these things find you, part 2

Some things regarding my Hoboken adventure that I forgot to mention. Prior to Saturday, I had no idea where Hoboken was, so my mom lent me her TomTom. I had never used it before, so I didn't know what to expect. On the drive there, it quickly endeared itself to me as the best little device ever invented. I put myself totally in the little bugger's hands, not having any idea where I was going. She (it speaks with a feminine voice, you see) guided me exactly where I wanted to go, telling me when to turn and which side of the road the exits were on. Fucking brilliant. On the way back, while driving through Manhattan, she did have a little bit of a rough time getting me back to the tunnel, but I'll forgive her that.

I cannot extol the virtues of this little thing enough. It gave me an unexpected sense of complete freedom: I could go anywhere, whenever I wanted, without preparation, just by hopping in the car and plugging in my destination. Fucking nuts. I was watching Back to the Future Part 2 the other week and was lamenting the fact that the 2015 future world in the movie is a far cry from where we'll be eight years from now. But the little TomTom restored my enthusiasm for the future.

(Getting a little carried away with the poetry, I know.)

The other thing: at the festival, I picked up a flyer for a short movie because I recognized one of the names. A Walk in the Park was DP'd by Josh Silfen, one of my counselors at The New York Film Academy which was a summer filmmaking program I did when I was 16. The short wasn't playing that day at the festival but I went home and found his personal website, which also led me to the site of another one of my counselors that summer, Ishai Setton. Turns out they did a feature recently called The Big Bad Swim, and it's been getting some attention on the festival circuit. Made me want to try and get in contact with those guys.