"Is there some place I can plug this amp in?"

Also on the Tracy tip, or at least the filmmaking peers of Miranda July underappreciation roll call: Dream Machine, by Brett Vapnek. The most inspired cinematic use of doughnuts, lipstick and karaoke ever? The best short film you've never seen? A WORLD OF YES. Like July and Greenwood, Vapnek has an eye for the mundane, for the awkward silences and small social traumas that fill our lives but rarely get seriously represented in works of art. Dream Machine isn't afraid to point out the beauty of the everyday caught up in a thousand moments of waiting, boredom, miscommunication and aloneness--or to posit a world in which people ignore Mary Timony and make it somehow believable. Vapnek has fallen off the Pogo radar somewhat since Fan Mail but I am hoping she has a new project lurking wing-side, waiting for its glorious Me & You & Everyone-style accolade explosion. The world needs her films too much for this not to happen.