the aftermath

So last night I zipped up to the University and saw his speech. I got there about a 1/2 hour early and made small talk with a mechanical engineer from Monroeville. Nice guy - I think his name was Scott). He had the day off and was there from the git-go. Not sure I could have handled 12 straight hours. He said some of the earlier speakers were good, some not so good. Another woman I chatted with had served in the military (Fallujah, Iraq). I'm pretty sure her name was Katie. It's remarkable how easily I forget peoples names. She was also pleasant. I'd estimate the entire crowd at about 203

So we ate the free dinner which was one hell of a spread. I should hit up these University functions more often. About 43 students were on hand and they had to amusingly wait, presumably to see if there would be enough food. And there was plenty, so all the Pitt students got to eat. And this wasn't no cafeteria fodder.

Anyway, John commenced speaking. As he flashed from one slide to another, he would basically offer up a bunch of anecdotes and observations. The speech itself was VERY broad-based so it seemed difficult to establish much continuity. Considering how brilliant and "ahead-of-his-time" I think the guy is, I was a bit surprised he wasn't a gifted orator. Then again, the speech was good, just not mind-blowing. I think my expectations may have been a bit out of whack. Truth be told, I think he'd be the first to admit that he hardly envisions himself behind a podium giving lectures at the University level. Simply stated, he's predominantly a leader-thinker-writer, not a speaker.

So he basically rehashed the past few years of his blog. Offering up an amusing tale of how he was invited to come to Nigeria by the leader of MEND (Emancipation Movement for the Niger Delta and a self-described fan of his global guerrillas blog), probably the most notorious "terrorist" group in Africa, he had a few humorous quips. The speech tended to meander a bit. Honestly, he had so much ground to cover, it would have been self-defeating to zero-in on a specific topic. All in all, a great speech, but I've been spoiled over the past two years by his blog. Nothing he said in his presentation came as a surprise.

Afterward, he took about 15 questions from the audience. Nothing terribly substantive. So the crowd politely applauded and I waited an additional 10 minutes or so while some students engaged him. This black kid in a painters ball-cap was asking him some nonsense about "whether a conspiracy can be considered conspiratorial if not all the actors are aware of the plot" or something to that affect. All that I'm thinking - I just want about 20 seconds so I can introduce myself and hand him my 9/11 style systempunkt blueprint. Aside from the annoying question the kid was yammering about, I hate it when men wear those painter caps. Seriously, it only works with girls in a sexy-crazy-weird kind of way. With guys, it's a straight up "Hi I'm Javier the fag who smiles excessively, and just wants to hear the sound of his own feminine voice while babbling 50mph."

So anyway, I got introduce myself and hand him a copy of my 4-5 page blog entry from February 2010. He sifted/fanned through it and politely responded, "Yeah, but you've got realize I'm not really in the movie script approval business." Slightly taken aback, it was not the response I expected. I did my best to assure him that I wrote it based on the sheer inevitability of it happening and my amazement that something similar already hasn't happened. He then thanked me for my interest and said he'd give it a read. I imagine he will. Hell, it's only a few pages.

But it did get me to thinking on the ride home. My "manifesto" would make for a killer Oliver Stone style movie. The sole dilemma - it's the one movie whose content is so inherently dangerous, it just could never be produced. Or could it? The damn thing has so many great angles. I've never considered myself a screenplay writer. Probably because of my intense hatred of anything fictional. However, this is as close to nonfiction as one could fathom. And then there's my overriding presumption that it will all go down regardless. That would make for an amusing situation when the FBI comes knocking at my door and I say, "Yeah, not only did I know it would happen, here's the fucking screenplay! Now get the hell out of here and harass my neighbor. His name is fuckface!"