Hobbs & Shaw & Donna
Shobhit and I finally got around to watching my library DVD copy of Hobbs & Shaw—or, should I say, its official title is Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, which is pointless and dumb but whatever.
Now. The movie is objectively stupid. And before Gabriel convinced me to take this journey through the entire Fast & Furious franchise with him, I never would have given it a second though. But, thanks to Gabriel, I have now surrendered myself over it—and, as such, I had fun watching it. I even quite liked the way they incorporated Dwayn Johnson's Samoan heritage into that of his character. I thought that was cool.
Gabriel himself steadfastly refused to watch Hobbs & Shaw until recently, declaring it "not Fast & Furious," but somehow he got convinced to watch it and even he had to admit it was a fun watch. He still very much separates it from the rest of the franchise, more than I would actually. It's a spinoff and exists in the same world, and when we had a text exchange about it last night and I noted that it was closer to the tone and sensibility of both Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious than to the definitively disappointing F9, he actually agreed. So really, to me, including it in any thorough journey through the franchise is perfectly appropriate.
There were even insanely ridiculous action sequnces in this movie that felt much more in line with the spirit of the previous Fast & Furious films than with F9. I honestly don't even understand why people like F9 that much, and my worry now is that the two-part "tenth installment" (not counting Hobbs & Shaw) will be more like F9 than, say, Furious 7, which I think I am deciding right now is my favorite of all of them. It has a car jumping between three different skyscrapers! That movie was made for me. I'm beginning to think I may even rewatch that one on my own time.
In the end, it worked out well that we watched Hobbs & Shaw last, because truly finishing with F9 would have been a comparative bummer. F9 even truly bends over backwards for multiple instances of retconned character developments serving as fan service, all of which fall flat. There's none of that shit in Hobbs & Shaw, and the two leads, Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, actually have good onscreen chemistery. I always like Vanessa Kirby, and Idris Elba makes a serviceable supervillain. It is funny to me, of course, that this franchise has evolved to the point of "supervillains" when the first movie was just about racecar driving petty thieves stealing, of all things, DVD players.
Shobhit and I did a lot of staring at the TV screen last night, because that movie is 137 minutes long, and we followed it up with this week's episodes of Only Murders In the Building on Hulu (very enjoyable, consistently funny) and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO (excellent as usual). I've totally spaced this week's episode of Y: The Last Man for two days now so maybe tonight I'll make the time to watch it.
That about covers everything since I last updated, actually. I get up, I go to work, I watch movies and/or TV, I go to bed. I sprikle social media and TikTok here and there. Tomorrow Shobhit and Tracy and I will go see the new James Bon film, No Time to Die. Looking forward to it. Ditto Friday evening, when I return to Virtual Happy Hour with Laney, who still doesn’t know if she'll be able to Skype or if it will just have to be by phone. Either way will be fine, I can work with it. And between that, the Seattle Pride fall event plus a movie with Ivan on Saturday, and the Argosy Locks Cruise with Ivan on Sunday, I have a jam packed weekend ahead of me. Especially if we decide to include Thursday evening as a part of it!
I was just on my way back to my desk after eating my lunch and wound up having an interesting conversation with a woman who had been by last week, with her mask on, saying hi to me and introducing herself. Her name is Donna, she works at the View Ridge store, and she sometimes does backup POS work at that store and thus has sometimes sent emails to me about POS issues.
She's here again today, presumably for a Board meeting? Interestingly, she didn't mention at all last week that she's one of the two staff people who managed to get elected to the board during the last election cycle, even though the current board recommendation did not recommend either of them and instead chose incumbents.
Anyway, she said hi again to me today in the kitchen, this time without her mask on. I actually said, "I'm embarrased that I can't remember who you are," as I know she had just said hi to me last week, but she totally understood and was very gracious about it. I explained how my store contacts are often faceless and almost exclusively via email, which makes it difficult to put names to faces once I actually see them. I don't even remember how her being on the board (she's listed at the bottom) came up in conversation, but I also said to her, "At the risk of being a little awkward, I didn't vote for you, but I'm really glad you're both there now." Which is true. She said, "I appreciate your honesty, and thank you for saying that."
The thing is, I totally had looked over her and the other staff lady candidate's bios, had read a little about them before ultimately choosing not to vote for them because I didn't feel their backgrounds or experience was sufficient. But, now, I actually do think it's great to have staff voices on the board. I mean, it's only two out of nine, after all; it's not like they have the power to overtake all the decisions or anything. Anyway, through all of the election cycle, I never put two and two together that she was that same Donna who sometimes emails me when working as POS backup at the View Ridge store. Sheesh! The world is often smaller than you realize it is.
Now that we've had this conversation though, I think I will definitely remember who she is going forward. In fact it just now occurred to me that her reason for being at the office both now and last week was probably because she's on the board, which means it will happen again. I'll have to go out of my way to say "Hi Donna!" the next time I see her just so she sees that I finally remember her.
[posted 12:45 pm]