A few of us go see the movie Coffee and Cigarettes on our night off. Some of the segments are funny in an intentionally uncomfortable making way — sort of like the films of Jim Jarmusch's pal Kaurismäki, the hilariously droll Finnish director.
Kaurismäki's full-length features are alternately in black-and-white or color. He says he makes the black-and-white ones for himself. The colored ones he describes as commercial. That pattern was messed up by "The Match Factory Girl," which is in color.
"Of course, it's so gloomy," he claims, "It ought to be black and white, but it's so laconic, too, that there'd be nothing to look at."
Our show is part of an arts festival that the University is putting on. We're in a lovely medium-sized theater on campus. Somehow, possibly accidentally on purpose, this festival seems to have managed to almost totally exclude the student body. That's a considerable achievement, as there are students everywhere, even though school is out. There are smattering of younger faces in the audience, but mostly it seems to be faculty or former faculty who have put on an arts festival for themselves. Well, that's OK, too, I guess. There were no ads that I could see in the music section of the local alt weekly, though the daily paper did run prominently the AP wire service article about my doings.
Taking a "casual" approach we decide to try out our alt stage outfits. The rhythm section and myself all wear striped overalls and the strings wear matching dark blue shirts and slacks. We look like refugees from Hee Haw and they look like cops. I do more talking that usual, and I introduce each band member as from a different local town, the ones with Indian names: Saginaw, Winooski . . .
We end up having a great time, and the audience, though slow to rise, eventually are on their feet and bopping around. I can see Juana and Alejandro dancing in separate aisles.
Afterward, some of us go to a local bar to witness the end of the basketball game. The Detroit Pistons win the NBA championship and the town goes nuts. There are shots of chaos in the streets and it looks like Iraq.
Daniel explains to me that the Lakers, who lost the game, were a prime example of corporate sports. They paid for the best players money could buy, but somehow a bunch of top players doesn't always gel into a team, which Detroit seems to have. So it's a kind of moral victory, too, or at least it's seen that way: the honest underdog vs. the rich, big city machine.
