after work i hurried home and made dinner as we were going to go out to a club to catch a small show. we got there, paid for parking, and there weren't very many people yet but there was some sort of red carpet action going on that looked sad because it was empty. there were only about 15 of us in line for the guest list. there were about 5 others in the ticket line. all of us were there because the advertised time was 9pm but one of the workers said they don't open until 10pm. hmmm... we stood in line and waited for about 1 hour because the workers didn't have the guest list. we saw some people with tickets go in. one guy walked by with free tickets but all of us in the guest list line declined because we were on the list. the free tickets should go to someone else who needs them. after he left, some of us were thinking we should've accepted the tickets so we wouldn't have to wait in the cold any longer. (yes, it was actually cold, the season is starting to change finally.) eventually one of the workers brought the guest list out and started letting people in. it turns out, our names weren't on the list, doh! he let us in but said he couldn't give us any comps. what, like drinks? whatever. we go in and walk upstairs. the people guarding upstairs wouldn't let us in because we didn't have a ticket. we would have to buy them at $20 each. ouch, a bit more than i thought it would be. let's contact the person who said they would put us on the list and wait. as we wait, we ask what time the performance would go on. they said 1am. FUCK! i cannot stay out that late on a worknight. it's only about 10:30pm and i'm already feeling sleepy. fuck this, i'm going home! and so we left.

we got home and finished the movie we had started watching while having dinner. it's called "quinceañera". if you don't know what a quinceañera is, and i didn't until college, it's the latina turning 15 party. i know of a sweet 16 party, but i never heard of a 15 party until like i said, college. none of my friends had any kind of coming of age party when i was in high school. or if they did, i was never invited so i don't know about these things. when i first heard about quinceañeras, i asked my friends what they are like and was taken aback by the ritual. it's like a freakin' wedding. it's really too much for me. the film "quinceañera" starts and ends with a "quinceañera". the film is more a few months in the life of the teenage protagonist, who happens to be a pregnant virgin. she gets kicked out of her house and goes to live with her kind great-uncle whom one of her cousins has been living with after he got into trouble at home too.

i think the film was a pretty good take on its subject matters. namely the quinceañera, teenagers, life in LA or specifically echo park (including gentrification), sexual ethnic fetishes, etc. i don't really know what it's like to live in echo park but we were just there yesterday visiting a friend so we kept pointing out parts in the film we had driven by. (and i must add that i don't know what it's like to be a pregnant teenager!) i liked that it was a bilingual film although twiddle thumbs questioned the moments when the characters spoke spanish, such as why use english here and spanish there. i suppose if i was watching a bilingual japanese film, i might do the same. (i really want to see bilingual japanese films. so maybe i should draft a script.) the unexpected treat was the protagonist's closeted cousin. he has his first sexual experience through the course of the film and experiences heartbreak. some characters were slightly annonying. there is more to the film but i don't want to spoil it. it's just a nice little piece you might not normally come across.

it was interesting to watch the extra footage to see how they scrapped this film together on a whim that someone should make a film about a quinceañera then got a budget but didn't have a script. also, some of the actors reveal their background. for a lot of the cast/extras, they were just echo park locals and for some of them this was their first big break. one of the main guys was in a british boy band i never heard of. one of the main guys is a casting agent but since there was a part not yet filled, the filmmakers asked him to do it. it was really funny to watch the interview with the actor who plays the young gay man because he grew up in wyoming, the total opposite of his character.