what the femme
I might have watched a movie for review last night, except I had an exciting virtual "class" event on Zoom put on my SIFF last night, part of their "What the Femme" series: "The Evolution of Ellen Ripley."
It was hosted by film programmer Anthony Hudson, also a drag performer who goes by the name of Carla Rossi, apparently based in Portland.
The event was a lot of fun, and included a lot of fun visuals, and was satisfying in their presentation of Alien Resurrection as not just a worthy installment of the franchise, but far more worthy than Alien 3 (with which I agree). That said, it did get a little pedantic, to the point that I felt the whole thing was getting a little over-intellectualized—something that's easy to do with literally any topic. I felt like there was a huge amount of assumed intent placed on both the film directors (particularly James Cameron for Aliens) and Sigourney Weaver herself. Although I think the assessment that the original Alien is both egalitarian and feminist in a way neither Aliens or Alien 3 were is fair, the almost giddy characterization of Alien Resurrection as some kind of subversively queer course correction seemed a little like a stretch. And I say this as someone who really likes that movie—but mostly because it's so unabashedly weird, not necessarily because it belongs in some cross section of film and queer theory college courses.
I'd be a hell of a lot more interested in what Sigourney Weaver herself has to say about these ideas. But, to be fair, Hudson was still very engaging and gave a compelling presentation that I still thought was worth the price ($15 general but $10 for SIFF members such as myself). It's nice to experience SIFF related programming again; I actually tweeted them yesterday to ask if there is any discussion about when their theater venues might reopen, and they responded that it's looking like sometime in the fall. That's a hell of a lot better than never, so I'll take it!
It does mean, however, that even with mainstream theaters otherwise open right now, it's slim pickings when it comes to quality options that might actually get me out to them to see a movie. I still kind of wish I had gone to a theater to see Those Who Wish Me Dead last week, but, that ship has sailed. I'd love to go see a movie tonight, but they've got nothing playing that looks worth my time that I have not already seen. So, another movie at home it is.
And, being Wednesday, I just finished with Virtual Office Lunch Meetup #42. And this week we had . . . just, Rebecca. What the hell, people! This was literally unprecedented: never before have we had only two people on the call. We've had only three people a few times, and in fact just the one time there was only Rebecca, when she stayed on the call, just in case, the Wednesday of Thanksgiving week, but everyone else was too busy helping out at a store, including me.
Still, Rebecca and I had no problem filling the hour with chitchat, which was nice. We talked about the state of the pandemic both in the U.S. and around the world, and particularly India; we talked about international travel and exotic animals we've encountered; we talked a little bit about TV shows. We talked a bit about our expectations moving forward once office staff is officially moved back—her plan is to continue working from home three days a week and only work in the office twice a week. She has high sensitivity not just to fragrances like perfume, but even to beauty products that have fragrances of any kind in them. Like, even a shampoo that has some kind of scent in them. She said she will probably continue wearing a mask well after it's no longer required at the office.
And I'm still waiting at least until we can work at the office without a mask. As much as I miss the office, working where I have the freedom to go maskless remains the preferred choice, so for now I stay at home. We'll see if and when that changes over the summer.
Now it's time for me to get back to work, though. Now that I'm done with the July ads, I have an unusual amount of extra time this week, thanks to the promotion schedule sometimes stretching a month from four weeks to five. This morning I actually got through the entire backlog of emails from my Birth Week vacation, which was three weeks ago! Maybe one day I'll actually get to backlogged email from, like, spring 2020.
[posted 1:05 pm]