alex simon lynn zephyr
I was going to go ahead and post an update about my weekend late yesterday afternoon, and wound up watching the Netflix original movie Alex Strangelove instead. I've had it on my Netflix streaming queue for a while, after hearing people on one of the podcasts I listen to discuss it, and compare it to the theatrical-release film from earlier this year, Love, Simon, which I gave a B+. I think I'd give Alex Strangelove, which is also a high school boy realizing he's gay, a solid B -- but, like the people on the podcast, I do think there are things about it that are better than Love, Simon.
Namely, that Love, Simon is such a pointedly G-rated story -- okay, so it's literally rated PG-13 by the MPAA, "for thematic elements, sexual references, language and teen partying." Except that movie is almost entirely sexless, which you could go back and forth on: it strips it of both excitement and realism to the point of blandness, but also it's the most mainstream movie ever made about such an otherwise innocuous gay relationship, particularly between teens, and that gives it unprecedented accessibility in a country that is, while bitterly divided, also on average quite moderate and centrist. There is real value to that movie, particularly as a wide-release major motion picture -- which Alex Strangelove is not.
Alex Strangelove clearly has a lower budget and far less slick production values. At times it has the feel of a made-for-TV movie, which, as a Netflix Original Movie, is basically the 2010s equivalent. Love, Simon's MetaCritic score is 72 as compared to Alex Strangelove's 62, which is actually fair -- and both scores fall into MetaCritic's own identified range of "generally positive reviews." Having been made for Netflix and not for theatrical release, Alex Strangelove has no MPAA rating, but if it did, it would be a hard R: for language, sexual (though never at all graphic) content, and overt drug use, including a pretty funny sequence involving a kid who licked a frog.
The thing is, if you're like me and don't have an immediate individual need for how Love, Simon smooths over any rough edges for broader audiences, I would really recommend Alex Strangelove. It may take a little while to get its footing, and could have benefited from a bit tighter editing, it also has a quirky charm that is all its own. It's both unafraid to get into a bit of bawdiness and grittiness that's still tame compared to many movies most of us have long since been desensitized to, but in the end it's still sweet, to basically the same degree that Love, Simon is. It's just that Love, Simon benefited greatly from the polish that can come with the right kind of major studio support.
Hmm. I essentially started with the end of my weekend. Why don't I just work backward from there? That could be fun!
Yesterday afternoon, Shobhit and I attempted to go to SIFF Cinema at the Uptown to see Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot with two of the ten vouchers he got from SIFF after participating in a live table read during the festival. Unfortunately, this became the second SIFF Cinema movie I went to in a row that had a notice on the window saying THIS MOVIE DOES NOT ACCEPT VOUCHERS. Fuck! So, instead of paying for two tickets, we just turned and left.
The guy at the ticket window explained that Amazon Studios, in an attempt to make as much money as they can, won't allow vouchers for the first two weeks of a release. And I say: whatever, my response yields them just as much money (zero) either way, whether they allow me to use the voucher now, or I just wait until I can use it. I'd understand better if the showtimes sold out over opening weekend, but their earnings were the same yesterday whether I filled one of the seats that would have gone empty otherwise or not. Maybe their tally of tickets used skews their accounting if they haven't been paid for, I don't know. They probably assume people who really want to see the movie will just go ahead and pay -- and to be fair, if it weren't for Shobhit being with me, I likely would have just done that, and waited to use the vouchers for other movies in the future. But it wasn't going to be worth paying $18 for, rather than $9 if I were by myself.
So, no movie yesterday after all. I will be seeing one at SIFF Film Forum at Seattle Center this evening, and I already checked -- that one has no voucher restriction. (I discovered SIFF Cinema's website does identify movies with such restrictions, and I need to start actively checking that for their movies, at least as long as any of these vouchers are left.) Shobhit was bummed when he asked if he'd still get a Social Review point just for driving out there and I said no -- and so, we stopped at a nearby Starbucks to use their restroom, and then he bought a slice of banana bread for us to sit down and share there. Just to get his Social Review point. Now I can say we "went out for dessert." It cost him something like $3.49. Basically, he spent three and a half dollars to buy himself on Social Review point.
And then? Minutes later, we rendered that unnecessary. We were walking toward the car, and Shobhit commented on how nice the Olympic Mountains looked. He asked if I wanted to go walk down the street to get a better look at them. That spot was not far at all from the foot bridge that crosses Elliott Avenue and then the railroad tracks over into Myrtle Edwards Park, and so we walked down there. This alone would have given Shobhit a Social Review point by default. He wasted his money!
We walked across the footbridge (officially called the West Thomas Street Pedestrian and Bicycle Overpass"), walked down into the park, admired the few young men hanging out with their shirts off, walked past the "Adjacent, Against, Upon" art installation (which, I just learned this morning, has been there since 1976 -- the year I was born), and then walked just far enough north to move a bit into what is now Centennial Park. It's essentially just an extension of Myrtle Edwards Park; both of them together were formerly Elliott Bay Park. The longer, southern portion was named for late City Councilmember Myrtle Edwards in 1976 and the stretch to the north of it remained Elliott Bay Park until it was converted to Centennial Park in 2011. I'm not sure I'm only realizing all of this now; I've lived in Seattle since 1998 so there remained an Elliott Bay Park for the first 13 years I lived here.
We weren't very far into Centennial Park (it goes about as far north as maybe two blocks north of Mercer St; I'd say we got to about as far north as . . . I don't know, a block or so south of Mercer?) before I decided I was ready to walk back. We found our way back to the car and drove home, which we reached at close to 2:45. We'd left slightly after 1:00, thinking we were going to a 1:30 movie, so the whole endeavor was still a roughly ninety-minute outing.
As for Saturday, that was when we had Lynn and Zephyr over for dinner. This makes the fourth dinner we have hosted at home so far this year, an idea I got months ago as a way to spend more time with certain friends without having to spend too much on going out in order to do it. We'll already have our fifth one on Friday next week, so I've started keeping a log:
Sunday, March 18: Claudia, Dylan and Jasper
Sunday, April 15: Abhishek and Vinaya
Sunday, May 6: Karen, Anita, Danielle, Morgan and Rylee
Saturday, July 21: Lynn, Zephyr and Nick
Friday, July 27: Danielle, Morgan, Rylee and an expected three others
This coming Friday is basically a repeat, although it'll be the first with Danielle to have had so much pre-planned intention: the one on my birthday was intended to be a dinner with Karen and Anita first and foremost, and I wound up inviting Danielle to it as a semi-afterthought. (I had already done an official Birth Week activity with Danielle two days before, and had not done anything else for my Birth Week with Karen.) July 27 happens to be Morgan's 14th birthday, though, and apparently she specifically asked if Shobhit would cook an Indian food dinner for it. And Shobhit accepted the request.
I had been intending to schedule a dinner with Lynn and Zephyr for months, and had finally nailed down Saturday the 21st before Danielle made her request for the 27th. So, here we are hosting two of these dinners only six days apart. As you can see, we never did do one in June, so it sort of averages out anyway.
Shobhit starts prepping for these dinners at least four days in advance -- especially if you count last-minute shopping for it. Although we did a lot of shopping for both these dinners on Saturday last weekend, we went to a store to pick up some last-minute produce on Tuesday. By Wednesday Shobhit had me helping with chopping a lot of the produce, especially since we had little time for it on Thursday when we had the Braeburn Condos Barbecue. Shobhit did a fair amount of work on his own on Friday, when I went to see Eighth Grade right after work. And I knew that Saturday would need to be dedicated wholly to this dinner, so I did not schedule any movies or any other kind of socializing that day. Shobhit had two different kind of doughs made a couple of days before (one for the samosas and the other for the parathas), and we spent a lot of time on Saturday both deep frying samosas and pan frying the parathas.
We did take a break in the afternoon to watch my Netflix copy of A Fish Called Wanda, which I expected Shobhit would find hilarious, and he did, just like the last time he watched it but I knew he wouldn't remember, it was so long ago -- the first time he saw it was also from Netflix, but it was in . . . oh, fuck. Hold on. Mayne not? I swear to God I have a memory of watching this once with Shobhit before! But, my Netflix DVD rental history has no other record of it. Maybe I rented it from a local DVD rental store back when those things still existed, before my Netflix account began. That began in December 2004, though -- a Christmas gift from Gabriel -- and at that time Shobhit and I had been together for all of six months. Did we watch it that long ago? Maybe we did! It may be too long ago for Google searches to find reference in my LiveJournal.
But I digress! Here's the menu Shobhit had -- for a dinner for four. Granted, he thought it would be five and that Lynn's son Nick, being a teenager, would eat a lot. But, Nick was sick and unable to attend. Still, Shobhit actually did prepare less volume than usual and we still had plenty for Lynn to pack up into containers we strongly suggested she bring for taking home leftovers:
1. Appetizer, set onto the coffee table: samosas. Zephyr declared it the best samosa he had ever had. But then, people often do. Shobhit's samosas are nearly always spectacular -- and for these he forgot to add the Beecher's cheese curd that I rode my bike during my lunch break to buy on Friday!
2. Flatbread: aloo [potato] parathas
3. Rice, with peas and coconut flakes
4. Vegetables with paneer (not a specific traditional dish, but something Shobhit concocted -- and was the best dish this evening)
5. Kidney beans (which I always expect to be bland but these were very, very good)
6. Baked bell peppers stuffed with daikon and other vegetables and spices
7. Okra, which everyone else loved but I'm sorry, I just don't like okra. These were edible, I'll grant, but I liked everything else 10 times better
8. Somewhat of an afterthought: "mango shake" -- bearing in mind that in Indian minds, a "shake" is not made of ice cream, but is made literally with milk -- to an American mind, more like a smoothie; it basically served as our dessert.
So, aside from the parathas and the rice, which are both designed to be eaten with the other foods, but including the samosas, that makes five dishes Shobhit made.
It occurred to me this morning that this was the third time we hung out with Lynn and Zephyr during this calendar year, which is barely even more than half over. For years, the typical thing was to see them twice at most: once for Lynn's birthday in January and once for mine in late April or early May. We talk every year about getting together outside of the birthday context, and only this year managed to succeed at it. I have known Lynn since the mid-nineties and am pretty sure this is a precedent, seeing her three times in the space of only seven months.
And I have noticed much more recently that I find it a lot easier to hang out and visit with her than I used to. In the very early days, conversation felt comparatively forced and awkward. "Forced" is rather strong for how it really was; emphasis there on "comparatively." Suffice it to say that I rarely felt fully at ease way back when, as she and I really never spend time together frequently enough to get a totally relaxed rapport, and it took a couple of decades to get there. Well, and also I'm just a lot more relaxed a person in general. (Holy shit, do I wish the same could happen for Shobhit, who likes to drive through traffic going out of his way to give himself a fucking coronary.) Shobhit does fairly well with Lynn and Zephyr himself these days, often getting into political and/or economic conversations with Zephyr that get both intense enough and extended long enough that Lynn and I just start talking amongst ourselves.
I had no photographic evidence of Lynn ever having been inside the condo, only in the community kitchen for my Birth Week a few years ago. They both remembered getting a tour of the complex some years ago, though, so I guess they had been in the condo at least once before. I just don't know exactly when, and it was certainly a long time ago -- probably much closer to when we first moved in, in late 2007.
Lynn said she'd like to see the rooftop deck again, and so we all went up there at around dusk. It had been a pleasantly warm day, but not exactly hot; at dusk it was rather chilly and I was ready to come back downstairs.
They were with us for roughly three hours, having arrived actually a few minutes early just before 7 p.m., and leaving soon after 10:00. Unfortunately, I kind of suffered through the last hour feeling truly awful, as I got a headache that taking two Aleve a few hours earlier did little to alleviate. It was the kind of headache that makes you feel like you're going to throw up. But I powered through, never complaining about feeling ill while they were there. I didn't want to dampen their visit after making so much of an effort to host dinner for them at our place to begin with. After walking them down to the garage to let them out (we parked on the street so they could use our space), I walked back upstairs and apologized to Shobhit that I really could not help him with the last of the cleanup, as I seriously needed to get into bed. Luckily I felt much better yesterday morning.
Shobhit and I did go to Costco for toilet paper yesterday morning, and we got into a bit of an argument on the way home. I realized later that it really came down to semantics, and Shobhit speaking English as a second language. I often lose sight of this even after all this time together, and I should probably take care to consider it more. We were both convinced the other was wrong but basically, we were both right. It just depended on what the words we were using actually meant.
Shobhit got really bent out of shape when I pushed back on his complaint that he could feel, in the moment, "I have high blood pressure right now." How the fuck does he know that, when he's not a medical professional? (His counter-attack on that was that I could not know I was sick the night before because I'm not a doctor either, because he's the kind of deflection and false equivalencies. But! I have a better understanding now of his defensiveness, after further reflection.)
I decided to Google whether you can tell if you have high blood pressure without actually taking a measurement. How would you know that? Aren't anger or stress distinct from high blood pressure? (He shot back at me, "You give me high blood pressure!" -- as though he hasn't long been the single source of genuine stress in my life, literally for years.) But, then I found a page that indicated that indeed, when you're stressed, your blood pressure raises.
Okay. So, here is my defense. To a typical, American mind, "high blood pressure" is a sustained medical condition -- not something that just comes and goes with stressful situations. It's something for which you literally need prescription medication. And that's the perspective from which I was seeing it -- my mother, after all, had years of high blood pressure issues, one of many medical conditions she's dealt with for years. It was never some fleeting thing that she could just say, "I have high blood pressure right now!" But, what I finally realized, is that Shobhit has his own ways of saying certain things. I really likes to push back on me when I tell him the way he's saying something is not the way Americans typically say it and that's why they are potential sources of confusion -- he loves to not believe me when I say that. But in this case, when he says, "I have high blood pressure right now," what he's really saying is I'm feeling stressed right now. And I should just accept that, and accept it as what he's saying. I could never tell him he's not feeling stressed, now could I? So no wonder he got bent out of shape.
I think there's maybe a 50/50 chance that he would even accept this as my explanation, that this is not how people in this country phrase descriptions of their own stress or anger. But it strikes me as the only sensible perspective for me to have on it. It allows me to be more accepting of his off-kilter way of describing certain things, at least. The next time he says he's feeling high blood pressure, I'm not going to immediately jump on him and say "You don't know that!" It comes as no surprise then that a response like that just gets him more worked up.
[posted 12:23 pm]