Kathy and I went to Open Screen Night at the Alamo Drafthouse up in Austin for our date night the week before last. Open Screen Night is a two-hour show where anybody who wants to can bring a short film, up to 8 minutes in length, and have it played for the audience. It was, predictably, a very mixed bag, but the time spent on the stinkers were kept to a minimum by liberal application of a gong to cut the worst segments short. Our favorite film was Masa y Sangre (Flour and Blood), a parody of the tortured barrio film, done by a local Latino comedy troupe. Funny stuff, though probably more so if you’ve grown up at least peripherally acquainted with Mexican culture.

It was quite a fun night, especially since we combined the theater with a long stop at Book People, the largest bookstore in Texas, earlier in the evening. A passerby was taking her miniature ponies, which I stopped to pet, for a walk outside the bookstore. One begins to understand why one of the most popular bumper stickers around town is “Keep Austin Weird!”