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We had our Action Movie Night at the Braeburn Condos last night, and it was one of the more highly attended ones—although the potluck portion had two more people in attendance than the movie portion: Tony, Jake, Ben, Derek, Ryan, Sean, Chris, a guy named Eli who apparently used to come but moved to San Diego but happens to be in town again, Shobhit, and me. That totals ten for the potluck.
Shobhit had to leave and not stay for the movie, because he was expecting a phone call from India regarding court dates in the never-ending process of getting shares transferred from his late father's name (the man has been dead since 1990) to his mother's name. He still hadn't gotten the call, apparently, when the movie ended and I went back upstairs; I guess his brother was running late getting to a court appearance, or something. Shobhit never did have a phone call for the rest of the evening, so his leaving seemed kind of pointless. Not that he missed anything great in terms of the movie; I'll get to that in a minute.
Then there was this Eli guy, who was fourth to arrive in the Community Kitchen last night, after Shobhit and I got there first, and Derek, another Braeburn resident, arrived just a few minutes after. Eli came in, and introduced himself. But then he said something, I can't remember what, that made me say, "Have we met before?" He goes, "Maybe, where do you work?" I said, "PCC." He replied, "It must have been there." I was like, "Really?" honestly surprised. Then he said something like, "Oh I'm just kidding." Um, okay.
It took me a few minutes after others arrived—including Tony, who gave Eli a big hug as soon as he saw him—for me to gather that Eli was a regular attendee from years past. During the potluck eating, Eli told a fantastic story to us all about a close friend he had made after moving to Seattle in 2016, and who later visited him in San Diego, and they got drunk and got matching tattoos—not one, but
two matching tattoos: the more serious, planned one was the
Rainier Beer "R", which they got on what appeared to be the fronts of their left shoulders, just below the clavicle based on the somewhat vague area he pointed to; he didn't show any of us that tattoo.
The great part of the story was the
other tattoo, designed by the nine-year-old daughter of the tattoo parlor's owner who was actually checking guests in at the front desk. Eli would mimic the snotty responses the girl gave to her questions, and when he played along with the idea that she would design a tattoo for him, she drew a sort of doodle of butt cheeks emitting a fart. She called it "a butt fart." Apparently Eli's friend got a stencil of the butt fart on his arm and texted it to his girlfriend, who responded that if he actually got that tattoo, she would absolutely break up with him. His response was to suggest to Eli that they do indeed also gett matching tattoos of the "butt fart" . . . on their butts. (I got the feeling this friend and his girlfriend clearly did not have the strongest relationship.) Apparently still drunk, Eli agreed, and now they both have a small "butt fart" near the top of their butt cheecks, one on the right side of the right cheek, one on the left side of the left, so they look like mirror images when standing next to each other. Eli did show us photos on his phone, of both a close-up shot, and one of the two of them standing next to each other, their pants pulled just far enough down to show both the tattoos and the tips of their butt cracks.
The fact that they went through this is absolutely nuts to me. It also says a lot about what kind of people Eli and his friend are (not specifically good or bad, but certainly the type who might make drunkenly wreckless decisions). The friend is not with that girlfriend anymore. But I have to say, to call this story a crowd pleaser would be an understatement. As Jake put it, "That is a
story." And Eli will have that for the rest of his life, I guess.
This is one of many big reasons I have never gotten a tattoo. I don't particularly want to be thinking one day that something is a great idea and then wind up spending the majority of my life with a permanent reminder of what turned out to be one of the dumbest decisions I ever made. I take care of that by never getting a tattoo to begin with.
Anyway, aside from Shobhit, Eli was the other one who did not stay for the movie. He just happened to be in town and he came by to say hi to everyone. He was clearly a sweet guy, I'll say that much for him.
Tony kind of cut it under the wire himself: he had to leave right as the movie ended. Somehow through his work, he got a four-day trip to Puerto Rico with his wife, and the first leg of their flight—to New Jersey!—was leaving at 11:30. As for Shobhit and me, the next Movie Night will be the first I have not made it to since we started going last August, because on that day we will be in Australia. Brisbane, to be exact. Or maybe Gold Coast, if that is the day we choose for our day trip train ride down there and back.
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So what was the movie, then? I'm sure you're dying to know! It was supposed to be Jason's choice this week, but he's out of town, and so backup Sean made the choice: the 2008 Michel Gondry film
Be Kind Rewind, which is . . . fine. A little dated in some respects; there is a scene in which we see Jack Black in blackface, something that absolutely would not happen in a similar movie released today.
At first I watched it as though I had never seen it before, as I really didn't remember any of it. But then I figured out that Gondry's masterpiece
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind had come out four years earlier, and there was no way I would have missed a follow-up film by the same director. And, indeed, this morning I found
my review, in which I gave the film a C+ . . . something I still stand by, actually. It's just a lot easier to enjoy a movie like this when with a group of friends just hanging out for the sake of hanging out and watching a movie.
But: this would be why I said Shobhit really didn't miss much when he skipped the movie portion. I'd have been far more disappointed had he missed, for example,
Triangle of Sadness, which remains by a huge margin the best of the films we have watched at Movie Night since I started going.
My weight is up slightly this morning, 161.9 lbs, a disappointment when I am dying to get below 160 before we leave for Australia a week from Sunday, but also expected after all I consumed last night in spite of having skipped lunch. Shobhit and I made pasta, as we now have several times, and he insists on packing the pasta sauce with a bunch of shredded cheese. This makes the pasta delicious, of course, but also ridiculously fattening. The real kicker, though, would have to be the cocktail, which always results in at least a slight increase in my weight the next day: I finally used up the last of my hot buttered rum batter from over the holidays, mixed in with a couple shots of the eggnog wine cocktail mix I still have left. It's very tasty, but also very sweet. I think I'm really going to try to avoid any alcohol at all until we're traveling.
I didn't eve have that much of the pasta: just one scoopful. I also had one medium sized slice of the vegetarian pizza that was brought; that clearly happens now as a courtesty to Shobhit and me, the vegetarians. Obviously I have to eat some of it! The real issue, clearly, was combining that with the cocktail. This is par for the course every Action Movie Night, of course, and now I'll spend the next several days course correcting.
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[posted 12:30 pm]
