In consideration: It's easy to be bitter / The Midwest Gazzette

• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Toronto

Only a few days ago I checked my Withoutabox page and saw that the Sacramento Film & Music Festival had a notification deadline of June 8, e.g. ten days ago. On a whim, I checked the page today, only to see the nice green typeface (the same as next to my Maine rejection) display a proud NOT ACCEPTED.

Not even an e-mail. Maybe I'll get a letter today!

So for those keeping track (e.g. the computer overseeing my Capital One card's outstanding balance for about $600 in festival submission fees and probably about $50 in shipping), my two rejections are the equivalent of lighting $85 on fire. And trust me, I would've gotten much more satisfaction if I could've literally lit the money on fire. Preferably, I'd light $75 on fire to light a $10 cigar.

(Stop hear if you don't want to read my tantrum.)

Now, of course, is time to second-guess myself, and indulge in the lifelong feeling that none of this is real and I'm just in a vat of jelly on an alien mothership, my brain hardwired into a fever-dream hallucination. So: Am I doing something totally wrong here? Did I set my aim too high with what I assumed were low-profile festivals? That is, compared to the behemoths like Cannes and Sundance. Does Transmissions not suck but just wouldn't play well at all at a festival? Or maybe it does suck? Or it's so fucking brilliant that all these assholes can't comprehend it and are going to recant and say it's a masterpiece ten years from now when I'm amassing an awards-pile for The Chronicle?

Whatever. I don't have time for this. I'm revising my script to shoot next year, and fuck anyone who thinks it's going nowhere.

---

In unrelated positive news, I don't think I've publicly mentioned that, for the first time in the history of geologic time, I will be published in a publication. I will be featured in tastemaker Michael Squeo's Midwest Gazzette (sic), and my name is clearly legible on this page of featured contributors. I suppose I've been hesitant to mention this, since I literally submitted eight different pieces under a variety of pseudonyms as a result of caffeine abuse and a slight manic episode, and I've yet to receive the mag to see which submission is included. If it's under a non-pen name, though, I can assume it's fairly mild.