mobile focus
For once this week I don't have something to yammer on and on about. I rode my bike to the library after work yesterday, to return a CD and pick up a book. Came home, and Shobhit wasn't quite home yet as he had an earlier shift at work and then spent some of the afternoon at Howell Park Beach; he was home soon after I was, though, and seemed slightly down. I made salad for dinner, so we could use up the Asian Cashew Salad we got from Costco that otherwise might have gone bad if we waited until next week to get into it -- we have a movie to see tonight; I bus down to Olympia tomorrow right after work, and won't be back in town again until Sunday evening after Shobhit comes to the family get-together at Mason Lake on Sunday.
We watched my Netflix copy of a Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe movie from 2002 called Auto Focus, which I added to my queue after Shobhit told me about the actor Kinnear plays in it, Bob Crane, who was the lead in one of the old shows on MeTV he's been watching, Hogan's Heroes. I've never watched it, and I can't remember now even why the actor came up in conversation with Shobhit, only that I wound up looking him up on Wikipedia -- and finding out he had been murdered. And that, furthermore, there had been a movie made about his murder called Auto Focus.
When I read Shobhit the portion of the Wikipedia article about John Carpenter being tried and then acquitted for the murder, Shobhit immediately assumed they were gay. The page says nothing about their sexuality, but boy howdy does Auto Focus say a lot about both their conquests of women -- the movie never says this explicitly, but one might say that Bob Crane was a sex addict. (The current psychological consensus that "sex addiction" per se doesn't actually exist is a subject for another conversation, I suppose.) Interestingly, the movie also introduces a very subtle queer element to these guys' friendship: John Carpenter is a tech head and gets prototypes of the first-ever camcorders, which they use to record their sexual exploits. While watching the playback of one orgy, Bob Crane flips out to find John Carpenter's hand on his ass -- and they have a brief falling out, rekindled once Bob discovers John is the only person who can quickly repair his video equipment. In another scene, they both jerk off at the same time in the same room while watching sex playback. Beyond that, though, the movie never makes any claim or even observation about any sexual connection between the two. In fact, in the end, Carpenter is most aggrieved by Crane's decision to end their friendship because Carpenter had spent years using Crane's celebrity to bed women.
The movie is also careful not to show the fact of the killer who comes into Crane's hotel room to bludgeon him to death. But who the fuck else would it be? Based on what little I have read, it seems pretty obvious the only reason Carpenter was never convicted was because of the ineptitude of the Scottsdale, Arizona police department in 1978, and then by the time charges were actually filed against him in the early nineties, key evidence was too old to be usable anymore.
Anyway, the movie is curiously emotionally detached, probably deliberately since evidently that's precisely how Bob Crane was. I'm just not sure it made for a particularly compelling movie. I mean, it wasn't bad. But I'll probably forget I've even ever seen it within a week.
So then we watched this week's episode of Harlots on Hulu.
Today may be the first day in more than a week when I did not wear shorts. I actually came to work in pants! And I'm quite happy for the reason why -- after Seattle's second hottest July on record, today the high expected is a mere 68°. There was a fair chance of rain this morning so I didn't even bike to work, and rode two different buses. I can't even remember the last time I did that -- got to work in another way besides biking. It's overcast today and likely will be until Saturday -- and I am into it.
There is also rain in the forecast tomorrow but I have little choice but to bike to work then, regardless. Because it's best for me to be in Olympia earlier than the first express bus from Tacoma can get me there, I'll be going down tomorrow after work. It may take me up to three and a half hours (or as few as three) to get to Dad and Sherri's place, so it's best for me to bring my packed bag and my bike and not go home after work first. I'll just ride straight to the Sound Transit express bus to Lakewood -- and I'll bike to the start of its route on Yale Ave N & Stewart St, to cut down on any chance that the bus's bike rack will be filled up and prevent me from getting onto the bus I want. In all likelihood there'll be hardly any rain at all, anyway -- that's how the "expected" rain this morning played out: it was barely-noticeable mist at best, in the end. Had there been a LimeBike anywhere near me I would have just ridden one of those the whole way.
I'm busing tomorrow to Olympia so Shobhit doesn't have to come down until Sunday; he doesn't even know how to ride a bike, let alone have interest in joining Dad, Gina, Beth and me for the bike ride we're all going to go on on Saturday. I'll then just ride with Dad and Sherri to the third annual family get-together on Sunday, where Shobhit will drive straight there from Seattle -- taking the ferry to Bremerton and driving down on that side of the Sound -- and then I can chuck my bike into the trunk there. This also works out well for Shobhit even for that day itself, allowing him to arrive mid-day and thus he won't get bored and start nagging me about wanting to go home earlier than I want to. I can spend the whole day; he can spend just a few hours; we can both be happy.
And, for once, he'll actually make an appearance at one of these get-togethers. In the past he didn't come because he had to work. But for some time now his shifts have only been on weekdays, and he's got weekends off.
[posted 12:29 pm]