— पांच हजार तीन सौ नब्बे-चार —
And here we are: my first Monday to recount the events of a fairly standard weekend since . . . April 17. And I just mean "standard weekend" in the sense that there were no annual major events to report on—as there had been both the previous two weekends, with which my very successfully executed 10-day "Birth Week" overlapped.
In fact, Friday night this past weekend was nice and chill; I had no movie plans that evening, and spent it at home with Shobhit, catching up on TV—particularly the new episode of
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Prime Video, which was both unusual in its construction and very good.
And then, Saturday was sucked up mostly by my viewing of the overlong
Beau Is Afriad, which was initially released two weekends prior but I had no time for going to the movies during my Birth Week. Given the nature of this, the third feature film by Ari Aster, it came as no surprise to me that, by this past weekend, the AMC 11 at Pacific Place downtown had it down to one screening per day already, and at a rather inconvenient time, too late in the day for my preference.
Luckily, on the other hand, the AMC Seattle 10 in the U District is still showing it three times a day, and if I recall correctly four times a day over the weekend. And ever since the Northgate Link Extension, seeing movies there via public transit is very easy, with just a quick walk over to Capitol Hill Station, and they had a showtime perfect for me, at 11:45 a.m.
It was, predictably, in one of the smaller theater screening rooms. I counted the seats on the AMC app, and the capacity in Theater 6 is 40. I was one of 12 people who came to this showing.
The movie must have let out around 3:10 or so, after ending in a way that solidified my minor disappointment in it (I gave the movie a B-minus). I then took Light Rail back to Capitol Hill, walked the rest of the way home, and spent the next hour or so writing the review.
Shobhit and I spent Saturday evening watching quite a lot more TV, once again on Prime video: first the first episode of
Dead Ringers with Rachel Weisz as twin gynecologists. I was pretty into it, even though it got very weird very quickly; I told Shobhit when it was done that there were only six episodes as it's a "limited series," and he said, "Thank god. That was mental." I don't think I had ever heard him use that phrase before.
After that, we moved on to this new series, nearly done airing (only one episode left) called
The Power that I was stunned I did not know about—I just happened to find it on Prime Video over the weekend while browsing. I had discovered that on Friday night and immediately texted Laney, because it's based on the novel
The Power, which she had recommended to me, and I actually read,
in 2018.
I gave the novel a B+, and I have a feeling that in the end I will regard the series as a solid B at best; we watched three episodes Saturday night, and although Shobhit immediately commented on how he liked it better than
Dead Ringers, I'm finding this series often very on-the-nose and a bit contrived. Not only that, but for some reason, the woman named Margot who is mayor of a city in Wisconsin in the novel is switched to mayor of Seattle in the show, and the Seattle setting gets quickly ridiculous in its depictions: near the end of episode 2, there's a wide shot with the Seattle skyline in the distance, and the buildings aren't even all in the right spot. It looks more like the view of the Space Needle is superimposed with the view of the rest of downtown from West Seattle—this combinig a southward view with an eastward view. It's very weird and dumb.
Nevertheless, Shobhit and I are still all in on the show, and will likely finish binging that before we go back to
Dead Ringers, even though in my view
Dead Ringers, while truly bonkers in its own unique ways, has far better writing and better production.
One thing
The Power has to its benefit, however, is Toni Collette in the mayor part. Toni Collette can usually be relied on to elevate anything she's in.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ नब्बे-चार —
So now we get to Sunday.
Looks like I'm having a great time, doesn't it! It could be said the photo above is a little misleading.
I mean, it wasn't terrible. But, I was not proactive enough for either Shobhit's or Sachin's tastes, when it came to asking people at Cal Anderson Park to listen to Shobhit's spiel for his Seattle City Council campaign. I was organizing paperwork—one of the few things I could actually do there to make myself feel useful—and the breeze picked up and bunched Shobhit's table balloons (in the two campaign marketing colors he chose) around my head. So I quickly snapped this selfie.
My campaigning ineptitude notwithstanding, I did go out of my way to keep my Sunday mornings and early afternoons free, so I could accompany Shobhit to these things. Even though I genuinely dread going, hate being obligated to be there, and am deeply relieved once it's over—even though it was admittedly never
that bad in the moment. I didn't even feel like the time dragged too badly. In any case, this was Shobhit's third time setting up a table at the park right next to the Capitol Hill Sunday Farmers Market, but my first to really accompany him to it because I was too busy with Birth Week activities the previous two weekends.
Sachin is a far better wingman for Shobhit in this context, as he is far more comfortably proactive in asking passersby if they are registered voters in Seattle, and getting them to come hear Shobhit's pitch. I explained this to Laney later, and she totally empathized: it's not that I don't understand, objectively, how simple this is: what to do, how to do it, how easy it may sounds to plenty of people. But I freeze up and I'm too shy. A couple of times people came to the table to look at the contribution paperwork on clipboards, which is still all Shobhit has as he won't have printed "talking cards" (which do look very good) until hopefully next week—and I did take the initiative to explain to people what those things were.
Shobhit asked me to invite Laney to join us as well, knowing that she and I had a double feature planned at the Braeburn condos later—I actually had it rescheduled from 1:00 to 3:00 to allow for the time to come to this—and she agreed, saying at first she would arrive between 1:00 and 1:15, then running behind and arriving at about 1:30.
Now, it turns out I was not really explicit with Laney about what this
may have entailed—mostly because I did not feel that her presence itself obligated her to anything specific. Shobhit's thinking was just that having a woman in our group would make more people comfortable approaching our table. I think Sachin's idea was that both Laney and I would be doing more overt work on par with what Shobhit was doing.
And the thing is, Laney is shy in this sort of situation, just as I am. She still did better than me: she actually approached people every few minutes to ask about whether they were Seattle voters, but she would frequently pull back and sit down. She even said at one point, having not realized this would be expected of her, "I thought I'd just be sitting and visiting, I didn't sign up for this!" Mind you, she smiled and laughed as she said this; there was no resentment in her voice—I want that to be clear. And even still, she
did make an effort, which I hope Shobhit appreciates.
It was just Shobhit and me for the first hour, maybe hour and a half, having arrived and set up around 10:30 in the morning (the Farmers Market is from 11:00 to 3:00; Shobhit had thought until yesterday that it ended at 2:00). He fretted a little bit about Sachin running late, because "I can only talk to people one at a time," and he needed more than just himself talking to people. To his credit, although he clearly wishes I would make more of an effort, he also seems to accept and understand my social limitations.
And I can get very ambivalent about this. I try to help him where I can, but neither am I willing to go above and beyond for his campaign. Shobhit has only been working half time at his job since the holiday season ended at the beginning of the year, and he's seriously considering a sabbatical for a few months to focus on the campaigning full time; whereas I continue working full time, and continue having a full social life that I am not willing to put on hold. And I have no idea whether there is any concensus on what the overall etiquette is on the degree to which the spouse of a political candidate is obliged to throw themselves into the same work. The way I see it, I have already made notably compromises; I'm just not willing to compromise to the degree that it's all about fulfillment for him, to the extent that I sacrifice my own fulfillment. And to be fair, Shobhit has not asked that of me.
Incidentally, at least three other District 3 candidates also came to different corners around the Sunday Farmers Market yesterday to make their own pitches to passersby, which means plenty of people likely got hit up by multiple candidates.
Efrain, the guy we met at the Town Hall a few months ago and did not mention at the time that he was running, said hi to Shobhit as he walked past with a couple of his own helpers, and they set up about a block away, at the corner of Denny and Broadway. He's a bit ahead of Shobhit in the contrinution numbers needed to qualify for using Democracy Voucher funds, and he arrived a while after we did, and then left a while before Shobhit did.
They are all very friendly with each other, though, which is nice to see. I didn't even realize until after they came up to Shobhit and even gave him a hug as they were walking by, but Shobhit noted shortly thereafter that it had been
Ry, who also set up on another corner; as did, apparently,
Andrew. (As far as I know, every single candidate for District 3—which covers both Capitol Hill and the Central District—is either a person of color or queer; in most cases they are both.) Shobhit was knocking door to door on Capitol Hill last week and apparently crossed paths with Ry doing the same thing then as well.
And by the way: just walking door to door proved very effective for Shobhit; he got something like six donations in one outing last week, from a single block he couldn't even finish because it started raining. May 19 is the deadline for filing with the 150 donations he needs to qualify for doing so without having to spend his own money on the filing fee—otherwise he can use the Democracy Voucher funds, as well as the donation funds. I will admit he is far further ahead in this process than I ever would have assumed from the start, thanks to his genuine focus and tenacity; he's really applied his Project Manager skills to this whole thing. I think he may be getting it just under the wire, but with now only 28 donations still needed to meet the goal, I think he's very likely to get there, between the door knocking and at least one more Sunday by the Farmers Market (which he plans to continue doing thereafter, but with a bit of relief as then all he has to do is ask for votes as opposed to ask for donations, although donations will continue to be helpful regardless).
— पांच हजार तीन सौ नब्बे-चार —
Laney and I left at 2:30, half an hour into the extra hour Shobhit didn't even realize he had until yesterday. Apparently he got another two donations by people coming to ask what he was there fore in the middle of him and Sachin breaking things down; that took the total number of donations up to 12 for this event—a better haul than the previous Sunday (9 donations) and nearly the same as the Sunday before that (11 donations, after a 12th wound up disqualified, if I remember correctly). And yesterday's 12 were after he was only averaging 2 per hour the first couple of hours—something Shobhit blamed at first on his being the only person there who could really draw people in until Sachin arrived. But! Even Sachin commented on how much harder it seemed than the previous week to convince people to stop and listen, so I don't think that was the only element. In the end, a 12-donation haul was a real success, in my opinion.
One of the donors, actually, was a guy from our own building who had promised to contribute, I think, and was just finally getting around to it. I had never met him before. He was kind of cute.
Anyway! I walked with Laney back to her van, which she had parked on 15th right across from our building, so she could fetch her packed dinner. We then went up to the condo so I could pack a dinner of my own, of leftover sambar and rice; I also made a giant cocktail of two 12oz Zevia Cherry Colas inside the
pink 30oz Yeti tumbler Shobhit gave me for my birthday, with four shots of rum added. I should have stuck to just that, but then, without measuring, I topped it off with just a bit more rum, and then wound up really quite buzzed by the end of our first movie, so I had to slow it down.
The movies we watched, conveniently, I had both on Blu-Ray:
Hugo (2011) and
Life of Pi (2012), both of them incidentally my #1 movie for the year in which they were released. They were also both in 3D in their original releases, and both the rare example of movies absolutely worth going to see that way—it was too bad we couldn't watch them that way now, but both films are so visually lush regardless that it was wonderful seeing them in the Braeburn Condos theater.
I also decided to make popcorn in the theater's popcorn maker, and Laney even helped clean it out when we were done. I walked her back to her van, and then went upstairs to catch up on the night's TV with Shobhit:
Succession and
Barry.
— पांच हजार तीन सौ नब्बे-चार —
[posted 12:37 pm]
