Nick Orsini's Blog, page 3

Can’t Hardly Wait Screening

Hi!

So, with the help of some really talented people, Read at the Show is sponsoring a screening of Can’t Hardly Wait in Montclair, NJ …at the Clearview Clairidge Cinemas. Below, you can check out the Facebook event, an article about the screening, and a flyer done by Abby Resko at Fearofbears.net.

I hope I see you all there!

Nick

http://www.facebook.com/events/123270807792450/

http://tellmesomething.org/pl/cant-hardly-wait-the-screening.html

Central Park Interview

Hi! So I was asked by a friend to participate in the One Day on Earth project. On 11/11/11, across the US, filmmakers set up at different locations to capture the stories and people in their corner of the world. I participated by being interviewed and also shot 2 of the interviews. Check it out:

The Year Without Batman

It was my father’s truck…from when he’d contract out jobs.

A red box on the hardest tires that still afforded movement.

The inside smelled like pipe dope, old Band-Aids and gum.

When he finally gave it up, I put a mattress in the back. I added

some hollow, beaded curtains and some carpet on the floor…

and although it remained rickety and questionable, it was mine.

And when we went anywhere, as an exhaust pipe shook and

held to screws…we never worked with our hands. We knew

better than to figure out better things to do.

**

13 December was the coldest day thus far…in an odd season

populated by high temperatures of sixty-four and seventy. Tuesday

was finally appropriate. Hats and gloves and work and work and

clicking my Dash clock until that moment. I entered my office in a

hurry to unzip. I was sweating into the stray fibers of my scarf.

And that was a day like every other day that makes up a year…

just a handful of hours strung up like Christmas lights: depending

on the one before to continue any sort of pattern. Then it ends.

Then it’s packed up in a box

**

A confirmation email lit up my notifications. I first saw it on a phone,

then in a browser …and part of me wondered about all the emails

on every device I’ve ever owned. Somewhere in the excited stage

of employment, I signed a paper giving me the right to this device…

Giving them all the right to find me at all times. I am discoverable

like a signal…my privacy is boxed away in my childhood. I am

public and available and always vibrating and dancing and moving.

**

Two tickets. One. Two. Tickets. It reads: show up on time please…

No cell phones and no photography. Palisades Theater and then some

address I’ll never know or remember. It will live in my GPS. And it

goes on to say: just two just two just two for today. And when you

arrive, a police office with a loaded gun will pat you down. He will

find your cigarettes, your keys, the camera stuck needlessly into the

back of your needless phone. And he will hold it in a basket until the

6 minutes are done. So help us God if it’s anything more than a phone…

say a digital camera or some SLR with lenses and film…you will be

asked to leave. You will be humiliated in front of every single person.

**

…Then it ended. The elevator ride from an office in the middle of the

most middle part of central Manhattan clicked by like vacation photos in

a viewfinder…and it was slow just like that trip. Finally I am done with it…

finally to the bottom of the building. The door revolved and pushed me

out into the edge of winter. My earbuds kept me strangely insulated as

two small balls of knuckles, hair and nails pushed deep into my pockets.

The bus terminal is a beacon of the old world…back when people traveled

without complaint…without a sense of already belonging wherever they

happened to be going.

**

The bus was dirty that day- a full newspaper exploded on the floor…some

rolling Bud Light cans irritating the feet of passengers. Someone was speaking

to some business colleague about a meeting gone wrong…lamenting a lost

opportunity for more money more money and the most money. Wasn’t there

something we could have done…something to save the deal!? No. Not today.

Not now and not here. The airbrakes let go of us and the bus rolled into a steady

rhythm of many, every afternoons. It got dark that day. It got dark so soon.

**

“Stop Request” was outlined in red lights across the top of the bus display.

I collected my messenger bag, my headphones, and politely asked the man

blocking me in to make some way. The aisle is never wide enough and my

elbows grazed the backs of shoulders. Up to the front, the door opened, my feet

were back in the New Jersey dirt. Yellow and red lights interchanged and the bus

began to pull away. The leaves were wet and not longer served up a crunch for

children who roll on front lawns and imagine too much stuff.

**

I collected my stoned roommate. Good thing he digs holes at the cemetery for

a living…good thing he has a strong back. Good thing he can pay the rent.

It was time. 6 minutes to get us through a winter. 6 minutes to bring us to the

brink of summer. 6 minutes and we’ll know everything…we’ll light up the

internet with intricate comments on small details that we will pull from our

four discerning eyes. It was time.

**

The truck sat in its designated parking spot. Spot number fifteen. We climbed

in and roared alive…two men on top of a machine that carried the materials

for houses in a former life. The beaded curtains shook and fanned out as we

took turns and merged. The Parkway turned into the Thruway somewhere in

the dark. We were greeted by different signs between states…Thanks from the

governor and thanks for buckling up safe.

**

The printed passes burned a hole right through my jacket. The parking lot

was full except for my secret spot behind the Target- A small row of ten spaces

that no patrons know anything about. The truck barely fit and I hit the driver’s

side door into the mirror of some small Ford. I didn’t leave a note for something

I was not sorry for.

**

Through Target.

Passed “Menswear”…

Passed “Electronics”…

Passed “Fresh Produce”…

Passed the attached Pizza Hut…

The door that lead into the gray.

Blue letters and a red rope marked the entrance.

It spells out I-M-A-X. We were, by my best guess, the

twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh people waiting. Some

wore shirts that just say “Bane” …not the band that evening.

And a pimply attendant lowered the rope, began checking

us off. We stepped up to the front, and then step passed

the threshold. There was no mall left…just the policeman

standing there. The frisk goes smooth. “Have a great time”

6 minutes to find our seats. 6 minutes until the murmur

disappeared. 6 minutes until the lights went down and

the Warner Bros logo filled the giant screen.

**

We make it through our days hoping for no more these things.