MovieCat
Somehow I did not know that Central Cinema has been hosting a monthly movie trivial night -- since 2011! It started in January of that year -- roughly a year after Barbara quit her job there -- which means this month marks the seventh anniversary of the event.
I had thought Evan and Elden might like to go, but they wound up being too busy and too broke this week. I still wanted to go, though, especially with such poor choices for movie-going this week, and I found it surprisingly easy to convince Shobhit to go. I guess he had nothing better to do, and on the plus side, he gets a Social Review point out of it.
Only one thing about it slightly disappointed me: It's called "MovieCat Trivia Night, and its description suggested much more of a cat theme than we experienced last night. The description even reads, in part, cats drawn into movie scenes. They did not have that last night. What they did have, in one of the games, was waffles superimposed into movie scenes.
So, there were not as many cats as I imagined there would be. In fact I went in thinking it would be focused on cats in movies. Not so much. The event's logo features a cartoon drawing of a cat, at least. And, you know, whatever -- it's still movie trivia so it clearly plays to my interests regardless.
And you would think I would be particularly good at this, given how many movies I see, right? The first game I was on a roll, and got all but one of the 15 movie titles quite quickly. Well, turns out this event has a lot of regulars who are very good at it, and when they tallied up the points at the end of the first round of four games, Shobhit and I ranked far closer to the bottom than to the top: 36 teams, and we were something like #32.
They give out several prizes, for first and second place, but also for last place, and also for "Best Team Name." I really wanted to come up with something clever but kind of drew a blank, and Shobhit just called us "Guru Shanti," after our cats. I don't think I ever have any hope of winning first or second prize at any future Trivia Night -- and I definitely want to come back to this -- but I suppose I could conceivably win for Best Team Name sometime. So I'll have to spend some time coming up with something clever.
The thing is, I'm worse at movie trivia than most people would likely expect, because of my fucked up, Swiss cheese memory. I will confess to looking up a movie title on my phone a single time, at the very beginning -- I rationalized it by telling myself it was a title I should have remembered and only didn't because of my memory issues. Other times, after I put my phone in my pocket and did not pull it out for most of the event, it took me ages to remember really obvious answers, including Dunkirk and The Long Kiss Goodnight -- the latter of which took me the longest time to remember the name of, and then I remembered it wrong, as The Long Kiss Goodbye. Damn it!
They games were all pretty fun, though. In one, they showed screenshots with characters cut out of them, and you had to guess the movie they were from. Others were just movie clips, with a theme: a cocktail (I had the worst time remembering the movies chosen for that one), or -- this was one of the rare cases where the theme actually got close to the "Cat" thing -- audio clips of people talking about animals.
Each round was ended with us being told what the answers were, as all the point tallies were recorded. At the end of the evening, Shobhit and I ranked slightly higher, but not by much.
I made macaroni casserole for dinner as well as hot buttered rums at home beforehand to save money on dinner and drinks, but we still ordered popcorn and then split an order of apple pie. Their popcorn, using real butter, is always great. The pie was a bit of a letdown, especially since it did not come with the whipped cream mentioned on the menu.
Shobhit had a weird conniption fit near the end of the evening, and it largely ruined the evening for me. He got uber-pissy about me looking at my phone while the second round answers were being given out -- it really made no difference in terms of possible cheating at that point, as our score sheets had already been taken to the hosts up front. Shobhit acted like it was a total waste of the evening at all since I was now not paying attention -- although, actually, I was Tweeting something and also listening to the answers. "Get a grip," I said. "I can do both."
But even worse, as we walked home, Shobhit insisted that I was looking at my phone during the game play, which looks like cheating. With the exception of the one time I did at the very beginning -- which was not what he was referencing; he got all pissy at the end, not at the beginning -- this was not true at all. I told him over and over that this was not what I was doing, and he literally kept saying "Yes you were." This was truly concentrated asshole behavior, bordering even into attempted gaslighting territory -- honestly the kind of shit I consider truly insidious and dangerous. Call that hyperbole if you want, but he was behaving with truly irrational anger that had no basis in reality, and when that shit happens, it makes me imagine a life in which we are no longer together. That's not what I want, but this behavior cannot be tolerated.
I didn't even want to talk to him after that, until I went to bed. I was lagging behind him on the walk home and he turned and actually had the audacity to ask what was wrong. "You fucking know what's wrong," I said, and he literally responded with "What?" as if he were innocent and had no idea what I was talking about. This is genuine fucking insanity. Seriously.
I suppose I still should have been more direct about what was bothering me, but in that moment, why bother? He had already made it clear that, for reasons that remain beyond my comprehension, he did not believe me when I told him I was not looking at my phone during game play. I did get a Facebook message at one point from Ivan about something totally unrelated, and I pulled my phone out to see who the message was from. I did not open up the phone at that point, though; I only pulled it out of my pocket and opened any apps during the end when they were tallying up points.
This was all so fucking stupid, I know. But there is significance here, my telling Shobhit the truth about something and his obstinate refusal to believe it. This is new territory. It cannot be allowed, not now, not ever. I cannot and will not live with that. On the upside, I'm pretty confident it's an isolated incident and not likely the start of a trend. So there's that, I guess.
[posted 12:21 pm]