the payoff

some years ago, a friend of mine, who is a rabid film buff, and i mean DEVOTED film junkie, and who spends interminable hours sitting in the dark watching all kinds of not-quite cinema you or i could never stand to endure, once accepted my encouragement and invitation to share an audience for "little miss sunshine".  it was against her better judgment, and we can all be honest with each other to say that jonathan dayton's and valerie faris' first film (and first screenplay for michael arndt) was generally excruciatingly slow to develop, and not as purely winsome and rewarding as its many devotees would have us believe.  (imagine waiting for waiting for godot, only with whinier and eminently less likeable characters).

but when the payoff arrives, and a pudgy prepubescent abigail breslin starts gyrating without reserve but with full adult choreography to rick james' super freaky "super freak", that's the moment when the two of us, my film buff friend and i, dramatically part dramatic company.  i loved it.  every interminable minute of characters you wish you never knew was washed away for me in an instant.  in fact, the fact that i had endured what seemed like hours of ennui leading up to that moment made that moment even more transcendent.  i was sold.  the entire movie was, for me, a big, big hit.  (my friend still ridicules me to this day for it).  if someone showed you just the clip of that final dance number, you'd be like, ok, it's funny, but not like john belushi funny.  but i'll tell you that if you take the time to endure the build-up to it, every pointless minute and hour of it, the whole thing takes on a whole new dimension of hysterical.  (i swear!  don't listen to my friend!)

but what does this have to do with anything today, you ask?

i attended last night's city license commission meeting where nothing of any real impact or drama occurred, which is a charitable way of saying that i imagine, to most people, it was the equivalent of my friend sitting through the first hour or two of little miss sunshine, and i won't argue with anyone about that.  oh, having chair brian akashian decline to accept the city solicitors office's new draft of proposed regulations as the base draft over which future deliberations will be taken, and moving that things remain based on the never-voted-on draft of last summer with the new changes evaluated and folded in as appropriate, caused a little back-and-forth among the participants.  but, seriously--it was all so polite, and, in the end, all the same since all the proposed changes are to be reviewed either way, and you could achieved the exact same state of non-entertainment by reading the meeting minutes in a few days.  imagine greg kinnear as a bad motivational speaker for hours on end...

EXCEPT!

in little miss sunshine, before the big payoff, you did get a tease when toni collette and steve carell and greg kinnear and paul dano smuggle a sheet-draped corpse (alan arkin's) out of a second floor hospital window, and in last night's license commission meeting the seeds of our future entertainment were surely sown when chair brian akashian deferred several items to their proper upcoming prominence.

february 14th at 6:30pm the fireworks begin--the proposed regulations are back on the table.  (i'm gonna be there to stand up to say my peace--you should too).  and on february 28th, the ongoing saga of peyton place, i mean brian's ivy hall and everyone who likes brian's ivy hall vs disgruntled neighbors and everyone who dislikes brian's ivy hall, is due for its equivalent of a mid-season finale.  (e.g. some folks got into a scuffle on the stairs which was immediately brought to the attention of a beat cop and settled, but now the establishment is standing accused of "not reporting" the incident, even though they called the cops in to help settle the disturbance at the time).  like i said, peyton place...

i'm guessing the meeting on the 14th won't be as well attended as the one last summer that resulted in the de facto firing of two license commissioners, but that's a pity because all the same issues and importance are in place.  no, the blood isn't as fresh, nor the pique of the community, but that's all the more reason to come together now to decide what to do.  (decisions made in the highest heat of emotions are rarely as good as ones made after reflection and time has past).  and, as for brian's ivy hall, we still have standing accusations of constabulary negligence by the chairperson of the downtown neighborhood association, though she's admonished me not to use the "c" word (i said accusations of corruption, i and i alone surely did) in relation to the accusations and deafening silence from the fourth estate, which will, as promised, result in the cancellation of my subscription because what's the point of buying a local paper when there's absolutely nothing local ever in it...

you can't buy tickets to entertainment like this anywhere else in town.

see you in two weeks!