Class guilt

Today, for the first time in my life, I visited a food bank. I showed a recent piece of mail to prove my current address, presented my driver's license to prove that I'm me, and filled out a brief form. Then I got a laminated card that told me how many cans of fruit, dairy products, grain products, proteins (beans, in my case), and cans of vegetables I could claim. (Fresh veggies were apparently just up for grabs.) While I was shopping, a volunteer started shouting at a tall, skinny woman whom he accused of stealing. She and her boyfriend were running some kind of scam wherein one of them exited out the back door rather than the front one. They were trying to make off with more than their share, the volunteer alleged. The woman was ejected from the food bank and told not to come back. Outside, people in line shook their heads, and another volunteer expressed amazement. Stealing from a food bank!

From my perspective, it's just a sign of the times, like the nervous-looking crowd today at WorkSource, the state-run employment support agency that provides workshops and other resources free of charge to the un- and underemployed. I took a three-hour class today on writing effective résumés and cover letters, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, thanks to the humor and enthusiasm of the teacher. I plan to go back later this month for the workshop on interviewing. I didn't feel particularly guilty taking advantage of WorkSource's free class, since I am unemployed, and my unemployment isn't voluntary. Being at the food bank, on the other hand, made me a little uneasy. Was I taking food from the mouths of people who needed it more? The form I filled out included the question: Are you homeless?

I'm the furthest thing from homeless, and I think my risk of becoming homeless in the immediate future in extremely low. My mother owns a house outside Detroit; worse-case scenario, I'd move back there. I'm also not poor in terms of my upbringing, or my family's current standing. We have money; I have an inheritance fund that I still receive monthly installments of $1,000 from. I just don't have any work-based income right now. Maybe visiting the food bank every week as a way to supplement purchases from Rising Sun, the cheap grocery stand eight blocks from our house, and the occasional PCC or Whole Foods splurge (though I'm trying to avoid those now), isn't causing some truly impoverished local family to go hungry.

Still, texting a friend outside the food bank, I felt like a tourist. Hell, I felt like one when I reached the checkout and the guy bagging my food asked: "No meat?" I didn't want to confess to being a vegetarian; it seemed privileged and precious and not in the spirit of taking as much food as you're allowed, because hey, maybe that's the only food you can afford this week. I didn't feel like figuring out which produce was worth taking home. I didn't want to take an unlabeled can of corn. Some kind of bourgeois instinct kicked in: Unlabeled stuff is sketchy. Don't do it!

As a friend pointed out, I had a day that exposed me to the lives of the poor and unemployed. I may be the latter, but I'm not really the former, and while I'll definitely revisit WorkSource, I'm not sure about the food bank. I'll have to give that some thought.

An explanation

I jest, of course. But not about being unemployed again. If anybody knows of anything remunerative that I might enjoy doing, or not hate doing, please don't be shy about bringing it to my attention. (Unless you want it for yourself, that is.)

Alan Ball at SIFF

There are few people I consistently refer to as heroes of mine, but American Beauty screenwriter and Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball is one of them. (Roger Ebert is another.) To my delight, I found out tonight that Mr. Ball will be attending both SIFF screenings of his new movie, Towelhead, which is based on the novel of the same name. Without much hesitation, I snapped up a few tickets.

The catch? The screening I'm attending happens June 14, when I was theoretically going to be in California. My June travel plans hadn't really snapped into place for me until tonight; now I think I'll spend a weekend or more in Portland between June 1 and the date of the screening, then drive down after the screening to Sacramento to visit my friend Emily Page, a former Weeklyite who now works at the Sacramento News & Review. I could also use part of June to prepare for my eventual exodus from Seattle, which should be happening later in the summer, after my Eurotrip.

In any case, the Alan Ball screening/appearance is a nice anchor for next month's planning. I think I'd regret missing an opportunity to see him in person, and having June even a little bit more figured out is kind of liberating. Not that unemployment has been particularly harsh so far. I'll make sure to blog about it when it bears down on me with all its guilt-inducing, monotonous force. But the first week hasn't been too bad.

SIFF opens with a whimper

First, some good news: Michael's latest Idolator piece in which he exposes his family to the Billboard Top 10 is absolutely wonderful.

Now for the not-so-good news: This year's SIFF Opening Gala was easily the worst in my Seattle experience (my first opener was in 2003). The movie, Battle in Seattle, was expectedly bad: simplistic, melodramatic, manipulative to the point of being propagandist, and predictable to the point of being kind of boring (and stuffed with embarrassingly obvious speechifying, some of it righteous in content but all of it self-righteous in tone). The party, on the other hand, was bad in ways that weren't as expected: There was no free booze (not that I had any, free or not, but I was outraged on behalf of my peeps who did), the whole thing was not very well attended, the music on the dance floor was noticeably stale, the films-projected-on-the-walls choices were uninspired, the venue was kind of depressing (partly because it was the subterranean Exhibition Hall, partly because its size made apparent how few people were there), and the food was either in short supply and almost entirely meat-based (the savory stuff) or disgustingly overabundant (the cake, which admittedly was pretty good -- but isn't the thing you want in overabundance). The VIP folks in their gated party community got to indulge in sushi and other healthy goodies, while we plebes waited an eternity for soggy egg rolls and, again, more cake than any human should consume at a single event. In accordance with the movie's theme of rebellion against the capitalist overclass, I proposed that we link arms and chant "The people united will never be divided!" until they let us into the VIP area, but alas, no one else was willing.

One highlight of the event: Watching my movie-star crush, Michelle Rodriguez, answer Serious Questions ("Did your involvement in Battle in Seattle inspire you to change your lifestyle?") with a combination of vacuousness ("I drive a Prius now!") and quasi-maniacal laughter. On the other hand, if André Benjamin had been any more awesome, his awesomeness might have caused the space-time continuum to telescope and dissolve. It's always nice to see André. He was wearing a large-brimmed hat and a denim sport jacket, plus jeans with deep cuffs. He's my kind of movie star.

The film did include a bunch of Seattle locations, which was gratifying (Cinerama! The Paramount! Zeek's!), and one scene with Charlize Theron was actually quite intense, but overall the movie was ugly to look at and dramatically amateurish (the writing was more at fault than the acting, but then again the cinematography was pretty poor, too). Its Afterschool Special-style earnestness was sweet, though, and it did make me want to do something unequivocally good for the world, like go down to New Orleans and help rebuild the city.

I'm not counting SIFF out just yet, though. Either tomorrow or Sunday I hope to see The Fall, which Geoff tells me is visually sumptuous, as I'd hoped it would be. And while I'm enjoying the flexible hours and fringe benefits of unemployment, I might as well pan for a bit more movie gold. After all, once I'm on the road (or whatever it is I'm doing next), there'll be no more Egyptian, no more Harvard Exit, no more -- sigh -- SIFF Cinema. Gotta log the popcorn hours while I can.