Nothing much worth mentioning happened at the screening. The film director, George Hickenlooper, who also directed "The Man from Elysian Fields," which I really like, was not in attendance. I kind of secretly hoped he would come up in the end and introduce Rodney Bingenheimer, the subject of the film, but he didn't even show up himself. That would have been cool. Bingenheimer is a really interesting person. The only interesting thing that happened during the screening is that a couple of birds were flying around in the Paramount for a couple minutes during the show. Birds flying is like one of my only phobias and when they fly overheard, I can't help but panic and shrink. Thanks Hitchcock.

I had about two hours to kill between this screening and the 10pm show of Richard Day's new film, "Straight-Jacket," so I went home and chilled for a bit.

I drove to Millennium Youth and met up with my friend Johnny Oh!. Johnny and I do a lot of Agliff (Austin's gay film festival) films together but he's not so big on standard film festival fare. "Straight-Jacket" was about a gay actor in the 50's trying to hide his sexuality from the public (sort of ala Rock Hudson), so I thought he might enjoy this. It was directed by the guy who did "Girls Will Be Girls," so we figured it would be fun. Over in the film pass line we saw Alan Campbell and said hello and so the three of us sat together during the film.

Alan told me he had seen a great film, although it only ran about an hour, called "Cosmopolitan." He said the filmmaker was selling the DVD after the screening for 20 bucks (something I've never seen or heard of at an Austin Film Festival before) and he bought one. We also discussed a few other films including "After the Apocalypse."

At some point, I had a conversation with someone who said they had slept with a girl who had slept with Ian Curtis of Joy Division. It was actually stated as, "Ian Curtis and I have slept with the same woman." This person said that a girl he was once with sexually claimed that she had slept with the lead singer of the band shortly before his suicide and that he had left her his boots in his suicide note.

After the film, I went and picked up my roomie Amanda and we went to Starseeds for a late dinner. Amanda's boyfriend Mike met us there after work. The dinner was pleasant enough. My favorite waiter Sean was there but he was a bit busy and didn't get a chance to talk to me much. I had told Alan and John (who went ahead to the restaurant without me) to get a corner booth as we were going to be going Scoot Wolfe style (Party of Five) and that if anyone questioned that, tell them you were getting a table for Lodger. I thought this was funny. Of course, the little waiter guy who we dealt with us had no idea who "Lodger" was. His name, he said, was David, and he seemed really high. I had asked him his name several months ago and he game me an odd answer like Haskell or Harkin or something but, of course, he totally denied this when I brought it up.

After Alan left, the rest of us stayed and chatted more. A bunch of freaks came in and sat at the next booth next to us. There was this totally sexy young guy who looked kinda tough but kinda fey and seemed really at ease in his own skin with them. I couldn't take my eyes off of him. I thought he was so hot. He looked like gay porn star Teddy Cox's younger brother (or son). I really wanted to get to know these people and I wished Melissa was with us because she always is good at striking up convos with random folks. These were the kind of people I would love to have on Lube TV.

Anyway, eventually we left and as it was getting closer to 2, there were lots of people showing up. I picked up the new Chronicle and headed home to hit the hay.

Lodger@SXSW2004