Friday the 13th: Visit to the Green Lantern

Last night Juan and I felt adventurous and decided to check out the Green Lantern's Friday the 13th film festival. The Green Lantern describes itself on its web page as: "A restaurant and cabaret located on the city's Lower East Side, the Lantern is the heart of this town's underground." (Click on the picture at left to go to their website.) The Green Lantern is home to the Weird Winonans' UFO and paranormal discussion group every Thursday as well as Dr. Bob's puppetorium (neither of which I have yet to be witness). We have determined that at some point we will request a tour of the puppetorium basement, though.

So, the film festival: "FRIDAY THE 13th! Beware the Ides of January. 'VINNIE PULLUPACHAIROS INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL' live cabaret acts in between strange and outrageous independent short films." It included some interesting shorts, such as 12:01 p.m., with the father from That 70s Show; Solid Geometry, based on a short story by Ian McEwan and starring Ewan Mcgregor; and the biggest surprise of all, Un Chien Andalou, Bunuel and Dali's surrealist film from 1929, which opens with an up-close shot of an eyeball being sliced with a razor, in order to shock bourgeois sensibilities of the time (and that continues to give most viewers the heebie-jeebies). The eye-slitting can be seen as a statement of rupture with the aesthetics of the day, but I actually prefer L'Age d'Or (another Bunuel-Dali surrealist collaboration) because it seems to infuse more humor into its avant-garde agenda of satire and ridicule. The other interesting "film" we saw was actually a recording of a performance piece by an artist present. Over twenty years ago, he decided to be buried alive for three days in order to foster better relations between our realm and that of the dead. Performance for the Dead featured his "funeral" and subsequent rising from the grave three days later. hmmmm.... right.

Oh, and in case any of you have been plagued by a similar question: buffalo and bison are the same thing when you're talking about the North American animal. Bison is just the more scientific name.