Top 10 Signs You're a Compulsive Festivalgoer

With all due credit to David Letterman for popularizing "top ten" lists, here are my

Top 10 Signs You're a Compulsive Frameline Film Festivalgoer

10. You keep a blog just about the Frameline Film Festival (Well, duh!)

9. You come home from 4 programs of film today on top of 5 yesterday — a total of 15 so far in the festival — and turn on KQED Channel 9 so you can watch a short film. In German. With subtitles. (Ich spreche kein deutsch, remember?)

8. You have to force yourself to have a dinner break because even you can't do six straight programs.

7. You feel that you need to give yourself permission to walk out on the wreally wretched first { queer • lesbian • transgender • queer youth • queer deaf badminton } film ever to come out of Upper Lower Eastwestia.

6. You feel that your soul has been uplifted more times than you can count by the films about segments of the community that you don't belong to.

5. You feel that your soul has been uplifted more times than you can count by the films about segments of the community that you do belong to.

4. After sitting through one particularly bad film, you comment on the audience ballot, "Having never actually gouged out my own eyes with a spoon, I can only speculate that it might be more painful than watching your film." That film goes on to win an audience award. You still remember it years later.

3. You still feel emotionally scarred from sitting through almost an hour of the worst film you've ever seen in your entire life before walking out.

2. After finally walking out, you loiter in the lobby for almost an hour for the sole purpose of returning to the auditorium to boo the end of the film, since about half the people who worked on it are in the audience along with their distributor (no link there, because I've finally forgiven them, due to several #5's and #6's since then) and you corrall about a dozen other people storming out of the film, urging them to join you.

and, finally,

1. You feel even more guilty about missing a tranny slasher flick — even though you can't stand slasher flicks — than about going to bed without blogging today's selection of films.