netflix and chill . . . with myself
I didn't go out yesterday. I just sat in front of my TV set most of the evening, after making myself a veggie hot dog for dinner.
First was Amy Schumer's Netflix comedy special, Growing, which they released yesterday. Her previous comedy special had been done for HBO and I remember watching that with Jennifer once when staying the night at her house in Shelton. I remember thinking that special was . . . fine. This one, I had slight reservations about largely because she chose to film the special while pregnant, which felt a little bit like stealing the idea from Ali Wong, who actually became famous largely because of her first comedy special being done while pregnant -- and then she did it again for her second one. So, it's not like taping a special while pregnant hasn't already been done . . . more than once, by the same person.
But! As Amy Schumer illustrated, in an impressively organic way, in her special, her pregnancy has been particularly complicated, landed her in the hospital more than once, and there has been a fair amount of media coverage about it. So to be fair, at this point in her life, there really is specific relevance to her incorporating her pregnancy into the content of her comedy special.
She also did it really well. I laughed at this special a lot, and as I already posted to Twitter and Facebook, I already expected to enjoy it and still it exceeded my expectations. I have encountered a particularly vicious hatred online reserved just for Amy Schumer, which I don't get and really never did. It's amazing how often I see people saying she's "not funny." Those people are idiots. Amy Schumer is hilarious.
The other thing I watched was the middle -- and most famous -- movie in director Robert Rodriguez's so-called "Mexico Trilogy," which I was able to check out of the library as a boxed set, and it's taken some time for me to get through them, already having to renew the set at the library once. The first film, which Rodriguez made a name for himself with by making it in Mexico (and with all the dialogue in Spanish) for all of $7000 in 1992 (that's $12,611 in 2019 dollars -- inflation doesn't make that sound any less like chump change), was called El Mariachi. I watched that one last week, and found it had its charms in its do-it-your-self spirit.
The one I watched last night was made in 1995, with a low budget by regular Hollywood movie standards ($7 million, or of course, $12.6 million in 2019 dollars) but a massive production budget compared to its predecessor -- as in, multiplied literally by a thousand. That one was Desperado, and in the nineties gained a reputation for its cheeky cool, Mexico-style Western aesthetic. It starred Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek. It actually was fun to watch, and maybe even Shobhit would have enjoyed it.
Strangely enough, a sex scene in it made me think of Gabriel. Not because of anything sexual related to Gabriel, but because I remembered I was with him when I saw that movie for the first time back in the nineties (and probably hadn't watched it since, before last night). There's a scene where the villain is in bed on his back, doing literally nothing while a woman orgasms as she rides him. The guy looks almost bored, and that's what makes the brief scene kind of funny. I've thought about that scene once in a while over the years, and never remembered what movie it was from. Now I've been reminded.
The third and last movie in the trilogy, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, wasn't released for another eight years, in 2003 -- I had already been living in Seattle give years by then. I remember seeing it in the theatre with Barbara. I can still remember my favorite line from that movie: "Are you a Mexican, or a Mexican't?" Anyway I don't know at the moment when I'll be able to make the time to watch that one. It could be tomorrow night, it could be this Sunday, it could be next week. Sunday may be the best bet.
I did stop at the Paramount Theatre on my bike ride home from work yesterday, and I bought a $25 general-admission ticket for the very back of the second-tier balcony to see Maria Bamford at The Moore this Saturday night. I had hoped I could get Gabriel to come with me, but he has plans that night he can't reschedule. I didn't let that dissuade me from still going to see her, though, so I'll just go by myself. I'll be spending much of Saturday with Laney anyway, as that's the day of our next double feature: Die Hard 2 (set at an airport) and Airplane! (largely making fun of all the 1970s Airport disaster movies, which we just watched over the past few weeks).
Third day in a row with temperatures in the seventies -- very annoying, but it does allow me to eat out on the patio. The regular furniture is not yet all rearranged and none of the cushions have been brought back out there, but there are still some hard chairs to sit at small tables. Today I sat at the one at the far east side of the patio, which I never do. Claudia came out and said, "I'm going to sit with you. You're welcome." Ha! I laughed out loud and said, "That is my kind of attitude!" And then we sat and chatted for about half an hour and it was really quite lovely.
[posted 12:36 pm]