Sometimes I hate being right...

- I'm not what you might call a football fan. Back when I was living in Columbus, I'd volunteer to work during Buckeye games figuring, hey, easy money. So when it came time for my boss to schedule managers for Super Bowl Sunday, I told him I'd work during the game. "After all," says I, "it's not like anybody will come, right?" (see title of post). I figured that the theatre wouldn't be busy- I wisely scheduled a skeleton crew for this shift- but the fact is that for the 7:00 round we had around twenty customers and absolutely NOBODY came after 8 PM. Our last movie was scheduled to start at 10:15. On the off chance someone actually showed up, I threaded and started the final set of movies beginning at 9:45, sent the entire staff save one home, and then waited. And waited. Finally, a little after 10 I called my boss at home and got permission from him to close up early. Then I stopped all the movies, spliced them back into one piece, closed the business day, and went home nice and early (a little before midnight compared to my usual 12:45). Moral of the story: you can't compete with the Super Bowl, especially not in football-mad Northeast Ohio, so why even bother trying?

- Rules of the road inquiry: when is it considered acceptable to turn on one's brights? If you're driving behind someone, you're supposed to turn them off. If someone's coming toward you, you turn them off. When it's foggy out, you're not supposed to use them (since they're only good for lighting up the fog). So what's the point of having them at all? Meanwhile, I've come up with a feature that's actually practical- a device that prohibits the car from driving over a certain speed (say, 15 mph) unless the driver's seat belt is buckled. I'm not a fan of the seat belt laws, not because I don't think it's a good idea to wear seat belts, but because it makes more sense to me as a public health issue than a legal one. So by combining an effective ad campaign (bring back "Blood on the Pavement"!) with safety measures such as this one, the legal angle would become redundant, which it sort of already is anyway, since a cop can't pull you over just because you're not wearing your seat belt. It's only enforceable as a rider ticket on top of some other violation.

- SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE (1968, William Greaves, seen in theatre) - sweeeeeeeeeeet. What this guy (scroll down) said, pretty much. What's most impressive to me is how cleverly the circles-within-circles construction is executed here, while never seeming pleased with itself. Offhand ingenuity is so much more charming than the smarmy, self-impressed variant. Rating: ***1/2.