Reel Rock and the Oddball

SMS and I had fun plans for our workweek evenings this past week.  On Monday, we went to the Mountain View Arts Center to see Reel Rock, a film festival in its 10th year.  The films focus on rock climbing and mountaineering.  SMS has attended a few in the past so I was excited to see the show.

The seating was general admission, open seating which we didn't realize at first but we still got ok seats in the balcony first row.  There were four films with an intermission, which featured a very poorly executed raffle/prize giveaway.  My takeaway from the giveaway- don't toss a bunch of non-aerodynamic packages into the crowd and expect to look cool.  The way the packages flew, it looked like the guy had no upper arm strength and/or wasn't athletic.  Don't look that way in front of a bunch of climbers!

My favorite film from the first half was A Line Across the Sky, a documentary covering the Fitz Traverse, a 7 summit ridgeline climb of over 13,000 vertical feet.  The climb was done by Tommy Caldwell and Alex Hommold.  It is an impressive accomplishment and the documentary did a good job of conveying the unglamorous hard work that is behind such impressive endeavors and adventure.

The second half had two excellent films.  One covered the sport of high bouldering and one guy's quest to get out of his own head and climb an incredibly difficult route.  It's pretty amazing how vulnerable the guy was willing to be on film regarding his anxiety and self-doubts.  The second covered an event called Horseshoe Hell, a 24-hour climb-a-thon competition where competitors collect as many points as they can by climbing routes focusing on quantity and difficulty.  It was awesomely funny because of the narration and the comments by one of the climbers, Nik Berry.

Speaking of funny, on Tuesday we went to the Oddball Comedy Festival at Shoreline Ampitheater.  We almost didn't make it because we were feeling a little slow after work but we decided to muster up the energy and head out.  We biked to avoid traffic, which is a totally awesome call especially for after the show.  The comedy show was great.  My favorite comedian is John Mulaney, although Amy Schumer and Aziz Ansari also had good sets.  I highly recommend the show if it's coming your way and there are a few comedy specials I would like to watch in the next few weeks.

Hail to the Chef!

And that's pretty much it for fun!  On Wednesday, we had a more typical night in.  Thursday was Grand Rounds for me where I saw a great talk on reconstructing cutaneous defects.  Last night was pretty mellow but totally awesome since SMS made his amazing pizza, accompanied by a delicious salad with roasted beets.  Yum!