disorganization and other tales of waiting in line.

so, all i wanted to do is have a little cultural outing. what i got was a frustrating, complete lack of organization. ugh.

we wanted to go see a prescreening of milk at the moma, with a q&a with gus van sant. sounds great, right? we thought so. of course, the tickets were just about sold on the first day of ticket sales last week. i went yesterday, for day-of ticket sales. they were going to start selling tickets at 1:00. i got to the museum at about 11:15. there was, of course, already a significant line, but i had a pretty good spot. (what we've also learned from this experience is: new yorkers love to wait in line.) after a while, a little man with a clipboard came around asking how many tickets everyone needed. around 12:30, another man ("Sweater Guy") came out and cut off the line about three people ahead of me saying that everyone behind that spot wouldn't get tickets. what the hell?! we hung around for a bit to see what would happen, but it looks like they had pretty accurately calculated the leftover tickets.

we found out that gus van sant had reserved about half of the seats for his buddies and entourage. good work, man. didn't you want the public to hear you speak? i'm sure your friends think your movie is good, or at least tell you so. we also got to see Pink Lady (short Jewish woman with a firey temper) give hell to Sweater Guy for not having enough tickets. whatever. they told us the standby line would start at 6, and they would give out whatever tickets weren't picked up before the movie at 7.

i got to the moma film office at 5:15. at that time, they wouldn't even tell you where the line was forming. what?! how does that make any sense? Sweater Guy announced to the growing crowd that at 6, he would tell us where the line would begin. ok... sounds like a stampede to me. by the time e got there, we were able to play zones for a few minutes, until Sweater Guy announced where the line would be. again, we got a good place. we stood against the wall in line for an hour, before they decided to tell us there were no available tickets. wow....

in the end, we went to crazy times square and saw slumdog millionaire, which was fan-frikkin-tastic. to entice you, trailer below.

(also - if you want to see any movie screenings at the moma, get there well before what you might consider to be ridiculously early, and expect utter disorganization.)