Explain It All with a SIgh

Just today, I was wished all the patience and strength I need to see me through. Through what?

I was so excited and not because it was Sister #5's birthday. Sister #6 was combining a visit to see Dad at the hospital with an overnight visit with me and no sister is as well suited to having fun with me as she is.

Plans change when Dad is unexpectedly released from the hospital and she has to fetch him and return the parents to the northern neck.

Oh, the fun we could have had.

For the second time this month, my gas service was cut off. It's been one long saga after another with the department of public utilities and me trying to figure out who thinks they live in apartment 2 (the answer should be me for six years plus now) and keeps terminating service. Once again, I can cook. Once again, I don't trust it to last.

Good thing I don't need my stove very often.

I've been looking at looming deadlines all week, which is just part of my life. The pain in the ass part is that one of the stories requires me to contact and deal with multiple "modern busy" women. Just to be clear, these are like the women I read about in magazine articles and book reviews, women with demanding jobs, expensive haircuts and a dedication to having it all.

Good luck with all that, ladies.

But despite disappointments, DPU runaround and high-maintenance women, I had plans tonight to go to Hardywood to see "The Astrologer," a psychedelic film made in 1975 by an astrologer about an astrologer who decides to make a movie about his life. How meta is that?

The hook? The film had been lost for 40 years so practically no one has seen it.

The walk over to Hardywood was notable for its contrasting celestial bodies, the enormous nearly full moon on one side of the street and the setting sun on the other. A gorgeous walk on a night that most definitely had the dry air and crisp temperatures of autumn to it.

I want to cry thinking summer is coming to an end.

DJ Sister Goldenhaze took the 1975 cake with enormous bell bottoms and a shirt tied at the waist. It had been so long since I'd seen her that I hadn't known she'd cut bangs again, leading to an entire dissertation on why some of us are bang devotees.

"If you've got bangs, you don't even have to do anything else and you've got a hairstyle," she said, echoing something I've known for decades.

With the most positive couple I know I talked about how - given Richmond's accelerated cool quotient -challenging it's become to choose between competing events on any one given night.

Like tonight (see: Daniel Bachman at Black Iris). Also, like next Sunday when the Bijou fundraiser "The Third Man" shows at the Byrd and Movie Club was showing "Beyond Valley of the Dolls" outside under the stars.

A cinephile shouldn't have to choose one or the other..

I took my case to Andrew, who organizes Movie Club, and was rewarded with him moving the date of "Dolls" so he too could catch the restored version of "The Third Man." Yep, that's me, affecting change at a brewery.

The movie was fascinating in that it's so terrible it's good kind of way. Nobody had any acting chops and there was no reason to care about a two-bit carnie who winds up being the most talented astrologer in the world. He also pronounces Libra as "lie-bra."

Judging by the audience's reactions, nobody was prepared for a movie made by someone who didn't hesitate to set an entire scene to one song. That's how you end up with a scene of a couple on a date, chewing, smiling, talking, arguing and drinking in slow motion and silent pantomime while a corny song plays over it for three agonizing minutes.

Although I did admire the slo-mo hair shaking and glass throwing.

The Moody Blues' classic "Tuesday Afternoon" was also played in its entirety over ponderously long shots in a scene of our hero on a sailboat, the pages of a calendar (three months' worth), peeling off in silent testimony to the passing of time as people tittered, laughed and looked away uncomfortably.

Okay, we get the point, their discomfort seemed to imply, as if prolonged attention was a sign of weakness or inferiority. So just watch the damn scene and stop expecting a quick cut, kids.

Later a 30-year old said that he'd assumed the director was trying to be funny and obvious with these shots. Not so, grasshopper. This was just self-indulgent '70s filmmaking.

Favorite line of dialog: "You're not an astrologer, you're an asshole." Best of all, it was said in the most heartfelt way. No irony. Just pure '70s sincerity (insert smiley face).

I left after the movie, missing hearing the band Manzara play, to hoof it back to J-Ward and catch Richmond Comedy Coalition's monthly "Richmond Famous" show with Ed Edge as the locally famous muse for the improv troupe.

I knew of Ed from Cafe Verde, his vegan taco joint, but also from Secretly Y'All when he'd shared a monumental secret, possibly the biggest secret someone could have. So, sure, I was curious to hear more stories from Ed.

A few minutes late, I walked in as Ed, a paramedic and organizer of several local non-profits, was in the middle of a tale about being kicked out of Canada. The story involved a black man (Ed) with his arms full of something - "Whether cash or cashews, they didn't know" - running from a convenience store.

That was all RCC needed to riff on two cops interrogating a woman for eating nuts ("Seventy percent of the population here is allergic to nuts!") and another about a guy who had caffeine blackouts that turned him into a southern gentleman ("I have great respect for the Negro") with a mustache, played by another comedian's finger as he followed along behind him.

Off to the side of the stage, Ed was cracking up louder than anyone.

In one piece, kids kept showing up in the principal's office because they were inappropriately dressed - a bikini, an evening gown, a cock sock and pasties made from pages of the bible.

"This one is Genesis, this is Revelations," he said twirling his fingers in front of his breasts.

Ed's next stories involved always being asked the worst thing he's ever seen as a paramedic. For him, that was childbirth. Once he fainted and once he projectile vomited. "This slimy Smurf thing - a baby- comes out," he said to hysterics.

Naturally, the troupe followed that with a pissing contest of each person's worst thing ever, namely things such as hangnails, blisters and ripping a Band-aid off. Next came two smurfs commiserating with a house owner about gentrification and bad city schools

For his last shared bit, Ed talked about the years when he was so busy with two jobs and multiple non-profits that he moved into a warehouse space to sleep and save money, effectively killing his dating life.

Naturally, he reverted to online dating, resulting in 47 first dates in 2011 and three second dates. Because he's vegan and a creature of habit, he took all his lunch dates to Harrison Street Cafe and all his dinner dates to Ipanema.

Humor followed with bits about trying to pretend it was a guy's first time at Ipanema on a date (everyone recognizes him and says hello) and a butler named Jeffrey who serenades him with "Major Tom" ("He may have a good voice but he isn't very good at reading social cues").

No one laughed harder than Ed, although the guy with the horse laugh behind me and I came close.

Patience and strength are overrated. Maybe all I needed to get through this day was a '70s flashback and some good laughs.

Cue August 28 page being ripped from calendar, my bangs fluttering in slow motion in the breeze...