Ten minutes with Borat

See this here ticket stub?

It was good for ten minutes with Borat on the opening day of the Toronto International Film Festival. The crowd was a frenzied snake wrapping itself all around the Ryerson Theatre. Word was that someone had sold his ticket for $400, that Borat would be riding a donkey down the red carpet. And eventually, from afar, for we were nowhere near the front of the line, the crowd roared when he was pulled in by six "Kazakhi" "women". This here to the right was about the best shot I could get. Would've had a couple of fine ones if not for unpredictable fists of triumph and giddiness thrown up in front of my camera.

Eventually, Jinki and I got in. We amused selves by pretending we were proud and stern soviet women awaiting the long anticipated visit of Lenin to our collective farm. [Yes, in fact I did photoshop a zit off the side of my head. Pending receipt of faxed photo waiver from Jinki's people; image concealed until appropriate approvals received and notarized for authenticity]. Glancing around the madness, I noticed the loathesome Ben Mulroney [pause for you to taste the bile...] in the crowd - the second time in a week that I saw the peckerhead, and both times were too many. His smiling idiot oversized git head and helmet like hair, let alone the nepotistic fortuity that gave him and his entourage excellent seats, make me want to hurl. Howev, I sucked back in my projectile vomit when Borat took the stage and welcomed us to his film. If it's not the running of the Jew it's that crazy Borat sleezily wanking at Victoria's Secret. Oh Borat! Will you ever learn proper American ettiquette?!! Borat is just in the middle of telling a funny story about how good jokes can indeed feature retards (and not necessarily as the joke's butt) when the projector fails. Me, skeptic head, assumes the breakage is staged and meant to suggest Kazakhi workmanship and ingenuity [in an "At Kazakhstani Tractor Collective 27-211A quality is job one" kind of way] but no, apparently we had a real crisis on our hands. Michael Moore and Larry Charles, who after fiddling with the projector got up on the stage to kill time, were en plus amuseante, although MM's brownnosing in the general direction of Canada does grate on one's nerves and Larry Charles would have felt much more comfortable chatting with me over a nicotini or caffieni and dishing out advice on how to get myselves on television.

But here's the deal. Ever since I finished puberty (~26 years old), I find it a bit tough to get excited over things that are, and in the past were responsible for, loss of sleep at night. Santa, birthdays, school trips, Borat: all cut from the same cloth. There's just too much room for error and not enough contingency planning in the grown up world. So, le plus meme choise le meme, le plus le same frog frog frog and I have to admit I was not terrible disappointed. Really what it boiled down to was getting to sleep earlier than anticipated.