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mixed-race couples at the Olympic Diner
Tuesday, May 15 2018
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This evening Gretchen and I went into Kingston to attend a screening of a movie entitled Delinquent by our friend Peter (of Peter & Alison). The venue was Green Kill, an art gallery and performance space in the south end of Uptown (near the "five corners" where Route 32 crosses Greenkill Avenue to form Wall and Fair Streets). Neither Gretchen nor I had ever been in the space before. When we arrived, Peter was there, ravenously devouring a large greasy piece of what he termed "two-day-old chicken." Also there were a couple Green Kill staff, all of whom who appeared to be aging gracefully into late middle age. The woman collecting money ($5 each) gave us complimentary glasses of white wine from a big chilled bottle. Soon we were joined by our friends Juliana and Lee, and then several other stragglers showed up, all of whom Gretchen seemed to know. One was a local poet named Sparrow and the other was the publisher of Jewish Currents, whom Gretchen worked for for several years. Tonight was Peter's night to shine, and he started out by reading from his novel American Fever, which is written as a blog with actual working links to real products one can buy. And then came the showing of Delinquent, which is a full feature-length movie shot Upstate outside Oneonta. It tells the tale of a sex & lingerie obsessed teen, his cruel hard-drinking policeman father, and the empty house the teen discovers and then uses as a place of escape. Things start coming together as we learn whose house it is and our teen hero tries to do something about his father's abuse. We all payed special attention to the ending of the film, which Peter had said had enraged all of Hollywood and ensured he would never make another film. The ending actually played out as two different scenarios, though one was revealed as a fantasy. Amusingly, in the extended after-screening Q&A, Peter said he's had people walk out of his film in disgust as one ending (which is revealed to be a fantasy) before the true ending arrives. As movies go, it was actually good, coherent, and and perfectly watchable. It had been shot on real film back in 1995, and the video was perhaps a bit grainy. But Peter insisted everyone had been paid. He said he'd made an unexpected windfall on an investment, and that had funded everything. Unfortunately, the film doesn't have that much buzz and only gets viewed once a week or so on Amazon.
Interestingly, the soundtrack of Delinquent is all by the seminal punk band Gang of Four, whose dental drill guitar sounds actually work well with the onscreen action.
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As the screening wound down, it was about 9:30pm, too late for dinner at a proper restaurant. So Gretchen and I went to the Olympic Diner on Washington Avenue (near the traffic circle). There, we both ordered the veggie burger with fries, as that was pretty much the only thing possibly vegan on the menu (the place has a decidedly 80s food sensibility). The veggie burger is really good there, though I can't be sure it's technically vegan.
Interestingly, Gretchen and I were one of only two same-race couples in the diner tonight. The three or four other couples were mixed-race. They were all heterosexual pairs of one black person and one white person, though it was a good mix of black women with white men and white women with black men.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?180515 feedback
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