The Weekend Events
I'm starting to think maybe I should have posted about some of my weekend while it was still happening, because it was a very eventful weekend, and I have much to tell about it. I also just spent probably an hour telling Tracy all about it here at work, and now I need to go through it all again! Let's hope I can get through it all in at least a relatively timely manner. At leas you can't interject into any of this like Tracy did, and make it take longer to get through. This post is not a conversation! It's a record of a few days of my life. Let's get started.
On Friday evening, Shobhit and I watched a movie I really enjoyed, a 1974 action thriller called The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw and Jerry Stiller. I decided I would finally look it up, after so many podcasters I listen to and people I follow on Twitter whose movie opinions I respect have regularly brought it up for some time, particularly in the context of it being so superior to the 2009 remake starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta. Shobhit and I had a great time watching it, so much so on my part that I shared a pretty long post about it on Facebook, which I also turned into a Twitter thread. Both of which were completely ignored. Oh well! It's available streaming on Prime Video and I highly recommend it.
Saturday was the most eventful, starting with the visit to Gabriel and Lea's house, for the first time allowing us to go inside. Which started with us discovering Gabriel and I had some miscommunication, cross communications, and assumptions on both sides. It all worked out; I must give Gabriel credit for being incredibly flexible, possibly to a greater extent than he was truly comfortable with. This may have been because his revealing, at the last minute, that we could not come visit after all might make things more complicated between him and Shobhit and me than they already have been. But that's ultimately neither here nor there; the visit happened, and it went well.
That said, I had texted him and Lea the weekend prior, suggesting that I come to the house to watch the next Fast and Furious movie, as he had previously suggested I do for the next movie, but Shobhit's work schedule basically made it impossible to do that with me, so I could conceivably just come on my own. That didn't work out, so when I texted them late last week, Are you guys around this weekend? We are wide open, I presumed it was understood I was specifically following up on the idea of literally coming to their house.
Apparently, when Gabriel had responded, Saturda late morning?, he was assuming it was understood that we'd just be watching the movie over FaceTime again. What I had been telling Shobhit, actually, was that we were coming to see the inside of their house finally, and in my mind, the movie may or may not happen. Shobhit even asked how long we expected to be there, and I said, "He may suggest we watch the next Fast and Furious movie, but I don't know if we will or not." Shobhit seemed fine with it either way.
So, Shobhit felt we should bring something, and so he suggested we make a pasta salad using kale and green onions from his p-patch plot. I actually loved this idea. We also added chopped olives and chopped fresh tomatoes, and a simple mix of olive oil, vinegar and seasonings as a light dressing. I wasn't "expecting" to have lunch made for us (and Gabriel never suggested he thought I did, for the record), but I figured, even if that was all we had as something to eat during the visit, that was fine. We also brought a bottle of wine.
It's a damned good thing I texted Gabriel to tell him when we expected to arrive, though—he never got more specific than "late Saturday morning" so we aimed for just before noon, although in the end we arrived just after noon—and to tell him we were bringing pasta salad.
It was several minutes before he responded, and it was a call. He prefaced this to say that we're all good, we're good to come visit, it's totally fine—but then he admitted they were under the impression they'd be watching the movie in their pajamas at home while I watched in my home, over FaceTime. I only later thought about how the last time we discussed our next movie watch, it was he who had suggested I (or we) come over to watch in person, but in the moment I was just like, "...Ohh." As it happened, apparently, they all had a "family meeting" to decide whether they were truly comfortable with this, to what degree they were comfortable, and how they wanted to go forward.
Bear in mind that, as Gabriel put it, most of us have been easing back into regular life after COVID, but for them it's more like "going from zero to sixty." They still won't have anyone over to visit who hasn't been vaccinated—which I totally understand and respect. I am remembering though, that first phone call with Gabriel while I was in Idaho a few weekends ago, when he first told me they were ready to have us come see the inside the house, he told me his friend Andy had come to tour the house and he wore a mask the whole time. I probably should have followed up with some more clarifying questions after hearing that, but I foolishly gleaned over it.
The bigger issue, it seemed, was not so much that we were coming at all, but that they were coming with food. They've had a couple of visitors, but they still have not had anyone over to share a meal with, at least not inside the house. I was like, "Well, Shobhit felt we should bring something." Gabriel said, "Yes, that's what normal, decent people do," and was very understanding and did not tell us not to bring it. I had already been over for dinner once after all, where we simply all ate out on their back patio, and there was no reason not to just do that with lunch. They made charteuterie boards, one for each of us couples and a separate one for Tess.
I just didn't think about the potential reticence about sharing food, especially inside the house. I really need to start getting very, very specific with Gabriel about his desires and boundaries about these things, when we come and visit in the future. I have a feeling it may be a while before I visit again anyway. This is in no way out of any kind of resentment or spite, I just know that this all caught them off guard and I don't want to run the risk of doing that again. He made it relatively clear that he'd like the next movie (Fast Five) to be watched virtually again, so when it comes to another visit, I'll just defer to him and let him send an invite whenever he fees comfortable enough for it. I totally understand that this has far less to do with us as individuals than it has to do with having visitors inside the house broadly. This was a clear first for them, having visitors inside the house for an extended period of time—maskless, except for Tess—after well over a year of incredibly strict COVID precautions. Returning to anything resembling pre-pandemic activities is taking them some time, and I'm fine with that.
I did tell Shobhit immediately about all this after the call with Gabriel, and Shobhit seemed mildly amused by it. He also said, "I guess he hasn't been reading your blog," as I had mentioned more than once over the previous week in these posts that we were planning on visiting. I know that Gabriel doesn't read my blog every day though (almost no one does), and that he sort of "stops in" only after we've spent some time together (he wind up reading this very post, I'm fairly certain), or occasionally just to see if I've said anything about him. Well, evidently he didn't last week.
I did ask shortly after they arrived if they wanted us to wear masks inside the house; I was willing to if that made them more comfortable. I had already even texted them that, since Shobhit and I bring our masks everywhere we go anyway just in case we need them. He never responded to the text, but I knew that whether he had a mask on or not when we arrived would be one cue to follow, and I wanted to ask him outright either way. He told me they planned to get tested soon and why, for reasons there's no particular reason for me to get into here, as it's clearly out of simply an overabundance of caution (which they have had all along), but said they still did not intend to wear masks and we didn't have to if we didn't want to. I told him my only real concern was whatever he was concerned about, so, no masks it was.
Except for Tess, I guess: I was somewhat surprised to discover that it was she who seemed to be the most reticent about being around non-household visitors inside the house, and although she removed the mask for some of the time we were outside, she kept it on while inside, and even watched the movie from Gabriel's office area that has a railing overlooking the living room below. Even when we all ate outside, Gabriel, Lea, Shobhit and I all sat around the round table they have out there with a standing umbrella for the sun, but Tess sat in one of the chairs at the far end of the deck away from us. Tess must have asked him at one point when he was over there asking how she was doing, if it was okay for her to be over there, or something to that effect, and I heard Gabriel say, "You're setting your own boundaries," and it was perfectly okay. And I agree.
There is one moment I keep thinking about, though. Shobhit and his fucking sneezing. Shobhit has a long history of many quick sneezes in a row, so long that I have long had a habit of counting how many sneezes he gets out. He also doesn't cover his mouth. This is a longstanding thing with him and both coughing and sneezing. If there's any place for this to be the worst place for him to do that shit, it's at a friend's house where they are more worried about contagions than anyone else we know, where they went so far as to keep a bunch of windows open and run both the living room ceiling fans just to keep the air circulation at the highest it could possibly be. And then here's Shobhit, literally sneezing particles right out into the middle of the fucking room. (Okay, it wasn't exactly into the middle of the room, it was more like, toward the coffee table. Not that that would be any comfort to anyone with a functional brain. Also, plenty of it certainly went into the middle of the room anyway.)
I keep thinking about whether I should have called Shobhit out on it right there. This is definitely too little too late, but he did finally start covering his mouth as of about the third sneeze. Sometimes his sneezing fits catch even him off guard, but there's still no excuse for it not to be an automatic reflex at this point, for him to cover his mouth as of the first one. But, in terms of my saying anything to him right then, I only heard the first sneeze; looked over and saw the second, uncovered sneeze; and by the time I could have said anything he was already (finally) covering his mouth. The damage was done. I suppose I should give Gabriel some credit here, because either he didn't glance over to Shobhit until he was already covering his mouth, or he did notice the uncovered sneeze and just refrained from saying anything, which may or may not have taken herculean strength. Either way, neither he or Lea said anything. Gabriel didn't even look stressed out about it, aside from clearly noticing the sneezing. Either way, it was embarrassing to me, and Shobhit needs to fucking learn to cover his mouth when he coughs or sneezes, really anywhere at all, but especially in someone ele's goddamned house.
So, if Shobhit (or I! God knows even I have a history of doing or saying things that deeply annoy Gabriel) did or said anything that Gabriel was upset by in any way, my best guess is those sneezes. Or, although this seems far less likely, it was something else I'm not even aware of. Fuck if I know! All I know is that, from my perspective, the whole visit otherwise went very well, I'm really glad we came, and it was a very nice time. By all indications, Gabriel and Lea felt the same way. That could easily be the case and they still want to wait a while before getting extended visits from anyone again; those things are not mutually exclusive, I do understand that much at least.
Should I say anything about the movie itself? I've got to say, these movie titles are annoying and difficult to keep track. Let's run through the gamut as they exist right now:
The Fast and the Furious (2001)
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
Fast & Furious (2009)
Fast Five (2011)
Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
Furious 7 (2015)
The Fate of the Furious (2017)
F9 (2021)
If there is one consistency among all of these titles, it's a truly random inconsistency. The one we watched on Saturday afternoon was Fast & Furious, the fourth one. Gabriel has already told me these movies get more and more ridiculous with their stunts and action set pieces, and the opening sequence of this one certainly raised the bar on that front. By all indications, Fast Five then raises the bar again, to an even greater degree. I did tell them that although I had a good time watching, I'm already at a point where these movies are basically blending together in my mind—even though I do know that Fast & Furious is notable in the series in that it retcons all the disparate characters from previous films so that they clearly all exist in the same universe. It's the first one since the first movie in which Dom and Brian are back together (the second one had only Brian; the third has neither, except for a brief appearance by Dom at the very end), and the opening sequence features Gabriel's favorite character in the whole franchise, a Japanese guy named Han who keeps his cool no matter how nuts the situation he's in. His appearance thereby places the setting of Fast & Furious actually before Tokyo Drift—but still after the first two. I mean, shit. The titles are confusing enough, do we really need to be also jumping back and forth in time?
Well, whatever. Honestly, just watching these with Gabriel is what's making it fun. It's fun with both Lea and Tess, too. Lea keeps easily guessing what certain characters are destined to do later in the plot, even when seeing certain films for the first time. And when we first sat down to watch, Tess called out from Gabriel's office area balcony: "I'm excited to see cars!"
We must have been at their place somewhere between three and four hours, headed home somewhere close to 4:00. I'd say it was the highlight of my weekend, except that my weekend had many highlights!
Not the least of which: Ivan has returned. To what degree and for how long remains somewhat up in the air. He has two job interviews tomorrow and has already spent a lot of time looking for jobs otherwise. His original intent had been to move back in with us upon returning to the States from New Zealand after a year there in August of last year, but he scratched Seattle off the list for now at the time because he could not find any job opportunities here that held any appeal. Evidently, that's changd as of this summer, and I did get an officialy answer out of him yesterday that, should one of these Seattle jobs get offered to him, he will indeed move back in with us. "If that's okay?" he said. Of course it is! The other thing though, is that he plans to leave on Thursday to visit another friend in Portland for maybe five nights, after which, presumably, if he's got a Seattle job he will come back permanently—or until he inevitably gets bored and frustrated with his job after another year and moves somewhere else again. He has talked so many times over the years now about "needing to settle down" and stop living such a nomadic life, that I still never expect him to keep that attutde for much more than a year.
I'll then just need to decide exactly what date to use for prorating what amount we ask for rent in July. However that happens, getting some extra income from sublet rent again couldn't have come at a better time for Shobhit, who is very ready to start looking for another job himself.
Anyway, let's back up to Saturday night, when Ivan arrived. His plane landed at 9:50ish, about twenty minutes ahead of schedule, so I'm sure glad I had him tell me the flight number and airline so I could track that. I had thought about offering to pick him up, but in the past I have offered and he declined. But, Shobhit volunteered us by suggesting it himself, so I went ahead and texted Ivan the option. "Well, if you insist," he replied.
So, we picked Ivan up at the airport. We made really good time getting there, and the cell phone waiting lot is under construction, which meant we became one of countless cars just waiting alongside the highway going right to the airport, sitting on the shoulder with hazard lights blinking. That was a new experience.
The waiting there was mostly just the time it took for his checked luggage to come out on the carousel, which took a while. He finally texted me that he had it, and we drove up to the pick up zone he said he was at. There was a lot of traffic—clearly way more people traveling again now—but once we finally reached his zone, it was easy to identify him, even with a face mask on, for his very on-brand track pants, combined with his height, the hat he was wearing, and his posture. I waved frantically through the windshield until he finally noticed us, waved back, and headed traight for the trunk with his luggage.
He seemed almost giddy, and from then on through the rest of the evening was all smiles and seemed genuinely thrilled to be back in Seattle for the first time in two years, and even just to see us, which was delightful. He kind of giggled a lot when I first got out of the car. I opened the trunk and let him put the suitcases in, and I hesitated slightly, as you never know whether people are going to be comfortable with hugging. (In the past Gabriel and I always hugged when departing each other after visiting, but not this past Saturday, which was unsurprising given everything I've already mentioned.) But, then Ivan raised his arms and, while he was still masked, we had our first hug in two years. He didn't even disembrace as quickly as he often did in the past. I think we've both rather missed each other.
Ivan did take his mask off pretty much as soon as he got in the car. Totally fine, of course; Ivan, as a working nurse, was among the first to get vaccinated—he got his in February. Also Pfizer, just like Shobhit and me.
We had pretty lively chat all the way home, making the drive go by quickly, and some continued discussion at home once Ivan settled in and said hi to the cats. He even gave Guru some attention! Shanti was always his favorite, and Ivan would often deliberately ignore Guru just to perturb me. As soon as Shobhit turned the car in toward our building's garage, I said, "You're coming home Ivan!" He kind of giggled and said, "Yes!" It was still kind of late by then though and well after 11 pm; it must have been around midnight when I went to bed.
So that brings us to yesterday, Ivan's first full day here but much of which Shobhit and I actually spent together without him. We went to see Black Widow at the Regal Meridian downtown, as I had been hoping to do since before I even knew Ivan would be arriving over the weekend. I invited Ivan to join us, but he seemed to consider it and then declined, so Shobhit and I went ahead with our original plan of seeing the first showin, at 11 am.
This is where Shobhit's and my mask wearing behaviors are now diverging. According to him, he is still masking up at work, mostly just because all of his coworkers are. Not everyone at the movie theaters are, though, and so he didn't bother. Even though I am fully vaccinated, the idea of transmitting a variant to an unvaccinated person still has me nervous (even though the likelihood of that happening in highly-vaccinated Seattle is comparatively low), so in a place like a movie theater, I am back to wearing a mask. I may go back again to unmasking there in the months to come, depending on where the data's at, but for now, I figure, what could it hurt? I only occasionally removed it so Shobhit could hear me better when I needed to say something to him.
Anyway, Shobhit seemed to think the movie was just okay. By most standards, that's basically where it's at. There was a lot about it, though, that made me really enjoy watching it—so I gave it a B+.
After the movie, Shobhit and I walked over to Pike Place Market. He got in line at Le Panier Bakery and I got in line at Piroshky Piroshky; I got three savory pastries for us to share, and once I was through that line Shobhit was only halfway through his, so I returned to him. He got a baguette to take home, and we also each bought one macaroon to have as a little dessert after our lunch, which we took over to Victor Steinbrueck Park to eat while sitting in the grass. There was a brass band playing not far from us, giving a nice addition to the charm of the pleasantly warm, sunny afternoon.
I'll tell you this, though: Pike Place Market was crowded—the park was too, though not to quite the same severity. Someone like Gabriel would not be ready to hang out there. Very few people had masks on, and since we were almost always outside and were indoors very briefly, we didn't either. We had walked down to the theater, though, and Shobhit wanted to bus back, and that's what we did. Transit still requires masks so we did wear them on the bus. I did find this kind of curious: I feel like mask compliance on transit is now higher than it was before, now that transit is one of the few places where masks are still required (the others being on airplanes and in health care facilities).
The movie has a run time of 2 hours and 13 minutes, and it had a ton of trailers beforehand; it was around 2:00 when the movie let out, and was easily another 90 minutes or more before we'd gone to get our lunch and then bussed home. Shobhit watched an Avengers movie using the Disney+ app and I wrote my movie review.
There was a moment yesterday, though, when Ivan said, "Are we going to watch something tonight, Matthew?" This was but one example of Ivan's behaviors and demeanors that haven't changed a bit, which I also told him. He had also mentioned gaining some weight, and when I said I hadn't really noticed that, I did also say, "You do look different but only because you're older." He was like, "Excuse me?" I said, "That's not an insult, you know. You're still incredibly good looking." Without missing a beat he said, "That's true," which cracked me up. In any case, Shobhit and I had already talked about how Ivan is now 36 years old (he shares a birthday with me, just 9 years younger) and he's finally starting to look his age rather than like he's many years younger.
One thing I was not quite used to, but will quickly get used to again I'm sure, is Ivan's "stimming," rapid movements of his hands and fingers that are clear byproducts of him being on the spectrum—effectively Asperger's, although I understand that's no longer an actual diagnosis. (Apparently he was never officially diagnosed, but a therapist once told him, ages ago, that he probably would be diagnosed with it. He's regarded himself as such ever since, and honestly, when he told me that during his first stint living with me, a whole lot of stuff clicked into place and made far more sense about him than did previously.) Anyway, when we all three of us did watch a movie later in the evening, I glanced over and saw him doing that in his seat over on the love seat, kind of compulsively rubbing his hands together and whispering to himself. I got very used to that stuff when we lived together before, and with all due humility, I honestly think a big part of our longevity as friends now has been due in large part to my fairly easily being able to just accept him as he is when it comes to stuff like that. I get the feeling he doesn't often meet new people who stick with him for that long, as a lot of his behaviors will strike many people as very odd. For me, as of yesterday, it was just the return of being around it, and I'm sure I'll be totally desensitized to it again soon enough.
I had suggested we watch the Betty Gilpin and Hillary Swank movie The Hunt, which I only thought to suggest after I opened up the HBO Max app to look for ideas, and it was at the top of the page as a suggested watch. This was a wildly controversial movie originally intended for release in fall of 2019, then its opening postponed due to both some mass shootings (always politicized) and people on the far right taking nothing more than the trailer and flipping their shit. None of them judged the movie based on actually seeing it, and it was made clear even back then that, although the premise is about so-called "liberal elites" hunting so-called "deplorables" for sport, the satryical nature of the film was much more and deeper than that. It also satires and skewers clueless liberals, a key turning point of the plot in the end actually being due to the dipshittery of one of the liberals. Not that any fo the far-right dipshits in 2019 actually watched the movie to learn that.
The movie actually got a brief theatrical release in the winter of 2020, just before the pandemic hit—meaning that it got a couple of weeks in theaters, then theaters all shut down. It was then one of the first movies ever to pivot right to streaming at a premium price, like twenty bucks. The thing is, this movie got such mixed reviews that I never felt all that compelled to see it in theaters, and then I have always refused to spend $20 on a streaming movie and always wait until the price has gone down to at the highest $6.99. It then fell off the radar, and only popped up again when I checked the HBO Max app yesterday.
Well, guess what? All three of us had a blast watching it! I mean, it's really at its core just another B-movie gore fest—it's not like some cinematic masterpiece or anything—but its satire of both far-right and far-left people is on point, and most of the kills are hilarious. Then, I read that the climactic fight sequence between Betty Gilpin and Hillary Swank in a large upper-class home was described as "John Wick in a Nancy Meyers movie," and that could not be more perfect. I think it actually took Ivan slightly longer than Shobhit to get into it (seeing "deplorables" get hunted had Shobhit on board from the jump), but by the climax Ivan was all in as well. The whole movie is just fantastic, B-movie fun, and I rather wish now that I had gone to see it in the theater.
Its score on MetaCritic remains an even 50, and more often than not, I can trust that means the movie won't be worth my time. Sometimes it is, though, and this is one of those exceptions. You should watch it! It's easy to do, just fire up your HBO Max, if you have a subscription.
. . . Well. Writing all that out took up basically the rest of my morning, after the initial conversation with Tracy about it. So. Uh. Don't tell anyone.
[posted 12:39 pm]