Otto and the Dude Reel One

Call me Otto.

Clearly, I'm not as stupid as I appear to be or pretend to be, that wouldn't be possible although it might be preferable to the marginal state of bliss that I occupy now as I try life with double elephant ears for pockets,while I wander from the concrete shithole that I call home.

No, I'm not stupid. Ya see it's a combination of the oversight committees of my internall egislation combined with poor intelligence gathering that is responsible for the current comedy of errors that I laughingly call my existence. It's not Trump's fault nor Pelosi's fault that keeps me from dreaming the American dream.

Dude is the American dream for me.

Dude is Jeff Bridges.

Big Lebowski.

Dude is my idol.

I love the Dude, man. When I found out the Dude was coming to town, I rubbed a couple of nickels together and headed to the Dryden Theater at the George Eastman house where Mr. Kodak himself screened movies for his guests until he decided that his work was done and he took his own life. Somehow, I had another double sawbuck so I took the tour of the house, checked out the elephant head in the lobby and bought a ticket for the flick that Dude was going to introduce in the theater.

I'm an hour early. I walk down to the front. Figure for the money I'm paying, I might as well get as much indoor times as I can. Rochester is one cold, dark, dangerous town. So, there I am sitting safely minding my own business when out of nowhere, a gray hair walks up to me and spying my unhidden camera says in a real snotty voice.."You can't take pictures in here."

Wait a minute, I think to myself. I'm in the home of the guy who popularized photograpy, the guy who made the art available to the masses as well as the messes and here's some drainer telling me I can't take pictures even though I'm using a Kodak camera loaded with Kodak film and I'm wanting to take a picture of a guy because HIS photographs are on display in the exhibition section of the museum. In other words, I'm a photographer in the birthplace of photography trying to take a picture of a photographer and somebody tells me "no".

I should be more specific about the drainer. She looked a lot like Barbara Bush in Bar Bar's days as first lady with the shocking white hair. The imitation was breathtaking. Part of the breathtaking aspect was the "perfume" she was wearing. Imagine the smell of lilacs inside a trash bin, well that was the stench that was taking my breath away. I whiffed her before I saw her and by the time I saw her, she was in my face telling me what not to do.

God I hate that.

I had paid six bucks to get in and six bucks is a whole different ballgame to me than it is to the fake Barbara Bush. Six bucks has bought me four days and four nights of winter warmth at Movies10 which costs a buck to get into the show and once you're in, if you play your cards right, you can hide out for twelve hours. Six bucks is what I paid to get a picture of Jeff Bridges. Six bucks should entitle me to that.

BarBar stalked away leaving a trail of fetid flower stank residue. The guy sitting next to me, another  early errival, looked asonished or alarmed or whatever you call an expression that is a combination of thunderstuck bemusement. Actually, I get and give that look quite a bit.

I had been talking to this guy a few minutes earlier and I can tell you what kind of guy he was. He was the kind of fiftyish guy whose favorie movie is the original Sands of the Kalahari, a copy of which he and his wife Beatice had been trying to find for the last five years.

He told me his name was Ice

I would hesitate to call this guy a dude although he was too old to be a nerd, to tall to be a dweeb, too small to be a doofus, to friendly to be a dork and too well informed to be a nimrod. I guess he was just a normal guy . Still, even he didn't know what to make of the fake BarBar.

I said to the guy, "There ain't no signs around here that say you can't take a picture."

The guy reached into his pocket and pulled out one of thise fancy phones. 

"I didn't see any signs either,"  he said with a 'we're all in this together but you're the one who got busted by a fake Barbara Bush as if you were Al Franken on a plane' kind of wink.

I wondered if the photographic prohibition was posted on my ticket. I looked at the ticket which didn't look much like a tickert Just a crumpled piece of  green paper featuring a large ADMIT ONE. Nowhere on this ticket did I see anything about not taking pictures.

I showed the guy my ticket and he pulled out HIS ticket and goes right to the fine print.His ticket cost thirty five bucks and since we were sitting right next to one another the main thing his fancy ticket bought him was more writing because his ticket said that photography was prohibited at the request of the artist.

Let's see...no prohibition on my later cheaper ticket ...clear prohibition on Ice's reserved more expensive ticket.  This pretty much sums up my life. Forget about being reserved. Show up early and the cheaper you live, the more freedom you have.

End of Reel One