Here are some things I bet you didn't know:

• Every year, I get into the wrong line at College Park. I then get into the right line. I then get my programme book and my envelope; I then go to Fran's and have something to eat; I then deface the picture of the executive director of Telefilm; and then I start.
• I now have 49 first picks and 64 second picks. The first picks are divided into M's and A's (the M is for "musts"); the second picks are divided into B's and C's (and the C's are basically "if absolutely nothing else can be done about it, pick this).
• I talked to Matty Price at about 1:30 this afternoon, a few hours before I picked up my book and a few hours after he picked up his. I got so excited just from hearing him describe the flicks he knew I'd be interested in, that my chair was slightly damp when I left it.
• It was not an easy transition out of work today, and yet not five minutes into my Fran's meal I was so immersed in the world of this thing that I couldn't remember what I'd done at work today, at all. I am all on board with the fetish right now

So yeah, 49 first and 64 seconds. The selection process is subject to a labyrinthine matrix of influences and interests that overlaps and negatively interferes with itself in unusual ways. Like, Dimitri Eipedes has a pretty tall hill to climb to get me into a flick he programmed, but it can be done; Cameron Bailey, on the other hand, can suck my dick (and has). His name on the page is an automatic page-turn. After a while going through the book becomes more of a pissing contest about what you're not seeing than what you are. "I'm skipping the Coen Brothers movie, how do you feel about that, Film Festival??" "OH YEAH? Well I'm going to fucking Portugal for two weeks, I'm not seeing anything!! SO THERE!!"

But as much as it's fun to go through the listings and find stuff that you just genuinely respond to as a filmgoer, it's even more hilarious to read the ones that completely checkmate you: you couldn't possibly not see them, even if you have every seeming reason to try to give them a miss. "Ellen Page? Check." "Mongolian hoard racing across the plains? Check." "'Adaptation of Satrapi's acclaimed series of darkly humourous graphic novels about her experiences as a spirited young Muslim woman coming of age in Tehran?' Check and mate."

So tomorrow I've got to grid this out into a comprehensive survey of theatre travel times, overlapping start schedules, rush lines holes, and meal breaks. Oh boy, I needed this.