Monday, September 12, 2005

An Interesting Thing I Saw Today
While waiting to pick up my shiny refurbished and newly dent-free trumpet from the repair shop this morning, I spent a few minutes wandering downtown Oakland, which I couldn't help but think should've been less desolate-feeling at 10 o'clock on a Monday.

Anyway, somebody was shooting a movie or TV show (on a street which, again, probably should've been bustling with actual business rather than the staged kind) and at the moment I was happening by they were filming traffic driving down the street, both ways. (From the looks of the cars the movie is set in the 70s--they even had a sweeeet orange Datsun 260z, similar to the one which will one day be in my driveway if there's any justice in the world.) So they said "Rolling!" or whatever, the cars drove by, and then they said "Cut" and the cars stopped.

But this is the interesting part: after they'd stopped, all the cars started driving backwards, in both directions, so they could do another take, which was an indescribably weird sight to behold. (Well, I guess I just described it. But it was weird.)

I wondered if a passerby turning the corner at exactly that moment might've wondered if time had suddenly started flowing backwards, and that he or she could soon right all the wrongs of the past, and take a nostalgic spin through childhood before curling up in Mom's womb and blinking out of existence.