— पांच हजार पांच सौ चौदह —
Last night was "Action Movie Night" at The Braeburn, formally known as "Man Movie Wednesday," as the event has evolved a great deal since its inception eleven years ago. This would be why
the complete excel sheet log of every movie ever chosen still has the header "MMWed Movie List."
I learned a bit more about AMN's history last night, incidentally. (No one else calls it "AMN." I just did.) According to Tony, the very reason there's now an additional rule that you can't book consecutive days, consecutive weekdays, or consecutive dates in the month is because of them. It was not until Tony got elected to the Board (a tenure he finished a while back) that the event was sanctioned as a biweekly movie night. I should get clarification from him on this, but I suspect this is also why the night is open to the entire complex, so it feels less like the original group is monopolizing every other Wednesday for their own event.
Shobhit and I started attending regularly in August of last year, although Shobhit comes a bit less often than I do, due to things like his work shift schedule—as happened last night. Ben quipped that they were disappointed in Shobhit for not making it, and Tony chimed in, facetiously: "Tell him we're all disappointed!" I said, "I'll text him right now." (I didn't text him that.)
Anyway, the current roster of regular attendees given the opportunity for a turn choosing the film is at 12 people, and with the movie night happening biweekly, that means it takes 24 weeks to go through the full cycle of people. Last night was my third time getting a turn. I rationalized that I was bound to choose my favorite movie of all time so I might as well get it over with now:
Batman Returns, which I have easily seen thirty times or more now. Thanks to my logging on Letterboxd, I know I have seen it at minimum
eight times now, just since 2006.
It didn't seem that anyone else in the group had seen it since it was first released, in 1992—thirty-one years ago. When the movie ended, Tony said he remembered the opening sequence but didn't remember any of the rest of it. Jake said he enjoyed it, even though he found the story a bit muddled. "The script gets less muddled when you've seen it thirty times," I said.
Shortly after I got down to the Community Kitchen for our requisite pre-movie potluck, Tony asked me what decade my movie was from. "The nineties," I said. "That is the correct answer," he said. These guys really like movies from the nineties. Well, the movie I'm pretty sure I will choose next is from 2004. That's sort of close! Holy shit: I just realized that when I get a turn again, it'll be 2024—and that will make my next movie choice twenty years old.
Anyway. The movie started, and as soon as it became clear it's set during Christmas I said, "This is my favorite Christmas movie." It got a pretty good laugh.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ चौदह —
— पांच हजार पांच सौ चौदह —
Another fun thing about it being my choice of movie last night was how surprisingly large the group was: even without Shobhit being able to make it, there were ten of us. Two of them were people who either rarely come or haven't ever before—Gina, who also lives in the building, probably has swung by it before but never since I've been going. But she peeked in about halfway through when we were all eating in the kitchen, and then said she'd stay if she was interested in the movie. And stay, she did.
A guy who is apparently staying with her right now came and joined us in the theater several minutes after the film started, introduced after the movie as, if I remember right, Daniel. (I could have that wrong.) He revealed himself to be quite the movie buff, saying he goes to movies about three times a week, and talking about movie watches at Scarecrow Video and such. It made me feel stupidly threatened by him, like,
I'm the designated movie obsessive in this bunch, motherfucker! He even kind of invited himself to keep coming back, which was fine; only four of us current regulars even still live in the building, and a majority of the group never has. We'll see if the guy sticks. I'll even be interested to see if Gina comes back any time soon. I was kind of surprised to see her there. If she becomes a regular, she'll be the only regular woman at what started as so-called "Man Movie Wednesday."
Anyway, in addition to Gina and Daniel(?), there were Tony, Jake, Ben, Chris B, Chris G, Joe, Derek, and myself. The theater seats 14, so once Daniel came down and joined us, there were only four seats still empty.
I sprayed some
Covixyl into my nostrils before going down, my first time doing that before an Action Movie Night—but, we leave for Palm Springs on Sunday and I want to take all the precautions I can. I used it before the Foraged Feast Potluck at work on Tuesday, and also before I went to Steamworks last Thursday. I learned of this product from Gabriel, who uses it in addition to wearing a mask basically any indoor space outside of his house. I'm leaning more toward using it when I will be in a more crowded space but won't be wearing a mask. When I go to the airport on Sunday, that's when I will do both.
Gabby, my boss, is working from home with a pretty bad cold this week. I mentioned Covixyl to her in chat over Teams, and she was like, "Oh now you tell me!" I sent her the Amazon link and she immediately ordered it.
Back to last night: as the only vegetarians in the group, it's essential that we make a dish to bring, if for no other reason than to guarantee we have something to eat. (Two people brought pizza last night, and both of them had pepperoni.) We've brought macaroni and cheese twice before, and I did it a third time this time, but decided to pivot away from Shobhit's insistence on overloading dishes with ingredients: I wanted it to be simple, macaroni and cheese, just with sauteed mushrooms added. They had this once upon a time at Six-Seven at the Edgwater and it was amazing. Mine wasn't quite as good, but it went over very well. I otherwise added only a bit of extra salt, a good amount of pepper, and some extra shredded cheddar cheese. Ben told me this was my best one yet. There was barely any left for Shobhit to finish up when I went back upstairs, Shobhit having gotten back from work shortly before.
I barely got it done in time, along with my cocktail (Zevia cherry cola with two shots of regular rum and one shot of coconut rum, this is delicious), before I needed to head downstairs. Usually I get there before anyone else, but this time I reached the Community Kitchen right at 6:30 and four people were already in there.
So, as usual, the Movie Night took up pretty much the entirety of my evening. I held back to help Tony with cleanup afterward, and gp up the elevator with him—he's actually our neighbor on the fourth floor to the west (Alexia is our neighbor to the east). I didn't even register this completely until right, now, as I am writing this: we are actually genuine friends with both of the condo neighbors on our floor. That's pretty cool.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ चौदह —
[posted 12:31 pm]
