smile, you're on candid camera

it was dark by the time i got to rochester.

i was a little anxious about my next stop. for reasons that still escape me, i took the offer to stay at my ex boyfriend's mom's house in upstate new york. it wouldn't have been quite so weird if it weren't for the fact that in the past six years of dating him, i had never met her before in my life. perhaps it was the sitcom character in me that brought me to this house.

fortunately, she and her husband turned out to be really sweet. she had heard all sorts of (thankfully) wonderful things about me and was delighted that we could finally meet. after a pleasant reception and a good night's sleep in their guest bedroom, they took me into rochester proper the next day to visit the george eastman house and the international museum of photography and film. of course! photography and film. what a perfect place to distract me with.

once the estate of george eastman, founder of the eastman-kodak company, the mansion is now open to the public so that people can see just how goddamn rich he was. behind velvet ropes are giant expanses of rooms with hunting trophies and the sort of furnishings you would expect to be described in the great gatsby. there's only fleeting mention made anywhere about george eastman's suicide in the upstairs bedroom, where guests are not allowed.

adjoining the house is the eastman-kodak museum, which contains one of the largest photography archives in the world. an exhibit of cameras throughout history was in the front gallery, so i wandered in to ogle the gorgeous old technology. there were these amazing pink and powder blue small art deco designed cameras from the 1920's called the vanity kodak ensemble camera, which was accompanied by a matching compact mirror and lipstick case so that women could carry their dainty cameras around and look marvelous at the same time. spy cameras, large format cameras, motion picture cameras, even the good old nikon f was proudly displayed. my dad gave me his nikon f when i was in high school and i've had one ever since. as a matter of fact, it was the same camera that i had brought with me on this road trip. the nikon f's were originally manufactured in the late 60's and photojournalists in vietnam would almost exclusively use them when shooting in battle because they're built like tanks and completely reliable.

the larger gallery in the rear of the museum was based on travel photography. a huge sign on one wall listed "films that have inspired travel across the u.s." while a banner on the the adjacent wall read "what films inspired you to travel?" there was a space below the sign for people to put up post-it notes with names of movies that inspired them to travel. accidental tourist. peewee's big adventure. easy rider. i felt compelled to write 'harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban' since that's the last movie i worked on and the crazy hours definitely made me want to take a vacation, but i got the impression that's not what they meant.

that night, after we got back to the house, it stormed like i've never experienced before. california weather pales in comparison to anywhere else in the world when it comes to lightning and rain. having never gone through an east coast thunderstorm, i was pretty freaked out.

then the power went out.

there's nothing quite like being stranded with your ex boyfriend's parents in the dark during a thunderstorm. it's such a bizarre situation that you might have to tell the screenwriter that this scene was bullshit. she'd argue with you that it's totally possible, but you'd ask her to give you some other way to move the story along.

as luck would have it, though - i always seem to get along surprisingly well with my significant other's parents. i got along with the clown's parents many years ago and the berkeley mom in the years before that. at the moment, i seemed to be getting along well with the neurotic mom whose roof i was under during this weather.

in the darkness of the storm, she brought the candles out and showed me pictures of her handkerchief collection of 40,000 hankies. i didn't realize that there were that many different handkerchiefs in existence. she then showed me her husband's collection of vintage corkscrews and told me about her collection of miniature ceramic cows. if i had any issues with my own paltry collection of vintage suitcases that i had been gathering more of during this trip, they were immediately quashed that night, smothered in handkerchiefs, corkscrews and cows.

when the weather had finally cleared, i was able to pack my car up in the morning so i could keep heading east. as i got into my car, and drove away from the house, i wiped my brow and shifted the car into third gear, happy to be back on the road again. i was grateful that she had never asked me once during my whole stay how my relationship with her son was going.

i had the nagging feeling that he didn't tell her that we had broken up. <05.24.04>

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