Brent Hoff, editor and co-founder of Wholphin, has agreed to be the official Rumpus correspondent at The Sundance Film Festival. This is his first update:
You know that feeling when you get on a plane and realize, as the steward is shutting the doors and everyone is on board, that you are about to be graced with that increasingly rare experience of an empty seat next to you?
It’s amazing.
It’s like escaping from a kidnapping. You feel like you’re getting a brief reprieve from this fucked up degrading cattle car of an air transportation system we have been forced to endure for years in the enduringly American name of “shut up if you can’t afford better.”
It’s exciting. Like a Jersey Shore cat fight.
Except that, right as you plop your special polygamy issue of National Geographic on the seat, you suddenly see a big, sweaty, overweight Homer barge on and come lumbering down the isle. Suddenly, you’re right back in the kidnapper’s house about to be touched. And boy does he touch. He squeezes in next to you like a banana being smooshed back into its peel and he’s not just sweaty, he’s wet, like he just ran all the way from home. And now he’s shared his smooshy wetness with your arm. But you don’t have time to care about that because he immediately starts spreading his legs, rapidly opening and closing them in this manic compulsive nervous rhythm, bumping into you each time without noticing or caring.
Bump bump bump bump.
You think, because you are disgusting, Jesus, he must be trying to air out his sweaty fellas. God, where do these people come from? His head is in his hands and he’s breathing heavy, like he’s in the midst of a pteromerhanophobic panic. Either that or he’s suffering from a low grade Parkinson’s. Oh no. What if none of this is his fault and he’s just suffering from an involuntary movement disorder and can’t help his incessant legs bumping which also makes him sweaty and late for planes? Oh what a jerk you have been for rudely accusing him of airing his sweaty fellas.
Or not.
You decide to give him a dirty look, yes that’s what you’ll do, a big “Yo, what the hell, dude?” frowney face to let him know that knee bumps, even from people with involuntary movement disorders, are not cool. So you take a second to prepare, and then right as you look up at him, that’s when he throws up into his mouth.
Bingo! He’s an independent filmmaker. Strap up, we’re off to Sundance!
