I have a vast network

At the museum yesterday, I taught a large group of people to play Telephoto, a game very much like Telephone, but with video.* So at 7:30, I and an intrepid team of volunteers spent 40 minutes making a short film, which we then showed once to another team who had to try to duplicate it shot for shot and line for line in the same amount of time, who then showed it to the next team, and so on and so on until a triumphant final screening of all the films in order at 10:30.

There was not as dramatic a shift as occurred in the original Telephoto project, which began Nouvelle Vague and ended Sci Fi (but stayed Existentialist), perhaps because there were larger groups and more people to remember things. The changes this time were more subtle, but reinforced what I suspected, which is that narrative wins at memory. Specifics of dialogue and action change, but names, pace, and plot points stick around - and the significant content of the dialog remains, if not the exact words (unless they're punchlines). Anything awkward becomes magnified with each duplication. Anything extraneous either gets dropped or gets reinforced as important to the plot - a stranger walking into shot either becomes something the characters react to or stops appearing. Camera errors will be remembered, but not where they occur. Number of shots will vary wildly between versions, becoming simpler and more complicated at random through the evening.

I also met Ciro's brother's girlfriend, who seems cool. They haven't been together very long, but I only know that because I know that; I would have guessed they lived together. I hope it works out; he could use something good in his life, and I think he's pretty worthy of it.

I also ran into a friend from high school, who had accurately and without much difficulty predicted I would be a science fiction author, and of whom I have a painting which is a significant presence in my apartment. (It's not a painting of him, but he was the artist's model.) He is selling paintings and teaching classical guitar, and has a prog band which I haven't listened to yet but have promised I will.

Once I'm through this month of working basically every day trying to pull together work, the museum, and this script, I'm considering making my project for May "Make Romie Happy." I don't doubt I will be called on to do various things, including more work at the museum and likely a trip to New Mexico (which I look forward to, but even travel that I like is stressful in the planning stages), but it would be nice to have a month in which I explicitly don't try to write things or submit things or make things or help out. It would be good to have a sort of vacation in which instead of thinking "what do I need to get done" I can think "what would I particularly enjoy right now." This is almost bound to fail, as I'm sure I'll get roped into something or other, but I think it might be kind of important.

I have received a cryptic e-mail message at my work address suggesting that there is dip in the kitchen which Val brought from New Mexico. This possibly means Val is in Dallas without my knowing (which is valid; I often make trips places and don't let everyone know because I don't have time to see them), and possibly means that there has been a more complex chain of events wherein dip was passed from somewhere to somewhere to somewhere and ended up in Dallas on its own. Point being: there is some kind of tomfoolery going on, and I am lured by its mystique, which has made my day spicy perhaps not in proportion to the dip itself. Avast!

*This was a game invented by me, Ciro, REL, Chad, Patrick, and Merlin some years ago.