Last Thursday I got out to George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) to see Mark Kessell speak about his daguerreotypes in a lecture titled, "The Zero at the Bone: What It Means to Be Human." His solitary obsession is on identity: what is it that makes us who we are? He said he enjoys the daguerreotype because no two of them are ever the same — presumably a comment on the uniqueness of identity. Likewise, he began working with them because their nature makes them mirrors, so the viewer is forced to see themselves in the image.

He notes that our ideas of life and death are solely cultural and personal constructions. So, for example, the way we grieve is strongly influenced by how we think we're supposed to grieve. His closing image was the title of the lecture — "The Zero at the Bone" which is an image of ancient teeth. Teeth are one of the unique fingerprints of our existence, like ... uhh ... fingerprints ... and, as some of you know, they are the most durable part of our physical form and will generally outlast the shape of our face, our flesh, and our bones after we're dead.

Following that, I hung around to see the film Die mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers are Among Us). Film historian Ralf Schenk gave some context to the film, noting that it was the earliest East German anti-fascist film after World War II. It's about a woman who returns from a concentration camp to find a squatter in her apartment — who happens to be a former Nazi doctor who drinks to try and drown his self-hatred. The film plays out much subtler than you might expect — I guess, until you realize the historical context, and the very recent sting of Germany's defeat in the war. It's more a film about hope and forgiveness than it is about conflict, and for that, it's really quite evocative.

Friday, I started out going to Paradigm Café (3118 E. Henrietta Rd., formerly Blue Sunday) in Henrietta to see Dream Engine. I was also there for some food, and got their baked potato soup which was the best parts of cream-of-potato soup, mashed potatoes, and baked potatoes. It's not too often that you eat something that's good enough to make you forget about what's going on around you. In addition, Dream Engine was as good as ever ... their spoken-word poetry performed before a jazzy/funky band really works.

Afterward I went to Betty Meyer's Bullwinkle Café (622 Lake Ave.) and hung out there for a while. I took a bunch of pictures to try and capture the mood of the place. Also, it was a night of bands (and a rare Friday night that they were open ... usually only on Saturdays for Betty's Saturday Night Sing-Along.) Gaybot did a disorienting blend of spoken word, electronic effects, and repetition to add to the surreal mood. Also, someone had made a lamb cake (that is, regular cake using a lamb mold) and the band distributed it to the audience. Being the finicky diner I am, I got the bulk of the head ... mmm ... lamb head in cake form. [Try all four flavors of double-meanings!]

Sunday night I was back at Betty Meyer's Bullwinkle Café (622 Lake Ave.) for another show. Singer and film aficionado Kelli Hicks played some of her eight-millimeter films while T. Griffin Coraline played. The band was a guitar/violin duo with electronic effects who played emotional observations on subtle but familiar topics. The films generally added to the mood of being a neutral observer, but as often as not, they were also distracting from the lighter nuances of the music.

Anyway, I got to thinking about how unique Bullwinkle's is. It's got a dreamlike quality all its own: the way the windows are blocked out create a sense of timelessness, and it's as though the inside is in some other universe where the rules of the world are only loosely applied. Betty has definitely put her mark on it: "1920's flapper house" is what I think she said her decorative motivation was. But you can tell it's pretty much all Betty.

Monday night I went to the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) to see the "Surprise Cinema." This time it was a film called Overnight which is a documentary — in final form if not the original intent (to document the making of the film) — of the rise and fall of Troy Duffy and his experience making The Boondock Saints. The story is that Duffy wrote the script and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Film Corp. (8439 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA) agreed to fund the $15 million project in 1997. However, (to put it sympathetically) Duffy's misguided attempts to play the "Hollywood game" caused him to be ostracized by almost the entire film industry and ultimately lose the deal. He appears to have a rare combination of Machiavellian moral indifference to present actions and unwarranted conceit to his own abilities and ideas. It was unnervingly similar to the portrayal of Hitler in Der Untergang (Downfall) that I saw a few weeks ago — the exception being that Duffy's friends could see the errors in ideas through the fog of his blue-collar charisma. (Oh ... yeah, and that Duffy wasn't out for genocide.)

The bitter irony in the whole thing is that it was solely Duffy's ego mania that destroyed the project — the resulting movie is actually considered pretty good and has a very strong cult following. It was finally released through Indican Pictures (8424A Santa Monica Blvd. #752, West Hollywood, CA) in 2000 to open on 5 screens in the United States and grossed only $25,000 in that weekend, yet is rated quite highly on IMDb.

Anyway, after a serendipitous error earlier in the week (concerning a meeting time) I came to a realization of understanding how to use going for a walk as a way of focusing on the current moment, so on Monday I started doing it for real. It was great ... just walking around looking at stuff, having a cup of coffee — not really thinking about anything but what I was seeing. I walked along the canal path which was somewhat bizarre in its own right — what with the desolation of the path bracketed by natural overgrowth and the former statewide thoroughfare; all within sight and earshot of Interstate 390 at rush-hour. On Tuesday, though, I made a mistake of bringing a bag to pick up some interesting stuff I had seen along the way, but I found I was just looking for stuff to pick up.

See, I'm someone who finds the present a slippery thing to hold on to. Less and less often do I find myself wading in the candyland hell of nostalgia, and more often in the future — whether it's looking for the next neat thing to put in a bag, or pondering how my death-bed-self will feel about how well I've lived my life. Rarely, though, can I just be in the present: what this leaf feels like; how those tree branches look; the colors of all the cars on the highway.

And so, let me dedicate this events list to the future presents (or is it the present futures?)

• Paper Clips (at The Little) - Some kids do a project where they collect paper clips: one for each of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
• Melinda and Melinda (at The Little) - In this parallel-stories-within-a-story, this woman Melinda gets to experience a good life and a shitty life. It sounds remarkably similar to Sliding Doors.
• Fever Pitch - Something about love of/and baseball.
• Sahara - Yet another action-comedy movie.