Today I went to the town storytelling festival that Ed puts on. The featured teller and workshop presenter was Jeff from last night. He called his workshop “Inchworm” and essentially it was all about REALLY acting out your stories on like, everything you say. Jeff turns out to be a guy who tells stories to preschool kids a LOT and.... you can tell. He took a story that’s about 3 minutes to read out of a book and turned it into 25 minutes of acting that out and making us also act it out.

I’ll be honest: this wasn’t my favorite workshop because I don’t really plan on telling weird adult life stories to preschoolers and this was pretty over the top for acting out stuff for adults, but oh well. Likewise I don’t really feel the need to make people do call and response with me, so...eh.

To quote Jeff quoting one of his kids: “Dad. Too much. You’re going over the top again.” But he said we didn’t have to get THAT goofy and “I’m only a passing phenomenon.”

Other quotes from Jeff:
“You make friends you don’t even know you have.”
“Every story is truthful.”
He told a story about going into a bar and saying, “Fifty cents for a story, 75 cents if you want a good one.” I guess he made some cash.

Jeff apparently also has a knack with “The Secret,” as he mentioned making a wish to the universe that he could get regular pay, money to pay for college and health insurance while still doing creative work. “Get on it, God.” He called up a TV station and asked for a job and three hours later they offered him a job of “drama specialist” in Hawaii, which he did for 30 years until retirement. WHY WON’T THIS TRICK WORK FOR ME, I’d like to know.

Likewise he asked God to send him a woman and he was kind of obsessed with the Empress card in tarot at the time, and next thing you know, a hot girl moves in. However, she broke up with him and he said he asked God for advice and God told him to go walk in the mountains because where he was was too noisy. He did get back together with her, they had two kids, got divorced, she died and he’s remarried. Dunno what that means on “The Secret”-ing.

While working in Hawaii in this drama specialist job, he did a radio and TV show about supernatural stuff in Hawaii and mentioned being in “Chicken Soup from the Soul of Hawaii,” which COINCIDENTALLY I happen to own and can just go look up what he had in it. There’s a story about a lady stopping anyone from mowing down trees and another about a guy who wanted to move to Hawaii and being asked what he’d bring to the table here.

He did a Cloud Atlas-sort of thing in which he had a framing story about running out of gas on his way to a meeting and being helped out by a very stiff Japanese fellow that he told stories to in the car. The Japanese fellow does not seem to be super into this and says, “You have a very strange profession.” By the time he arrives at the meeting, the boss says, “You’re late” and then “yeah, but you got a great story out of it.”

Other performers:
* The aforementioned Brandon, also from last night. He told about how he had a hot model-type girlfriend in college (note: dude is very nerdy looking so...damn) who cheated on him, apparently at one point with Billy Idol. Girlfriend wanted to go to Thailand after graduation, so he followed her, but she got assigned to teach English in the big city of Jakarta and he got shuffled off to the middle of nowhere, where there was nobody to teach in the village but one guy who was left behind. So he spent all his time writing love letters to the girlfriend...sometimes rather explicit. “You do crazy things in the jungle.” He never gets any mail back.

Finally he goes to Jakarta and to the address he wrote the letters to and find this random family, who have been reading his letters and underlining them and reading them aloud...Turns out that after a week, she left Jakarta with some other dude and didn’t even bother to break up with him. The old man in the jungle was more loyal to him in the end. Ouch.

* Vicki, who’s told there before, talked about how she was breaking out into hives on a daily/cyclic basis (it turned out she was allergic to watermelon) and at one point she breaks out so bad her doctor tells her she could be in the movies...as in Planet of the Apes.

* Tanner, who was telling his prostitutes/cat hit by a car/Jill Stein story for the last time because he’s moving to Oregon in a few days for a job. Quote from him as they smoke pot in the story: “We just get stony baloney.”

* There was also a lady that told in Auburn, Rebecca, a story she wrote about aliens trying to help us out and how we utterly fail at it.

After that, we all went out to dinner, and Tanner, Marian (from the Antioch group) and I discussed how we were all going to the Fremont conference this year and should hopefully meet up. Otherwise we talked about more storytelling stuff that I did not write down during dinner.

After that, I went to finally see Endgame so I could finally talk to all the other damn nerds and read the entire Internet again as of Monday morning. I’d normally write a review of it but I have enough writing to catch up on here and by the time I get to posting this it’s like a week or whatever after it came out, so, thoughts (spoilers below if anyone cares).

I am fine with Tony dying, since lord knows RDJ Jr. was obviously wanting out. I was genuinely surprised that Captain America (even more obviously wanting out) did NOT die but instead had a time travel relationship with Peggy somehow. (Who’s Peggy’s husband? Uh....Roger Steves, I guess, who never makes it to the holiday parties?) I was pissed that Black Widow died, essentially because childfree/less woman is worth less than “guy who has A Famileeeee, even if they are all literally gone.” Sigh.

Other than that bit, and thinking this world really needs more goddamned female characters, it was pretty good. I wasn’t utterly blown away but overall liked it. I enjoyed the time travel, back in time to other movies, use of Ant-Man and I really loved how “Professor Hulk” has integrated and is now a large, green, happy guy with little desire to smash. And he gave Scott some more tacos. A lot of people are irritated with Fat Thor and Fat Thor jokes, but I am less bothered. Dude was feeling bothered and had issues and still fought anyway. Also I was totally amused at him turning into The Big Thorbowski, literally.

I’m glad most people came back. Nebula had a great role in this. I am not happy about soul stone deaths being irreversible. But overall, it’s a good finish.

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