— पांच हजार सात सौ चौरासी —
For a couple of days last week, I was almost taken aback by how little I had planned over the weekend: just an evening movie with Laney on Saturday, and that was it!
Then Shobhit brought up the watch party in Lacey on Saturday night, which we were to drive down to Lacey for, of the short film he had acted in and shot in Olympia five weeks ago. I had totally spaced putting it on my calendar. Well, shit! I had to reschedule the movie with Laney.
With Sunday still wide open, I had a couple of days of text exchanges with Tracy to come up with something to do. She had texted me three weeks ago that we should plan a hangout for sometime in March. I finally followed up that I could do this weekend, and she said she was available Sunday. I'll get back to that.
On Friday evening, Shobhit asked if there was anything to watch, and I consulted all my watch lists on different screeners. I finally suggested we watch the widely beloved 1995 BBC miniseries adaptation of
Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, which I was pretty sure I had never seen. Shobhit was fairly sure he had seen it before, but also he loves that novel, has ready it several times, and did not take much convincing. We watched three episodes on Friday night, and he actually tried to convince me to watch the whole thing until 3 a.m., which I would not do. Instead, we watched the back half (another three episodes) on Saturday late morning and early afternoon.
We went for a short walk, to the Broadway Market QFC and back. He got ready, and by 5:00 or so we were headed out, driving down to Lacey.
The host was a guy named Michael, and the gathering was at his house. I think I was only one of two "plus-ones" that anyone brought with them; the other was the girlfriend of one of the other actors. Michael's girlfriend is named Sarah, and she's a painter. She had lots of canvasses of paintings, and I really liked a lot of them. Later, when we were leaving, she surprised me by saying, "Do you want some art?" I asked for the one that was my favorite: a dark blue background, with a white sailboat and moon, but the sailboat was smeared in a way to invoke movement, and also morphed into its shape from white foamy sea waves at the bottom. I was delighted to take it home, and she signed it for me.
Shobhit decided to make cucumber sandwiches and bring them, which I'm really glad he did. The event was never billed as potluck, but unsurprisingly, the table of what they called "so much food" was all snack stuff: Pringles single serving packets; cereal bars; a challa bread; chocolate chip banana bread; and several others. Sarah did bake several small flatbread pizzas, but only one of them was vegetarian, so Shobhit's cucumber sandwiches were the only otherwise substantive, non-sweet or non-snack item there. He made it using three different vegan cream cheeses I had brought home as samples from work, all mixed together, but it worked out fine. I don't think anyone even noticed that the spread on those sandwiches was non-dairy.
In any case, with that table spread of tons of snacks and sweets, I ate way too much, meandering back to their dining room to graze over and over again. This is the danger with that kind of setup.
It was interesting to be at this part of local filmmakers who were clearly very proud of their work, and about which I had, let's say, mixed feelings. I do think there was some acting talent onscreen, and that included Shobhit. The director, whose name I forget and which is probably just as well anyway, passed out feedback forms to everyone, including us "plus-ones," and I wasn't really sure how critical I should be. I was glad Shobhit was the one himself to note how noticeable it was to see him looking to the side of the camera to read a telepromter. Also, I had seen earlier drafts of Shobhit's sides, and found some of the language, intended to be "funny," to be offensive enough to make me uncomfortable—by the time they actually shot, though, the script had been cleaned up and made much better. "Better," of course, is a relative term.
Before the party was over, Michael played two other shorts that Shobhit himself had not been a part of, but which he clearly wanted to share. The final one had been part of a 24-Hour Horror Short film festival, and was actually relatively impressive, by far the best. To be fair, the short Shobhit was in is kind of still a work in progress, and this short was a final product. It also had far better production value.
Anyway, we got in the car to head back home at around 8:45. By the time we got home, we watched this week's two episodes of
As Time Goes By on KCTS and we had a great time watching it as usual.
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौरासी —
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौरासी —
So that brings me to yesterday, a much more full day than originally anticipated. Ever since Tracy moved back into the house she grew up in to live again with her dad in Puyallup, we see each other less often, but she regularly checks in to make sure we still make plans to hang out, generally at least once a month. I actually really appreciate that, and she clearly values me as a friend she wants to keep around. The feeling is very much mutual.
That said, I kind of feel bad that she so often has to drive all the way up from Puyallup in order to hang out—my not owning a car notwithstanding. There's Shobhit's car too, of course, but I also don't particularly want to have to drive somewhere and deal with paying for parking, when I really don't have to: At first I suggested I take Light Rail down to SeaTac Station and we could find something to do near there. She countered with the idea of seeing a movie at the Grand Cinema in Tacoma.
I couldn't do Light Rail for that, but there's still the 594 Sound Transit Express, which runs every half hour. It takes roughly an hour between downtown Seattle and downtown Tacoma, and I just took that. This was mostly what made it such a full day, though: I left home at 9:50 to walk to 9th & Howell and catch the 10:15 bus, which got me to Commerce Street Station in downtown Tacoma at 11:21, for an 11:55 movie at The Grand.
I had never seen a movie at this theater before. Tracy said she had a couple of times before, including a bad date once. Anyway, it's a pretty steep uphill walk to the theater, where there's little else around, so I just walked north on Fawcett a few blocks after meandering around and killing time. By total chance, she happened to pull right up to a corner I walked up to, so I closed my umbrella—it was raining—and hopped in, riding with her to the parking spot near the theater she found.
The Grand is playing a retrospective of David Lynch films due to his recent passing, and at first Tracy had suggested
Mulholland Drive. The 6:15 showtime was too late for me using the bus to Tacoma and back, though, so I countered with
Blue Velvet at 11:55.
I don't even know when I last watched a David Lynch film. It may have been
Mulholland Drive itself, which came out in 2001 and I did not think was either terrible or great. Such is the case with most of that man's work. We got out of
Blue Velvet—which I am pretty sure I watched once, in the nineties, with Gabriel—and I had mixed feelings about it at best.
We went to the bakery right next door, Corina Bakery, after the movie. They were open another hour. We each ordered a frittata (surprisingly delicious) and a hot apple cider, and we also split a warm chocolate chip cookie. We spent a lot of time catching up. There was a ton of stuff for her to tell me, and a ton of stuff for me to tell her—I last saw her a month ago, when we went to visit Claudia in Port Orchard together.
When Corina Bakery closed, I used the bathroom and then we just went to her car to chat for another hour or so. She drove me back to Commerce Street Station, which was just several blocks from there. I had ten minutes to kill and I walked across the skybridge to the station's parking parage along that street. I took a photo of the skybridge because it had nice design symmetry.
I caught the 4:14 bus back. Was back to downtown Seattle at 5:15. Had I shot right out of the bus and over to 4th & Pike I could have caught a #12 bus home, but I barely missed it and there were ten minutes until the next bus. So, I just walked home from there. Shobhit had dinner ready, and I heated some naan in the oven. We watched
The White Lotus and
The Righteous Gemstones and both were great. I watched Bill Burr's comedy special on Hulu, which was shot in Seattle, and it was okay. Early in the special he makes a crack about visiting Capitol Hill, and says, "I was the only guy not transitioning." It's the kind of gag that I can take as not malicious, but still potentially harmful—certainly the kind of thing that would immediately make Gabriel turn if off, simply because he wants the algorithms to learn that he won't tolerate that kind of humor. A guy like Bill Burr is tricky, because he demonstrates that he's learning and growing, but still likes to get a rise out of people. I wasn't thrilled with his use of the word "faggot" in the special either, even though it was followed up by a story about how his wife told him he can't say that anymore. The thing is, when was it ever actually acceptable? That's the part that guys like this often don't understand.
— पांच हजार सात सौ चौरासी —
[posted 12:31pm]
