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Shobhit's friend and former accent lesson teacher Ellen told him about the
summer concert series at Volunteer Park, kicking off yesterday, suggesting he come and campaign, because it was bound to be packed with District 3 voters.
She was absolutely right about that. The vast majority of the people there were, indeed, from the neighborhood. This would be in contrast to most other big events that we tend to go to there, particularly for Pride, which attract people from all over the city and region.
He came directly from yet another campaign event, hosted by the South Seattle Climate Action Network, at Bradner Gardens Park in the Mt. Baker neighborhood—which, I am only realizing right now, is actually outside the boundaries of District 3, albeit only by about three blocks. In any case, he was at that one when I got home from work, and where he said he didn't think he gained any new voters and only a few other candidates were there, and then on his way up to Volunteer Park he stopped by the condo to pick me up.
He later thanked me for my "help," although I did very little, besides keep him stocked in campaign talker cards, at one point even going back to the car to get a huge stack more. He may have passed out more cards yesterday at Volunteer Park than he has at any other single event.
We could have gotten through the whole crowd, lounging in the grass enjoying the free live concert, had we split up and covered sections of the crowd separately, but I clammed up at the suggestion. The idea of doing the in-person equivalent of cold-calling makes me panicky, and I still maintain that I would not be a great asset, aside from perhaps just getting more flyers passed out. Instead, I largely just hung back, holding extra cards until Shobhit needed them, sort of shadowing him from a distance. For a bit, I chatted with Ellen, who was already there, but who left probably less than an hour after we arrived.
Shobhit, for his part, seemed to be having a blast. He was in
incredibly high spirits when he finished weaving through the entire crowd and we were headed back out of the park. This was clearly because he felt like he'd made real progress, spoke to a ton of people who were actually receptive to him and his platform, and thanks to Ellen, he'd found a perfect venue for this kind of work, which none of the other candidates appeared to be at. It made me think I should research whether there are any other similar events around the district that he could target.
There are six of the concerts in this Volunteer Park series, every Thursday from now until August 17. I went ahead and put them all onto his campaign Google Calendar, which I have been maintaining from the start. (There are other things I do indeed work on for him. It's the in-person campaigning stuff that makes me recoil.)
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When we got back home again, I went back to finishing the first episode of an Australian murder mystery / dramedy that Laney had recommended and raved about, called
Deadloch, available on Prime Video. I look forward to watching more but I did find it a little hokey at times, and at more than one of the characters a caricature, particularly the detective lady brought down to this tiny Tasmanian town from Darwin.
We had spent so much time at the park, it was about time to get ready for bed once that was done.
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In other news:
* To me, yesterday's announcement that SAG-AFTRA will join the Writers Guild of America (WGA) on strike—officially as of today's date—is huge news, the likes of which I have not tracked with the same focus of attention since covid. I don't feel like the rest of the world has truly caught up to how significant this is, though, the number of people mentioning it in my social media feeds notwithstanding. The average entertainment consumer is going to be forced to reckon with it when it affects the content they consume far faster than the WGA strike has, though. I mean, huge stars
walked out of the Oppenheimer premiere in London in solidarity. Although, it would appear they may not have been made aware of
the strike rules that early after the announcement, which actually prohibits even promoting projects.
I've even been tracking
the New York Times real-time updates on this story, which, among other things, notes that this is the first actors strike in 43 years, and the first time both SAG-AFTRA and the WGA were on strike at the same time in 63 years. This is a big, big deal.
I suppose another part of it all, here from the vantage point of 2023, is how siloed everyone's interests are, let alone specialized sources of news chosen from far more choices than people had forty years ago. It's easy for people not even to realize something like this is happening—and, indeed, I only googled yesterday afternoon to see what the status was after a podcast I listened to had hosts talking about how the actors strike could be underway by the time the episode dropped. And I was like,
Oh. Well, is it? And, indeed it was: it had already been for a few hours. Or at least, the news had been out for a few hours, that the strike would be officially underway at midnight.
And by the way, the studio responses to
both unions' demnads are insanely privileged and tone deaf. The demands are beyond reasonable, and they are left with no recourse but to force the studios' hands. It's a really goood thing that the actors, many of whom have been picketing with the WGA for weeks, actually joined them, as the studios will be forced to act sooner than they had been willing to for writers.
* Troye Sivan, probably the most recent artist I became a new fan of—and I disovered both his first album,
Blue Neighborhood, and his uber-fabulous second album,
Bloom, in 2018,
five years ago—has a new album set for release in October. I really love his music, and am eternally intrigued by his celebrity persona, as an unapologetically sexual, queer man, to the same degree Madonna was unapologetically sexual in her early years.
I only know about this because a social media account I follow, called "Gay Fat Friend," a fat gay guy who posts funny responses to conventionally-hot guys' posts,
shared a post cutting clips of him dancing topless into the video for Sivan's lead single, "Rush," so that it no longer features only people with 0% body fat.
There's a fair amount of discussion about this online, and I'm not sure the piling-on is fair; Troye Sivan can express himself within the world he lives in however he wants. Besides, it's significant to me to see a music video so overtly sexual, like even more than Lil' Nax X has been (to be fair, it could easily be said that Lil' Nas X walked so Troye Sivan could run when it comes to this), right down to a stunning number of bare butts and partial nudity—in one brief shot, a few guys actually totally naked, covering their penises with their hands.
Given the limited variety of body types, I would never call this video "body positive," but I would absolutely call it sex-positive, and I love that about it, at least. I find it really hot, and I also love the song itself. I can't wait for the entire album to be released.
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[posted 12:29 pm]
