I've got girls on the fucking brain right now, man. Every time I tune out of whatever I'm supposed to be tuning into, girls is where I'm going. It's good. Apparently I had a lot of built-up stuff in there that needed gentle sifting, prodding, and sorting to make some kind of coherent order. I've actually figured a few things out in these few short days, and that is another benefit of this stripped-down emotional state in which I am living. It clarifies, it gets you closer, and it shakes shit around of its own accord. New patterns can be pulled, pensieve-like, from the mist. Until about Tuesday at 1:30 in the afternoon, when it all officially goes to hell.

Let's dispense some wisdom:

You don't fuck with the festival volunteers. That is rule numero uno. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how tired you are, no matter whether they're right or wrong or know more than you or less than you or if they're trying to murder your puppy. Losing it at a volunteer gets you nowhere, every time. When that NBC Universal trailer comes up, you clap, every time. And that's all.

While we're up with the stories and homilies, let's speak on the crow's nest. The crow's nest generally refers to the very back row of whatever theatre you're in, on the balcony if there is one, or just at the back of the room if there isn't one. A theatre without a slant has no crow's nest, though, because a crow's nest is dependent on elevation. (There is no crow's nest in the Varsity 8, Cumberland 3, or ROM theatre.) Now, the crow's nest is important. It is the last refuge of the damned, when the damned are about. When it's all been too much, you're late to a screening, or you've just seen too many movies in a row and it's time to get some perspective, the crow's nest is where you go. Particularly bad Midnight Madness movies can be saved by a visit to the crow's nest as easily as by downing a bottle of scotch. Also, pretentious European dreck that looks like it was shot on unfiltered off-market film stock is improved by the crow's nest. And if you've just basically had it - with the fest, with the volunteers, with all the fucking people and the bad food and the smell of your own overused clothes - then the crow's nest will save you. Trust the crow's nest: it is your friend.

Brandy and I just got out of Les Chansons d'Amour, which I literally could not have loved more for its first act, was kind of "meh" on for the next hour or so, and then dropped dead at the end to such a degree that I turned to Brandy as soon as the credits rolled and whimpered, "I'm unsatisfied!" The film is a musical. But a musical shot like a regular movie where people are just hanging out dealing with their shit and then they start singing. I've always been fascinated by that form; some day I'll do something with it in one of my own movies. I even wrote a musical scene for the third act of subculture that just comes out of nowhere and is never spoken of again - just to do it. But I ended up discarding because it was just too fuckin' weird. But generally speaking I think the idea of using musicals and people singing songs as though you were using a radial wipe or a zoom in, i.e. just another technique in the handbag and one that you don't need to "present" to the audience as the overall thematic technique of the film as a whole, is a tremendous idea. For about twenty-five minutes, Chansons was doing every single damn thing I ever wanted to see with that trick, aside from doing it too regularly to be anything other than an unabashed musical. Someday, a someone in a regular movie will just sing a song to say exactly how they're feeling about something, and then they'll stop, and then the movie will go on like it never happened. You know, like how no one can hear Hamlet soliloquoyzing, even though they're all just standing right there. Someday, or possibly in Magnolia.

Wayne Wang's double feature is hovering like the Death Star in my future. Scheduling a double between the lesbian South Africa movie and the anime Midnight might have been a major mistake from an emotional stamina standpoint. I can't believe it's 6:00 and I've got four movies to go.

Oh shit: why the fuck is Cameron Bailey here? CAMERON BAILEY PROGRAMMED THE WORLD UNSEEN??? I gotta get outta here...