I woke up Sunday with good intentions, doing my taxes in the morning and heading out for a full day of festival fun afterwards. Since I had not seen any of the shorts yet, I knew I wanted to go to ShortTimes Ten. Uncharacteristically of me, I slept in and woke up later than expected. I had a choice to make. It was either do my taxes or go see the shorts. I foolishly thought to myself, "I will still have time today. It will only take me an hour to do my taxes."

So I went to see ShortsTimes 10 and just like full length features, some were good and some were bad. My favorite was a claymation short named, Startle Pattern, which follows a little naked clay man absorbing his environment. My second favorite was a one-minute short called Coconut, which was a single frame shot of a kid being ignored while playing "Duck, Duck, Goose."

Looking at my cellphone clock after the shorts ended, I realized that this was my window of opportunity. I could go home, e-file my taxes and make it back on time to see Linda, Linda, Linda at 3:45 p.m. (a movie I have been salivating to see all weekend long). But the sun was shining and I was enjoying walking through the spring weather. That is when I started justifying not paying my taxes for this year, thinking to myself "The Bush Administration doesn't deserve my money anyways. When they start listening to me, that's when I'll pay." A few minutes later I calmed down and came up with a better, but still equally ridiculous solution. I'll do my taxes at a coffee shop after the next film is done.

Since I was thirsting for a beer, I decided to see whatever was playing at the Orpheum Main Theater at 1 p.m. It ended up being a Czechoslovakian film called Something Like Happiness. The only thing I knew about it was the director apparently cast real orphans as the kids and ended up adopting them during the making of the film. Sweet, but it says nothing about the movie itself.

I am happy to say, Something Like Happiness was a pleasant surprise and ended up being one of my favorite films throughout festival. It's an indie films for purists. A film where everything happens, but nothing really happens. The movie follows three character's lives and how they interweave through a number of foreseeable and unforeseeable encounters. I was happy with my pick, but of course, the film was longer than expected and I didn't have time to do my taxes at the coffee shop.

I then went to Linda, Linda, Linda.

Finally, after Linda x3, my plan was to see my last film of the festival, a documentary about illegal immigration called Borders, but at the last minute, I decided to go to The Life of Reilly instead since a few friends were going. I went expecting to see a documentary on the life of Charles Nelson Reilly (Tony winner that's known best as the host for Matchgame), but came to find out that it's actually a film of Reilly's one person show called, "Save it for the Stage." It was interesting and Reilly is quite a story teller, but I had a secret suspicion that half the stories he told were lies which made me regret not going to Borders.

The movie and Q&A got done around 10:15pm. I had an hour and forty five minutes to make it home and do my civic duty. I almost called Jesse Russell to tell him that if I get arrested by the IRS for not doing my taxes, I expected Dane101 to bail me out. I rushed home, e-filed my taxes and made it in by the midnight deadline only to find out the next morning we have until April 17th to file this year. Figures.