— पांच हजार तीन सौ चालीस-तीन —
There were only eight in attendance at Action Movie Night last night. Let's see if I can remember them all! Tony, Jake, Derek, Chris, Chris, Ryan, Shobhit and me. That was easy!
Shobhit and I agreed once again to make pasta to bring. We have lots of pastas and lots of pasta sauces. Shobhit already had the pasta sauce made once I got home, and cheese grated for topping it with, and even had fried some of the bread crumbs I didn't think was really appropriate but later proved excessively tasty. All I had to do was boil the pasta, so that was easy.
Shobhit opened a bottle of wine and poured himself a glass to take downstairs with him and have with the pasta. Chris, who usually brings a pizza and the last two times went out of his way to make it vegetarian, I think maybe only brought beers this time. Only Tony brought pizza and it had pepperoni. But! Derek came with baked macaroni and cheese, which mixed quite well with Shobhit's pasta and its blend of grated cheese topping and bread crumbs. I ate a tad more than I probably should have.
The Board, which Shobhit sits on, got new furniture for the community kitchen. You can see the old furniture, which had been there since The Braeburn opened in 2006 (a year before we moved in), can be seen
in this photo from my Birth Week Movie Night in 2012. I'm talking about the upholstered furniture, not the high chairs at the counter, which have not been replaced. Anyway, this furniture, now replaced, was put upstairs by the pool table and affixed with "free" signs. Shobhit and I deliberated taking the ottoman plus the two matching chairs, but wound up taking only the ottoman, which is a bit larger than desired in our living room, but whatever, it serves its purpose.
I should really get a new photo of the kitchen, now that I look at these old photos. Consider
this photo from a Trikone-NW gathering we hosted there once in 2008. The fireplace wall used to be painted brown. The new furniture is gray in color, and now so is that wall; I went in there last night thinking it had always been that color (I guess I have "1984 brain"). I loved how the new furniture matched the color of that wall, actually.
The new furniture is
very firm. I still found it perfectly comfortable, easy to sit on with good posture. Shobhit noted more than once that it was built to last many years. The old furniture had been in there at least sixteen years, after all. Still, we were every one of us stunned when Shobhit noted that when you combined the cost of the furniture itself and its delivery, the Braeburn spent something like $21,000 on it. That boggles the mind.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ चालीस-तीन —
— पांच हजार तीन सौ चालीस-तीन —
So anyway, the movie selection came from Jake, who had to be used as backup because Jason didn't make it this week. I had looked at Jake's history, which is long, as he's one of the few who has been coming since Action Movie Night's inception in 2012, since before they made it an open invitation to the whole building. He had a pretty solid history of choices, actually.
And then? The movie was something I would never in a million years have watched otherwise: the 2010 horror film
Insidious, starring Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne. It was so scary that Shobhit very nearly left in the middle, going so far as to start gathering things and whisper to me, "Should we go?" He was taking his cue from me because I kept recoiling and covering my face. I actually briefly did consider leaving, but wound up deciding to stick it out.
None of this means I thought the movie was good, mind you. And if I were ever to re-watch it (not a chance in hell), it would be even worse, since its tension would no longer work. Lots of jump-scares, which I fucking hate. Other people think that's a blast, which I have never understood.
Basically
Insidious is a low-rent
Poltergeist, right down to the woman "expert" on the paranormal who comes in to investigate, a couple of male assistants in tow. Lin Shaye, the woman who plays the expert in this movie, has nothing on the vibe that Zelda Rubenstein had in
Poltergeist—or Beatrice Straight, for that matter. (I forgot
Poltergeist ultimately had two women come in to assist the haunted family;
Insidious only has the one.) Far more importantly,
Poltergeist employed a hell of a lot more special effects, a good portion of which actually still hold up; and it had a far, far better script. The dialogue in
Insidious is consistently flat and devoid of any real energy.
What
Insidious did manage was an unsettling tone, to the point where Tony actually turned and quipped, "Fuck you, Jake!" Moments later he added, "Why am I so scared? In a room full of men!"
Speaking of which, a weird thing happened with the Google invite list, auto-generating email updates to the list. Someone made some kind of adjustment to it. But it came in with the title "Man Movie Wednesday." At first I thought someone had changed it
to that, but I see now that
the film selection history page was always called "MMWed Movie List," so they must have started it as "Man Movie Wednesday" in 2012, and later changed it to "Action Movie Night," likely when they opened it up to everyone in the building.
I mean, whatever. Either way, I kind of hate it when things get gendered in this way, especially when it's something I am participating in. I have no real problem being regarded as "a man"—albeit a historically androgynous one, one who wears makeup and grows long fingernails—but a title like "Man Movie" still brings certain cultural allusions, many of which I just do not fit into. There was a similar feeling when Tony made that reference to being "in a room full of men," as though that meant either that he should be ashamed of being frightened, or that being surrounded of other men should prevent him from being frightened. Either thought it a little . . . regressive. (As is the title "Man Movie Wednesday.") And god knows, I would never be a part of anyone feeling "safer" just because of my gender. In many contexts it could be quite the opposite.
I do rather feel like Shobhit's and my presence at these movie nights has introduced a sort of vibe that had not been there before, something that alters the collective (if possibly unconscious) idea of the group as a "boys club." I'm rather girly; we're the only gay people who attend, that I'm aware of; Shobhit and I have both at least once made some crack about a hot guy in a movie. I'm not saying I think this makes any of the others uncomfortable; to be clear, there has never been any such indication by a single other member of the group, which is clearly comprised of very progressive guys. I'm only saying the average "type of guy" in the group clearly shifted a bit once Shobhit and I started coming.
This was our 11th movie since we started coming last summer, and the first of the year. The movie choice was among my last favorite, but, tastes certainly vary among the group (it should be noted, the choice two weeks ago of
Triangle of Sadness opened with a clearly gay man interviewing a group of hot shirtless male models), and they can't all be great. Hopefully it'll be a better one next time.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ चालीस-तीन —
[posted 12:30 pm]
