I have come to love the Blackberry I borrowed from Mrs. Hillbilly for this trip. It has become indispensable during the brief time I have used it. The thing rocks hard. Have no idea what features it has but I have yet to find a better device for helping me find stuff in the dark without waking the other person sleeping in the room. The screen has to throw out at least 1200 lumens.

So as you can probably tell, I was up at the crack of dawn this morning to purchase our tickets for the day. Our existing tickets were deemed unsuitable by us so I headed to the Sundance office to see if we could trade up. Was extra alert too, on account of the wake-up clock at the hotel seems to be fifteen minutes early and there was no hot water. Who needs Starbucks?

As for the ticket trading, you are now reading the meanderings of a confirmed ticket scalper. That's right, I showed up in line shortly after 7:00 and when the line got long enough, I sucked up my pride and said in a loud, but politely Canadian voice: Does anyone want tickets to The Good Life or It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine! for today? The two people behind me showed interest in the latter, which is directed by Crispen Glover. You'll probably recognize him as George McFly from Back to the Future but trust me on this, It Is Fine! Everything is Fine! is not the same sort of feelgood movie. Looks interesting but it was playing too late for us old folk (starting at midnight in Park City which is a 45 minute drive from the hotel).

So I was pleased at the response to my hucksterism until the fellow asked, "How much?" I responded truthfully, "well, I hadn't really thought that far ahead." We eventually settled on $15 per ticket which was the face value. Baby steps, dear reader, baby steps.

In any case, I was feeling a bit of a rush from the sale when the doors opened up to purchase tickets. I managed to get tickets to two other movies on our list and made to exchange our tickets to The Good Life for a third one. For this I had to talk with the supervisor and as we were chatting she said she remembered us from a previous day earlier in the festival. It was at this point she started laughing and I was a little confused because I hadn't used my Joel and Ethan Cohen joke on her yet. But she was laughing at the comments that another person had attached to our account. Apparently, we have been dubbed "nice guys" by the Sundance ticketing system.

All in all, it was a confidence-boosting morning despite the extra-refreshing shower I had to endure. I returned to the hotel, gathered Brother Ian, and we made our interplanetary trek back to Park City to watch our first two movies, which I shan't comment on out of respect for the filmmakers. After they were finished, we returned to the relative sanity of Salt Lake City for a Cobb salad, which is the traditional meal to eat after you've just watched four hours of puke on-screen (see reviews for Bugmaster and Slipstream).

With the taste of the afternoon's dreck still lingering, it was back to the hotel for a hot tub and a go on the out-of-tune but still mildly tonal piano on the second floor. Followed up with a much more enjoyable Delirious (see review), then crashed for the night with hopes of hot water dancing through our minds for tomorrow.

Celebrity count still approaching zero depending on how you view Bingham Ray. He was in the Slipstream screening and from what I gleaned from the conversation he was having with the people around him, he was negotiating whether to pick up a movie. He played prominently in the book Down and Dirty Pictures as the co-founder of October Films who eventually got booted out or left (don't recall which). Anyway, you may not consider this a big deal but I think it's a good find. Have tremendous respect for the man for trying to go toe to toe with Harvey Weinstein.