matter what you do
The more you try to qualify
The more it all will pass you by
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is

Sadly, they did not do “Tougher…” last night, but they rolled out a lot of the faves, including a great rip at “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” for the encore, with a rousing crowd participation for the “na-na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na-NA-nas”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ridden home from work with my iPod blasting that tune, rolling into the twists and turns of the Skunk Creek bike path singing the “na-nas” out loud, so it was fun to do it along with a few hundred other fans in the auditorium last night.

It also appears that 70’s metal/rock is the thing to cover these days, because just as the Eels covered “Zep’s “Good Times, Bad Times” at the show I saw a couple months ago, Cake covered Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” last night. Good choice, fair execution, I thought.

Brenda is fully into 12-hour days at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival already (two weeks in), and so even though we bought the tickets together a few weeks ago, she begged off at the last minute so she could get some well-deserved couch time. I’m glad Leslie was willing to tag along and check out the show, and to show me where the hell the auditorium was in the first place.

The Chatauqua Auditorium is a nice venue, a semi-open arena with good acoustics and a great location at the base of the Flatirons. It also turns out that you can get a decent listen of the show just outside the place, and if you get there early enough, you can plop a blanket down on the grass just outside the seating area and not only listen to the show but even see the show. I’ve made a mental note of that for next time.

All in all a great night in Boulder.

Ever since Brenda & I moved to Boulder there has been one glaring omission from our daily lives, and that is settling down to read a good local newspaper. Back in Jersey, the Star Ledger was an excellent paper that originated from the local county where we last lived in that state. We got great reporting and writing, on everything from the international to the very local. The sports page was phenomenal. Molly Ivins’ column was printed regularly, and we had almost no use for the New York Times and its holier-than-thou masthead font (and pricing).

Here in Boulder, we have the Daily Camera.

Now, being a Boulder newspaper, the Camera boasts some interesting and fun features that definitely pander to the local culture. There is a “trail dogs of the week” section, where reader-submitted photos of their dogs out on the many local trails are featured; there is a rock climbing column, as well as what has to be the highest percentage of sports section coverage devoted to cycling and running in all their forms. And of course the letters to the editor section—replete with outlandish requests and complaints from both ends of the liberal-conservative continuum—never fails to entertain. But the editing of this newspaper has been sub-par from day one, and pretty much every single day I can spot at least a couple of grammatical and spelling errors in what is supposed to be a professional newspaper, and one of the articles in today’s business section encapsulates this dilemma so well I just had to share the first paragraph:

Camera’s Circulation Falls By Alicia Wallace, Camera Business Writer

New statistics show circulation at major US newspapers continued to tumble, and the Camera does not appears to be immune to the trend.

‘nuff said? Thought so.