Updating the resume to include the phrase "Internationally Acclaimed"

Just checked the link in this blog. The Costa Rica International Film Festival (formerly Montezuma International Film Festival) is going on right now. That makes me feel a little weird. It's happening without me. That's not right. And yet, I can't ask them to stop for me. What I can do is submit something for next year. I have to go back. Damn, it was great there. If I go again, I may not come back. This was from Saturday, November 10, 2007

Back from Costa Rica, and the Montezuma International Film Festival. 

Had a great time.  We jumped off a waterfall and swam in jungle pools.  We hiked barefoot up rivers to more waterfalls.  We saw monkeys and exotic birds and plants and a sea turtle with a shell the size of a bathtub.  Lots of time on sand spent looking at big waves.  And we ate and drank.  Plenty.

Here's some pictures.

This is the Uraca.  Kind of like a blue jay, but with a rockabilly hairdoo.  Can you see it?  The tuft stands up a good three inches.  These guys were all over our breakfast place, and not shy.


Also at our breakfast joint.  He's enjoying a banana, just like in the cartoons.


These little red squirrels rule the coastline.


A wiser man than I might've reconsidered climbing up to this waterfall after reading this sign.  If you understand Spanish, please do not tell me what "varias personas han muerto aqui" means.


But that man would've missed this.  Lisa's there to the right.  She would later dive right in with her clothes on.  Or maybe already has, judging from the "wet rat" quality of her hair.


Stream under a different waterfall, when she'd thought to bring along her swimsuit.


Me, too.


This is what the beaches were like.  Rocky, but spectacular.


This guy was growing outside our room.  Pretty.  We live in a semi-tropical locale, why don't we have these?  Lisa recognized plenty of plants that we do have at home, only they're extra-super-jumbo in Costa Rica.


Zip-line through the canopy of the rainforest.  Kiss my ass, Sting.


But this is what it was really all about.


Oh, yeah, there was a film festival going on, too, wasn't there?  This is me and Crystal Liu.  We won the short film awards.  She got "comedy short," I got "science fiction."  Which is pretty damn civil of them, I think, because if we'd both been competing in comedy, she'd have kicked my butt all over the place.  Crystal's funny and talented and cute as a speckled puppy.  And apparently asleep under the spell of my charm.


Here we are accepting our awards, with festival director Eric Panter.  I'm not sure what happened to them shortly after this shot.  Er, I mean, photograph.

I could show you plenty more: about our journey there (fraught with peril and death) and our journey home (peril, no death); some of the people we met; the meals we ate (fresh seafood aplenty, and while the beer there wasn't great, we did find this Swiss brew that was made from hemp and had a faint aftertaste of bongwater, but was otherwise excellent -- I need hardly add, it is not sold in the states).  But you can come over and catch the slideshow.  I can't imagine you've made it this far in the narrative anyway...