endgame schmendgame
Last night was pretty much entirely occupied by the disappointingly average Avengers: Endgame, both the watching of its three hour, one-minute run time (and that didn't even include the trailers), and then roughly another hour to write the review once we got home, past 9 p.m. I had so many things I wanted to say about it, I started writing the review in the Notes app on my phone while Shobhit and I walked home. I never do that, but I did it last night.
Here is an irony that I did not mention in the review. I did not see Avengers: Infinity War in the theatre, and then once I watched it with Shobhit on Netflix and found it to be surprisingly entertaining and fun, I almost wished I had -- almost. The response to Endgame, which opened two Fridays ago, has by and large been so positive, I let myself think it might actually be worth seeing in the theatre, and so I did. And now I kind of wish I hadn't. I'd have had a better evening last night without it.
I mean, I don't want to get too hyperbolic about this -- it wasn't that bad. But, to call it wildly overrated would be an understatement. As I said to Shobhit as we walked home from the movie, "The more I think about that movie, the more irritated I get with it." Even Shobhit volunteered that he liked Infinity War better, and I agreed. And here was a rare moment where Shobhit and I were in alignment when it came to any kind of mass extinction. That ending really set Infinity War apart. I still knew, of course, that it wasn't really the end -- and that everyone reduced to dust would be brought back, probably through some stupid time travel conceit.
There really is no justification for that three-hour run time. I tried my darnedest to prepare ahead of time by not drinking anything after about 2:30 yesterday afternoon, and peeing multiple times before leaving work and once more right before the movie -- and I still had to leave to pee about two hours in. I had to pee a second time during the end credits. I asked to stay to the end of the credits to see if there was a post-credits sequence, and for the first time there was none. Damn it! We could have left ten minutes earlier.
There were some nice things about the experience that had little to do with the movie itself. I opted not to ride my bike to work in the morning, taking an "E-assist" LimeBike instead, and then walked directly to Pacific Place, where Shobhit met me. I got there at 5:00 and that was exactly the time Shobhit left, so he got there closer to 5:20 for this 5:15 showing. But that was fine. I walked around looking at the massive renovations happening at Pacific Place. There was a small cocktail party going on down on the first floor, which I observed down through the atrium from the fourth floor, and between some things I heard a brief speaker say about the changes happening, and what construction was going on, and a few informational posters around, I learned a couple of key new things.
First, they will be turning the four-story atrium into a five-story one. I could already see a huge hole knocked out of the first floor -- which, on Pine, is the ground floor; coming in from Olive Way, it's the second floor. At present, from Olive you just go up an escalator to the first floor, but that level is flush with the parking garage level, but with some shops already around what will eventually become part of the atrium space on that level. Second, they already took out the Il Fornaio coffee shop that had been on that first floor for as long as I can remember, and I saw a rendering that showed it being replaced by lounge areas with oval-shaped green spots that looked like astroturf with furniture on them. More specifically, those things would have to be on the outer rim of the atrium, because where the coffee shop used to be would have to be where the new hole now is, adding the lower, fifth level to the atrium. Third, I heard that speaker guy say that once all the renovations are done -- apparently aiming for fall of this year -- there will be food options on all floors. In the past they were all only up on the fourth floor, with one cupcake place down at the garage level.
Anyway! Shobhit arrived, and he brought dinner with him: sesame seed bagel sandwiches, with white wine in a thermos. And he made my sandwich quite delicious. He added a tofu burger patty to his and offered me a bite, which I stupidly accepted; whatever hot sauce he put on it really burned the end of my tongue. I could tell it would have been really tasty otherwise, but all I could focus on was the burning. It wasn't excruciating, and I didn't complain, but it certainly prevented me from being able to enjoy that bite. At least the sandwich he made me was delicious, and I did appreciate that. The wine wasn't half bad either. Hmm, maybe I would have actually made it through the whole movie had I not had any wine. Who knows?
The weather's warming up this week. 73° outside, just at lunch time. It was actually quite pleasant, sitting out on the patio and chatting with Claudia and another woman whose name I forget. Looks to be just shy of 80° for my bike ride home, so we'll see how pleasant that is. 83° tomorrow? I might just come to work in shorts for the first time this year.
[posted 12:38 pm]