I'm frankly still coming down from the screening of the film the other night, which was right up there with the most exciting moments Standing There Productions has had this year (squeezing in just above the time I cleaned my room so comprehensively that I could see my desk for a whole day and a half). But in other news:

Nearly finished Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman, which is getting really juicy now that his love of science has driven him to work on a little old thing called the nuclear bomb. But I must confess that I broke the rule of never dallying from one book, and I read two articles about Alan Bennett (in The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books) which means that I now feel more or less entitled to discuss him as if we've been acquaintances for years. When David Lodge, in the NYRB article, started criticising Bennett's diary entry of September 11, I found myself thinking, "Oh dear, David, your problem is, you just don't understand Alan". It's just like when I was watching the winter Olympics and I actually called out furiously in my own loungeroom, "Oh I can't believe she thought she could do that during a 360 turn". Massive expert, me.

Today I've been working in the Victoria Law Foundation, trying to help organise Law Week. I was trying to find some funny quotes or jokes about law. Problem was, they had to NOT be offensive to lawyers, which of course left me with things that sound like bumper stickers. "Old lawyers never die, they just lose their appeal" etc.

So anyway, thankfully along the way I found the following statements from the snorty-laugh-inducing Dave Barry (go here) who is also the man who established the rule that you should never comment on a woman's pregnancy until you actually see a baby coming out of her (in case she has put on weight, rather than become pregnant). Anyway, here's Dave:

"Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world".

Also:

"Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear"

Finally, I greatly enjoy the following as a sage commentary on American party politics:

"The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club".

... If you want to genuinely laugh as well as quite inexplicably wanting all of a sudden to watch the entire of series one of 24, go to his blog entries on TV. Most amusing.

Did I mention we had fun at the screening? Pictures up soon.

Last night was the cast and crew screening of our film, I Could Be Anybody. We cheated and invited a rowdy bunch of friends and supporters as well. It was a brilliant night, with lots of drinkies and (it gets a bit gourmet here) iced vo vos. Seriously. Are we not the PEAK of cuisine?

There were three screenings of the film, due to the fact that there were too many bums and not enough seats, so we got to witness various different audience reactions to a film previously only ever watched by two people at a time (usually the same two people). Until yesterday, I Could Be Anybody had only been watched in its finished form by Rita, me, Stew, the DVD angels at Eskimo Productions, targeted family members, and my housemates. Prior to that, in its more raw form, it had been watched by half a dozen other people, from Fez the sound magician to Marcus the colour-fiddling guy. So in a sense, this was the "outing" of our short film.

The screening was at a gorgeous little theatrette called the Erwin Rado cinema (see here) and thanks to everyone who turned up, helped out, and assisted in eradicating our surplus of tick tock biscuits, iced vo vos, and snake lollies.

Photos will be up on our site just as soon as we've broken into the producer's car (where her keys are currently secured), located the camera, re-acquired basic motor skills, and managed to get home without hurting ourselves.

Our cast and crew screening is tonight.

Lots of people are coming. Lots. Many. More than two.

Hold me.

So tomorrow night is our cast and crew screening in Fitzroy. I'm reminded again of how bizarre my life is when I find myself asking questions using words I don't understand to people I barely know, the answers to which could well determine what it is people actually see when they come to see our film.

Did you know, for instance, that there are heaps of different ways to watch a film on a TV? There are heaps of different DVD players and heaps of different sorts of TVs and projectors and there are things called "modes" and "formats" and WHY WASN'T ALL THIS SORTED OUT IN A MEETING SOMETIME IN THE LATE EIGHTIES?

I was watching our film today in my loungeroom when it ocurred to me that I must have lost quite a lot of weight since I was in that film. I was thinking, "Hang on, is this a movie about a fat girl? Is this a comment on the representation of women in the media?" I mean, I was reeeeally wide. Then (with considerable relief) I realised I was in "wide" mode.

Mental note: remember not to put film in wide mode tomorrow night. Actors may take offence.

Reading update: Sydney Writers' Festival fast approaching and I'm a fraction (geddit?) of the way through Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, which is a book full of deliciously outdated expressions and vast overuse of the exclamation mark. It's also fascinating because it's about a guy who treats every moment in life as an opportunity for an experiment (social or scientific). Including dreams. He decides he wants to work out what dreams are like, so in his own dreams he sits there going, "ah, this bit of my dream is clever. See what my subconscious is doing there? That's most intriguing".

This is my favourite bit so far, which is an aside during a description of the kinds of things he would argue with fellow students about at university:

"I often had this problem of demonstrating to these fellas something that they didn't believe - like the time we got into an argument as to whether urine just ran out of you by gravity, and I had to demonstrate that that wasn't the case by showing them that you can pee standing on your head".

Of course you did. You had to.

Here's to nerds.

Where would we be without them?

Us. Where would you be without us?

Last night I saw Inside Man, the Spike Lee film. For an Anthony Lane review, see here. It's the first non-live entertainment I've seen since Kokoda, which felt live because Simon was in it. So it was good to just sit there and imbibe. Never thought I'd be grateful to be sitting in front of an American movie that I don't have to think too hard about, but I was definitely grateful that the people in the film didn't know they were playing to an audience of two.

Anyway, I have to get on with it. I've had all day to get further through my list of "things that need to be done by Thursday night's film screening". So far, I've emailed a lot of people with various different problems, I've panicked about how we're going to seat ninety-five RSVPd guests into a sixty seat theatre, and I've remained fairly consistently informed on the situation of the miners in Tasmania who have managed to get out of a small cage under ground after two weeks and are now going to a friend's funeral. Just in case I thought any of the above was of any import whatsoever.

So today I was getting things ready for the cast and crew screening we're having on Thursday night, for our film, I Could Be Anybody. I'm halfway through my list of things that need to be done by then, so the glass is half empty, or full, or something.

Anyway, I decided that I needed to go to gym, even just for half an hour, even just because if I don't it will become a metaphor for life merging into work. So I did. And there were these two teenage girls doing weights together. One of them said to the other, "Did you see that guy upstairs in the cardio room?"

The other one said, "No. Why? Was he cute?"

"Yes"

"Would I think he was cute?"

"No"

"Nya. Then who cares?"

That reminded me of these drama games we used to play. You had to establish your status somehow. One day we worked out that in Australia, laid-back can be the most powerful position you can take.

Just prior to that, I'd been parking my car in Collingwood (dropping something off at the awesome DVD place, Eskimo Productions) and there was this guy taking the front off his terrace house. He was sweating and covered in plaster and paint. He heard me pulling into the car park out the front of his place and he turned around. His T-shirt said, "information is power". The car in his driveway was an old green ford with a bumper sticker on it that said, "my other car is the met".

For those of you not living in Melbourne, that means "my other car is the state-owned public transport system before it was privitised".

So anyway I got out of the car and there was a cat hanging around the back wheel. I said hello to the cat who then did what all cats like to do when you say hello to them, which is get under your feet.

"Come on Nietzsche", said the information is power guy, "leave people alone".

... sometimes it just writes itself doesn't it?

Off to the comedy festival again tonight and it does rather make me wonder what the hell I'm going to do when this thing finishes. For those of you not from Melbourne, there is a month long festival called the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which is cruelly robbing me of any sleep and which is responsible for a higher than usual incidence of the flu for this time of year.

Kathy Smith Goes To Maths Camp was reviewed yesterday in the online UK Chortle, here.

See also here, which as you know is my favourite newspaper.

Also, I received an Alan Bennett DVD in the mail today, which was a present from myself. God I'm ace.

Also saw Kokoda on the weekend, a film starring our friend Simon Stone who was pretty much unrecognisable (ie he was wearing shorts) and who I really did not want to see dying in a tent. I then met up with him about ten minutes later at the comedy festival and was most relieved to see he wasn't wearing army issue shorts, he wasn't covered in mud, and he appeared not be bleeding to death.

The movie is definitely worth seeing. Although I missed a lot of it due to the fact that my hands were covering my face and I was muttering "Simon's going to die".

Thankfully, I can at least give away the real life ending: Simon doesn't die. He comes to the comedy festival with me and Stewart and Katie-Jean and we go to dinner in the city and the meal takes an hour and ten minutes to arrive so I complain to the staff and we get the entire meal plus drinks for free.

Yay for me being the hero of the story. Who knew Kokoda had such a modern twist at the end?