ice cream points
Typical Tuesday, I suppose: after a Monday DLU rehashing the social activity of the entire weekend, I have comparatively little to say the next day -- especially with a relatively uneventful Monday evening.
But! It was more eventful a Monday evening than usual, at least, as Shobhit kept saying he wanted some dessert, specifically ice cream, and suggested I look for coupons in the Chinook Book. I found a two-for-one coupon for an ice cream cookie sandwich at Cupcake Royale, tore that one out, and off we went after watching a couple hours of TV.
And then? They were out of cookies. The woman was willing to honor the coupon for two-for-one ice cream on its own -- Shobhit wanted only ice cream anyway -- but, because of the way their POS system is set up, they could not do that in a way that was equivalent in value (ice cream sandwiches cost more than just scoops of ice cream). So, Shobhit suggested we just save the coupon, and just get a couple scoops of ice cream. Two scoops, half each of different flavors: "Stumptown Cofffee with Dark Chocolate Ribbon" (the only one I did not eat from as I hate coffee); "Bananza with Caramel Fudge Brownie" (Shobhit's second choice, which was excellent); and my two very typical choices, "Salted Caramel Cupcake" and "Red Velvet Cupcake." We got a bowl with two spoons, and we sat at a table there to eat it.
Shobhit noted that this would yield him a point on the next Social Review. Indeed it will. That made him happy. He was weirdly happy for most of this outing, gleefully walking with our arms linked, and more than once laying his head on my shoulder at the table. I don't know if this was influenced by the glass of wine he also had with dinner before this or not, but he even said out loud with specificity: "I'm so happy."
He also told me he read the short story I wrote last year, which is linked to right here on this site (under the "FICTION" header), Oblivion, which was kind of a surprise. I wrote it last July, after all. He must have gotten bored or something yesterday and went looking around my links here at FruitcakeEnterprises.com. I mentioned to him that Laney had liked the story so much she told me she hoped I would write a sequel; Shobhit gave it an unusually nice compliment himself: "It was very well written," he said, last night. That sure made me feel good to hear. I've always been pleased with that story, short as it is (five pages), but it's always nice to get confirmation.
The thing is, it's truly rare for me to get much inspiration to write fiction anymore. That story, after all, was literally the first fiction I had written in a full decade. As I noted to Shobhit, very few people express any interest in reading my fiction when I write it anymore -- and I don't even necessarily blame them: amateur fiction does not tend to be all that compelling to many people. I would not likely have much more interest in reading anyone else's short story either, to be fair. So I don't really take that personally. That said, I don't feel like there's much sense in writing fiction if I have no real built-in audience. If there's virtually no one with any interest in reading it, why bother writing it? Thus, I am left feeling less than motivated to churn out more.
Shobhit made a fair point when he said, "You should write for yourself." Yes, I should. But my journal entries and particular my movie reviews -- which, small though it may be, I do know have a steady audience -- serve that purpose.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what kind of writing I do -- in the end, all of it will be forgotten, scattered to the electronic wind. Long gone are the days of a writer's prolific tendencies largely resulting in continued attention centuries after they're gone. I'm hardly the only person these days who writes everything down, and our numbers are far too great for really any of us to be the next Shakespeare or Yeats. Why bother trying? My writing, generally speaking -- especially the blog entries -- serve as records for my own reference while I'm still alive, a supplement to my often-unreliable memory. Once I bite it, though, who's going to give a shit? Rather few people to be sure, only to shrink in numbers quickly thereafter.
Mind you, sometimes I get inspired to write things I haven't done in a long time, out of the blue, and I'll still do it again if I am so compelled. But I need that inspiration to happen; I'm not going to force it. There is simply no return on investment when trying to force it.
Anyway, we spent some time last night, before and after dessert, watching a few episodes of the Netflix original sitcom One Day at a Time. I would have paid this show no mind at all, except that the WTF with Marc Maron podcast's latest episode was a talk with Rita Moreno, who plays the grandmother on the show. Rita Moreno was Anita in West Side Story, and she also presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Morgan Freeman -- apparently a friend of hers for some fifty years -- at this year's SAG Awards. The woman is 86 years old and looks amazing for her age, not to mention how mentally sharp and energetic she is. She could have been forty, the way she sounded in that interview.
She told Marc Maron about how she never looked her age, and even playing the grandmother on One Day at a Time, she plays a 77-year-old -- nine years younger than her actual age. They talked about what it's like shooting a traditional sitcom with a studio audience, something Netflix only started producing on their own within the past couple of years. The show actually has two seasons streaming now. And after reading a little more online about the show, in spite of its very typical, largely cheese sitcom format with what feels like canned laughter (although they do have a live studio audience), I decided I wanted to check it out.
I accidentally watched two and a half episodes of season 2 first, not realizing the second season's episodes get listed first. I was slightly unusure about the first episode at the beginning -- which, curiously, felt a lot like a pilot even though it was the second 2 starter -- but in short order the show won me over. I agree with Shobhit that it's "a little preachy," but still good. I like that it's about an immigrant Cuban family and it tackles associated issues of American xenophobia and racism -- in a way no show on any of the major broadcast networks ever would. That, combined with a very strong cast (the mother is played by Justina Muchado, who had played Vanessa Diaz, wife of Rico, on Six Feet Under), really endeared me to it, and I actually look forward to watching more. Shobhit looked up a guest start in the third episode we watched, on iMDB, because she had been a teacher in one of his acting classes, and that was how he figured out we had been watching season two. When we returned from getting ice cream we went back to the beginning of season one and watched a couple episodes of that before I went to bed.
[posted 12:32 pm]