The Eyes of Furious Hansen
I had a pretty eventful weekend, plans of one kind or another each day of it, and even what I would call semi-spontaneous activities on . . . well, come to think of it, arguably all three days too.
This is really only because Shobhit went to Sachin's to hang out and have dinner on Friday evening, and I opted not to join him, both because Sachin's girlfriend is still not fully vaccinated (she is partially now, at least) and because not all of Sachin's four roommates are yet known to be either. This was where things got a little tricky, because although Shobhit has offered no resistance whatsoever to my insistence that no one unvaccinated visit our home, even though I am also uncomfortable with him visiting another household with unvaccinated people, Shobhit did it anyway.
I suppose I could have pitched a fit and tried to forbid him from going, but I didn't bother. Honestly, I still regard the risk as fairly minimal. Sachin himself has been fully vaccinated for months, and he's the only one Shobhit really was hanging out with. I already know from experience that Sachin's roommates don't come and hang out with him and guests he might have over; in all likelihood they were all either gone or in their rooms anyway, or if they came out, the interaction was brief—brief interactions being key, and something I don't spend a lot of time worrying about.
I did hear about a landscaper who was at the house working on Sachin's property, though, who I guess overheard when Shobhit was asked by someone (Sachin's girlfriend, presumably) why I was not with him, and Shobhit mentioned offhand that I did not want to come knowing that not everyone was vaccinated—and I guess the landscaper themself was upset by this. Shobhit seemed unable to relate exactly what Sachin said to them, but evidently he somehow managed to appease and/or comfort them in some way.
Anyway, I had been thinking about taking myself to see Dear Evan Hansen over the weekend, perhaps Sunday since I had fairly long plans already on Saturday, but since Shobhit was over at Sachin's, and made a slightly last-minute decision to see it right after work on Friday instead. That movie has the unusual combination of being an enjoyable watch and yet it still kind of sucked in retrospect. The average of my element grades (directing, acting, etc) definitively worked out to a B-minus, but given all I had to say about it, I decided my "overall" grade still needed to be a C+. I was actually not long into writing the review when Shobhit got home, rather earlier than I expected.
Saturday was my Braeburn Condos Theater Double Feature with Tracy, who come over to watch the first two Daniel Craig James Bond movies: Casino Royale (which I gave a solid B in its initial, 2006 release) and Quantum of Solace (2008, also a solid B). A decade and a half later, I actually feel more in line with the critical consensus that the first one was objectively better, although maybe not by a wide enough margin to make me think either grade I gave them needs to be rethought.
As is now our custom, Tracy and I brought our own lunches, Tracy also brought snacks, and I made popcorn with the popcorn maker we have in the little room just outside the theater. After opening the Chocolate Chex Mix bag she gave me, I was thinking maybe we didn't need the popcorn after all—but, Tracy asked me to make it anyway and so I did. Even though, this time, we both had only one serving of the popcorn each, leaving more leftover than usual. I brought that up to the condo to share later with Shobhit instead of throwing it out.
Anyway, we start our double features at 11 a.m., and break for lunch in the middle, eating out in the Community Kitchen at the counter island. This is one rather convenient thing about more restrictive rules in the middle of a pandemic: the Braeburn Condos, for now anyway, is no longer allowing for different households to reserve the theater and the kitchen separately, and you have to reserve both at once. Works for me! It was always awkward in the past anyway, when someone else had the kitchen but the way it's designed you have to walk through the kitchen to and from the theater if, say, you need to go out to use the bathroom.
I tend to allow three hours per movie when I make these reservations, to account for any chatting we do; indeed, I asked Tracy about her trip to Hawaii—which was not as great as she had hoped—and we talked about that for a while before we got the first movie started. I didn't actually check the time when we parted ways almost immediately after the second movie ended, but I can only assume she had other plans. She's usually all about just continuing to hang out indefinitely. even after the movies are done. The reservation ended at 5:00, but no one had made any evening reservation so we really could have stayed in there as long as we wanted. She did help clean up though, which I always appreciate.
It still worked out for me that I had more of the evening free, because later I told Shobhit I wanted to go for a walk—it was an incredibly nice day and I wanted to get out in it for at least a little bit. Well, Shobhit didn't feel like leaving until dusk, so I didn't get out into the sun, really. But, he decided he wanted to go out for breakfast, so that's what we did, after settling on Hot Cakes over on Olive Way.
When Ivan found out later that's where we went, he said he would have joined us had he known—but, he was gone when we left. Apparently only long enough to go downstairs and pick up a package, but, the opportunity still got missed. (His last time at Hot Cakes was actually with me, back in 2019 before he left for New Zealand.)
I was really happy to see that Hot Cakes had outdoor seating, all of them two-person little tables, only two of them available and only one with two chairs. Perfect. This was the last thing I needed after a day of munching on cookies and chai and chocolate chex mix and popcorn, but I have to say: that molten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and caramel syrup was fantastic. Damn, it was good!
I'm still not done with Saturday though!
Gabriel called me on Friday, I think it was, to see if I might have time over the weekend to watch F9 virtually. I said probably yes, although I had other plans that meant it would need to be in an evening. So, he called me again while Shobhit and I were walking to Hot Cakes, to tell me that Lea was going to be too busy all day and evening Sunday, so if it were to happen this weekend it needed to be that night. I told him we were on our way to dessert but we could watch when we got back, and so we settled on that.
Thus, shortly after getting back from dessert—and then having to wait another half an hour because Gabriel got a call from Mandy after apparently a lot of phone tag and Gabriel's "ten minutes" turned into thirty—we all got on FaceTime and queued up the movie. Luckily, the VOD price had already dropped to $5.99 so I was totally okay with paying for it.
Except, we basically all agreed that F9 was the worst installment of the entire Fast and Furious franchise. This happened to be the first one where we were all watching it for the first time, and the whole "going into space" bit, even considering how deliberately ridiculous that franchise has always been, I think was a little much for Gabriel, in terms of its absolute impossibility. (Also, there's a moment where Dom evidently turns into The Hulk, yanking down concrete walls pulling on metal chains with his bare hands.) Honestly, most of the movie was comparatively just . . . dull. I didn't need it to be realistic, but I did want it to be inventively exciting, which the previous few movies certainly managed. But, we got nothing like the between-skyscrapers car jumps in Furious 7 or the cars falling from the sky (or more specifically, 10-story parking garages) in The Fate of the Furious. Gabriel talked about a noticeable shift in tone with this movie, and I had to agree with him. It just plain wasn't as good, or even as fun.
I guess I can now say I've seen them all, though. I had been thinking I wished we'd gotten through these fast enough that I could have seen F9 in theaters, but now I don't care at all that I didn't. That would have been an even bigger disappointment. We do still have my library copy of Hobbs & Shaw to watch, which came out between Fast & Furious 8 and 9, but as Gabriel has said many times, it has no connection whatsoever to the franchise except that it features spinoff characters. He and Lea did finally watch it last weekend, though, and he admitted it was still fun. And, it sounds like, much more fun than F9, which actually makes me kind of glad we're keeping that one for last.
So now we've arrived at Sunday, when Ivan finally found the time to join me for an outing to the movie The Eyes of Tammy Faye, ten days after its release. Usually I would be more annoyed by having to wait so long to see a movie I want to review, but it mattered little in the end with this one, whose existence is ultimately, honestly, kind of pointless. Ivan and I both enjoyed it, but we also agreed it deserved about a B-minus. So, it was still a better movie than Dear Evan Hansen, though not by much. And ultimately this just means the two movies I went to see over the weekend were just okay at best. I'm still glad to have gotten out to see movies at all, though.
Ivan and I walked downtown to Pacific Place together, and then walked together only most of the way back: he likes to take long walks most days, and he broke off from me to turn up to the north on Broadway. I actually didn't see a whole lot of him for the rest of the day, even though he returned while I was writing my review, but he spent most of the rest of the evening in his room.
I almost forgot brunch! The movie plan with Ivan had been in place since he had to bail on the plans initially being for Wednesday evening, but Shobhit suggested Saturday night that we go out for brunch Sunday, and I said okay.
I told Shobhit I preferred to go to brunch somewhere on Capitol Hill rather than downtown, as I did not want to go all the way downtown just to come back and then go downtown again. Although, we still drove to brunch on Broadway because we also wanted to go to PCC in the Central District and we needed the car for that.
We settled on Olmste(a)d, the place that used to be Broadway Grill, which closed after two decades in 2013 and then sat empty for the next six years, until Olmste(a)d opened there at the end of 2019. I had actually been to Olmste(a) once before, with Laney for Happy Hour in January 2020, and this was Shobhit's first time and my first time back since then.
And I must say that I was very happy with the experience. They are one of the now-many restaurants in Seattle requiring proof of vaccination; Shobhit keeps his card in his wallet, and I keep mine inside a plastic sleeve in an inside pocket in one of my jackets, which happened to be the one I was wearing (I also have a photo of it on my phone anyway). I was totally happy to present it, and thus feel very secure eating there—especially combined with all of the staff being masked, and with outdoor seating options.
It was slightly chilly, and although we did not sit in the truly outside seating, they have garage doors that pull up to create huge open-air circulation to the table we sat at, which was only barely inside from that—functionally, we might as well have been outside. Our waitress was very accommodating and the food was high quality. Also, Shobhit asked the waitress where her accent was from and she said Brazil; she asked him the same question and he told her India. She told him she loves Indian accents and that "they're so cute," which I found slightly patronizing even though I'm sure she didn't intend it as such.
So we had brunch there, went to PCC to do a little shopping, came home, and only a small while after that I left for the movie with Ivan. After getting back and writing the review, then waiting for Shobhit to watch some dumb movie on cable, I joined him out in the living room and we watched maybe five episodes of season five of Schitt's Creek.
And I still have more about today to tell you! Well, only a bit, and because I just had my FaceTime lunch with Karen—postponed from last Thursday because that was the day I went to the Washington State Fair with Gina and Jennifer F-H.
We easily filled a solid hour with casual chatting, a lovely time as always. I do miss being able to meet at actual restaurants with her, but she has already talked about how much more convenient the virtual lunches are for her, as she can be far more efficient with her time during a work day when she doesn't have to block out time on her calendar for driving to and from a restaurant. Maybe once the pandemic is a bit more under control—which means we are almost certainly talking sometime in the spring at the soonest—we can mix it up a little, maybe meet at a restaurant once a month or once every couple of months or something, and still do the virtual thing the rest of the time.
I guess I've said everything there is to say about the past three days now. Whew! And: back to work.
[posted 1:06 pm]