— पाँच हजार चार सौ छिहत्तर —
After having an unusually chill weekend the previous weekend, only leaving the condo once to a store two blocks away on Saturday and never even leaving the condo complex on Sunday (leaving the condo itself only to take out recycling), this past weekend was basically back to business as usual: social engagements every day between Friday and Sunday; actually two different ones on Saturday; hanging out with a friend I don't get to see near often enough on Sunday.
Granted, I didn't leave the condo complex on Friday evening this weekend either, but that was because, while Shobhit was working, I went next door to Alexia's condo for our latest Movie Night—a detour from Harrison Ford-athon, after seeing his remake of
Sabrina the previous Friday, to see the original, 1954
Sabrina starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and William Holden.
Alexia and I were surprised to discover that, contrary to our high expectations based on that star studded cast in 1954, we both liked the 1995
Sabrina better.
Here's the brief review I
posted to Letterboxd:
I went into this both wanting and expecting to like it more than I did the 1995 version starring Harrison Ford and Julia Ormand—which I also enjoyed more than I expected to.
What I did not expect was liking the Harrison Ford version better. The 23-year difference between him and Julia Ormond was enough of a stretch as it was, but I found I could live with it. The thirty
-year difference between Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn is a little harder to get past. He feels way too old for her even within a 1954 context.
The only things I liked better in this, original version than in the 1995 remake was Sabrina's outfits, and Linus's hilarious old fart of a dad.
Alexia and I will get back to Harrison Ford for our next Movie Night, although when that will happen is up in the air. She's got a lot of travel dates over the next couple of months that conflict with weekend dates I would otherwise likely be available. We may have to play it more by ear for a while.
She did ask me to send her a list of holiday season stuff I plan to want to do, though. I still need to work on that.
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Saturday morning came with it a not only unusual, but umprecedented social engagement—one I did with Shobhit, so he gets at least one point from this weekend for the next Social Review.
Shobhit received a AAA newsletter email announcing an electric vehicle (EV) test driving event in Tukwila. It was sent to him on Friday September 15 (Friday last weekend); he forwarded it to me the same day; I replied that I had a double feature scheduled with Laney to start in the afternoon but could see no reason why we couldn't fit this in beforehand, it taking place in Tukwila notwithstanding—it was scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., so I figured we could just plan to get there right when it started.
Shobhit promptly forgot about my emailing him about the double feature with Laney, but it worked out anyway. We'd have wanted to get there right at 9 a.m. anyway; there were already several people in line when we arrived, and by the time we finished the first of
four test drives that morning, the line over at the registration tables was massive.
When we checked in, there were some sixteen EV models to choose from, and we could choose however many we wanted. Shobhit selected probably eight or nine; I selected maybe five or six. In the end, we each only drove two, totalling four between us.
There wasn't anything strict about matching the cars we actually waited to drive with what we selected on the touch screens. We just walked out into the parking lot, and stood by this tall, thin slab-like white posts with the logo of the car manufacturer at the top. When we first walked out, we just went for whichever car was available immediately, which turned out to be an Audi.
With each car, there was a representative who would ride with us. We discovered later that the rep would typically ride in the front passenger seat even if there were two people along for the test drive, but we were immediately conditioned by our first ride to allow both of us to ride in the front, with the rep in the backseat. Shobhit drove the Audi a bit further than the prescribed loop, largely because he was full of questions I would never even have thought to ask—timing of battery charge; miles of a distance on a full battery; price of the car; warranty information; lifespan of the battery—and they would be so engaged in chatting about these things that the rep would forget to tell him when and where to turn.
This was not my first time
riding in an EV, mind you, although even that was really quite recent: when Steven and his husband David gave me a ride to the ferry after the
Merchandising Team Barbecue at Justine's place on Whidbey Island just this past July. I even
too a brief video from inside the car, marveling at the quietness of it, and I even wrote at the time:
Riding in this car made me feel a little like I had been zipped into the future, like one of the scenes near the end of the 2001 Spielberg movie A.I..
Shobhit and I took turns being drive and passenger, though, and the first car I was able to drive for our second go-round was Cadillac, and this was indeed my first time
driving an EV. A lot of things take some real getting used to, not least of which are the electric gas and brake pedals. Nothing really "revs up" in the same way as in a gas powered vehicle. Once you get used to it, though, it was quite nice and really fun to drive.
We surmised that most people there were actually looking to buy an EV soon, and were being very practical about their test driving choices. Not us! No one was in line to drive the Porsche, so we went right to that one. This was our third car, and Shobhit's second to drive. He kept joking about how he wanted people on the road in front of us to get out of his way, or for the rep to let us drive onto the freeway (he would not let us do that), so he could experience driving fast in it. The Porsche was indeed by far the most fun of the cars we test drove, and that was the one I
took a picture of Shobhit with.
We were there close to two hours, maybe more like an hour and 45 minutes, and by the time we were at our fourth test drive, almost all of the many posts had two or three drivers waiting in line to test. Clearly we were not going to be driving a dozen cars. We decided to do one more, so I could drive a secone one; I test drove the Jaguar. This one was even different from the other EVs, in that the gear shift wasn't even pretending to be levered, and just had buttons for "drive" and "park" and "neutral"; weirdest of all, reportedly because the narrow back window limited visibility so much, the rear-view mirror was not a mirror at all, but rather a view screen, a live feed of the view behind. I could not get used to this, because the eyes look through a mirror with distance viewing, as though looking throug a mirror, and when you switch from looking at the road out ahead of you to looking in the mirror, you have no expectation of refocusing for distance. But with a literal screen monitor, you are looking at the surface of that screen and not through it, which made for a very odd experience. I'm sure drivers get used to it eventually, but I didn't like it.
A couple of the reps riding with us did ask us if we were looking to buy an EV, and Shobhit replied that we may in the next five years or so. This was news to me. Or maybe he was just giving the guy a bullshit answer, come to think of it. I should have gotten some clarity about that. Before this, Shobhit has talked about just considering living carless once his 2004 Nissan Sentra finally bites it for good. That car still drives okay, but its days are clearly numbered. Amazing to think that next year it will be a twenty-year-old car (only driven by Shobhit for 16; he never buys brand new cars because it's a giant waste of money, and bought this one used, four years old
in 2008). I'm thinking that's probably not long-term realistic and he will indeed get another car at some point. Maybe it'll be an EV, although as he noted to the reps, he's concerned about long distance driving outside the city and is waiting not only for EV prices to go down, but for innovation in battery life, preferably batteries not needing lithium.
I never brought this up during the test drives, but my issue with all this, cool and fun as EVs are, is that they are not nearly as carbon friendly as people think they are. The manufacture of EVs has a large carbon footprint, and that's the case even setting aside the deeply problematic nature of lithium batteries. Either way, it's actually greener to keep driving a really old, beat up gas powered vehicle that still drives fine, than to buy a brand new car, EV or otherwise. So I have pretty mixed feelings about the whole endeavor.
That didn't stop me from having a great time test driving a couple of them, of course. The cars were there, the event was free, why not! Shobhit and I both really enjoyed the event. Plus they had free coffee and doughnuts.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ छिहत्तर —
— पाँच हजार चार सौ छिहत्तर —
Shobhit decided while we were down in Tukwila to swing by DK Market for some grocery shopping. This got us home
really cutting it close with my 12:30 meeting time with Laney for our Braeburn Condos double feature, but it was fine. It was actually my decision to make chai that was the reason she had to wait five minutes in her van before I managed to come downstairs. I did also help put groceries away while I boiled the tea mixture.
The movies Laney and I watched on Saturday were part of our shift into horror-genre territory, for our second of two double features in September, and then both of our scheduled double features in October. The movies this time were
Scream VI, thus establishing that Laney and I have watched all six films in the series together; and
Ready or Not, which had the same duo of directors—and was actually a better, more fun (not to mention original) movie. I let Laney decide the order we watched them in, and she chose
Scream VI, mostly because it's a longer movie.
Scream VI indeed could have been about 20 minutes shorter, at least. It was all right; entertaining enough. Better than the
Scream "reboot" that would otherwise be regarded as
Scream 5, which Laney and I both felt was the weakest of the entire franchise—but we still liked all four of the original four better than this one. This franchise is 27 years old now; it's amazing they keep managing to milk it.
Ready or Not is so much more entertaining, though, it was definitely the right choice to watch second. It's very gory but also very funny. It actually would make a great double feature with the unfortunately widely misunderstood movie
The Hunt.
There was another reservation of the theater at 6:30, so Laney and I were very efficient with our time, getting the movies started pretty quickly once we got down to the theater. I did have to reboot my laptop to get it to play properly again, but at least that immediately made it work just like it did last time. We paused the movies a few times for bathroom breaks and that was about it, and in the end we actually had a pretty good pad of time left before my reservation was to end at 6:00. We sat out in the Community Kitchen and just chatted for a while, maybe another half hour. It was quite nice. We next get together for another movie in the theater,
The Creator, on Sunday this coming weekend.
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Speaking of being in the Braeburn Theater, I had texted Gabriel earlier on Wednesday if he knew if he had plans on Sunday, and he called me back in response, just as we were all gathering for Action Movie Night in the Community Kitchen Wednesday evening. I walked out into the lobby to chat with Gabriel for a minute.
He asked why I wanted to know, and I said if he's available maybe I could come down to his place to watch
Phantom Thread, which he had not yet seen and which we had recently talked about doing sometime soon. To my genuine surprise, he said this could work. "Look at us, making plans!" he said.
I actually waited until Saturday to tell Shobhit I was going to visit Gabriel on Sunday, and ask if I could use the car. I agreed to drive him to work yesterday morning, even though it meant getting up pretty early so I could get him there by 8:30, and I also filled it up with gas, as it was close to empty. (To be fair, had I mentioned this to Shobhit earlier, he'd probably have gone out of his way to make sure it was filled up himself, but then there wasn't time. So, I did it: and it was surprisingly expensive, costing me $50 that I had not budgeted. And that was after taking it to the much cheaper Costco gas station after I dropped him off at work.)
Gabriel and I did not discuss what time I would come over yesterday until he called to ask on Saturday night. I was like, I'm sure any time I propose will be too early for you. He asked me to throw something out and so I was like, "Eleven o'clock?" Predictably he found that completely untenable. I really should habe known, considering when Mandy and Andy and I all came down to hang out back in July, we all met up at 1 p.m.—and that was ostensibly for "brunch." During our call this past Saturday night, Gabriel kept changing his mind in real time: "One o'clock. One thirty. Make it two o'clock." We settled on 2:00.
He wanted me to come after lunch. I had no idea whether there was any plan for dinner and didn't ask, although maybe I should have. Shobhit was expecting me not to get back home until at least 9:00 because I typically wind up hanging out until late when I get down there. But, Gabriel and Lea are tightening their belts—literally—with food intake as their May 2024 wedding date approaches, and I presume have meals that are more, let's say, prescribed that usual these days. I genuinely get that, and this got me home earlier than expected anyway. This is probably a good approach going forward: an afternoon visit between meals, so that they don't feel any expectation to feed me.
That aside, Lea still uses baking as stress relief, and when I arrived yesterday, she was in the middle of making "
cardamom buns." Gabriel and I each eventually got a fresh one while we were watching the movie, and then later Lea sent me home with a bag of them. She asked how many I wanted, and initially I said, "Fifteen." She was like, "Okay," and I said, "I'm kidding! Two." And she said, "Four!" and put four in a plastic ziploc bag for me. Shobhit and I ate them all later last night.
Anyway, when I
first arrived, just a couple of minutes after 2:00 (unusual for me, I'm usually a few minutes early, which Gabriel hates), their front door was open, with just the screen door shut. I just opened the door and called out, "Hello!" And Gabriel said, "Just a minute!" and rushed out to take me back outside, a covid test box in hand.
He started to tell me he forgot to ask me to test, as though I would have ever come without testing. "I already did," I said, and he was like, "Oh."
I even took a photo of my negative test, in case I'd need to send it to him, and then didn't think much about it, assuming he would know that I would test, and of course not come if I tested positive. In retrospect, I should have just texted him the photo regardless, no matter what his expectations were or should have been—reassurance, "layers of mitigation" and all that.
In the moment, all I could think was that the last time I was at his place—back in July—I told him specifically that "I always test before coming here, without exception." I saw no reason to expect that to be any different now, but Gabriel clearly did not remember my telling him that. I feel like he used to remember more things. Is this an age thing? The brain just doesn't have the space for all the things anymore. I mean, this has been an issue for me for years, but I feel like ten years ago, my telling him something like that would be something he would have remembered.
I mean, he did mention he also forgot to ask me to test. And had he done that, I would have just replied with the photo of my negative test. Which I should have just done to begin with. And will from now on. No more assumptions! More than anyone, Gabriel needs the reassurance, as he remains the most continuingly cautions of all the people I know, and with good reason. None of this is based on any kind of moral judgment.
I noted, actually, that my test yesterday was the second one in as many days. Action Movie Night on Wednesday had unusually high attendance, with eleven people; and then I was in the Braeburn theater again with Laney on Saturday—I tested this weekend both for her sake and for Gabriel's. Gabriel asked me if people mask up at the Action Movie Night gatherings and I was like, "Oh, no." Of course not. Although I mask religiously on public transit and in public movie theaters, I almost never do at Action Movie Night, because I broadly know the vaccination rate in that crowd. It's true that a couple of them have indeed still had covid, but none have passed it on to anyone else in the group. I still consider being unmasked at Action Movie Night a low risk, and as with all these decisions, it's a calculated risk.
I didn't get into all that with Gabriel, as it wasn't necessary; I just left it at, "Oh, no." So then he quipped, "If we get covid, we'll know where it came from." Given that I tested negative the previous two days in a row and there have been no reports of covid among the group, the likelihood of that happening is exceedingly low. Which Gabriel clearly knows, or else he wouldn't have let me come over.
Anyway, once I told him I had already tested, he let me in the house. Tess shifts from Gabriel's house to Stephanie's on Saturdays, so she wasn't there; Lea was in the kitchen working on her cardamom buns, and we chatted for a bit in the kitchen. I got some news about Tess, including the fact that now that she's 16 years old, she's learning to drive. They had a lot to talk about that.
Lea had some wedding planning related errand to run that evidently did not require Gabriel's presence, so she did not watch the movie with us, and Gabriel and I started the movie probably shortly before 3:00. I don't think I had watched
Phantom Thread since seeing it in theaters in 2017, but I did remember loving it; the movie doesn't quite reveal itself to be something to love until it ends. The film is ingeniously constructed in a way that it subverts expectations as it goes along, which Gabriel agreed was a great thing about it.
Near the beginning he asked me, "Does a murder happen in this movie?" I had to think for a moment and said, "I don't think so." When it ended, he commented on how he now understood the second I took to answer that question.
"Kiss me before I'm sick," Daniel Day-Lewis's Reynolds Woodcock says in that movie. It was at this point that Gabriel was fully registering "These people are
fucked up." Yep! Earlier on, he asked me, "Is this a kink movie?" and I said, "In a very subtle way, it kind of is."
Gabriel did like the movie about as much as I wanted him to in the end, though. When it ended, I started the post-movie discussion by saying, "There are many things I love about this movie," and he said, "I
adored it!"
Right before we said goodbye as I was getting in the car when I left, Gabriel commented on how he's enjoying a kind of "movie renaissance" between us—we're watching and discussing movies a lot more these days than we have in a while. Literally as I was writing this, I checked to see if he had logged watching this movie on Letterboxd already, and indeed he has. He even posted
a short review, which I find very concise and true:
Truly a master stroke for PT [Anderson]…so much in so little and with a truly remarkable (if not disturbing) finish.
I logged the film as well, but as usual just
included a link to my initial 2017 review. The one thing to update from that review is this: I was skeptical at the time of Daniel Day-Lewis's assertion that it would be his final film role ("Okay, Cher"), but guess what? So far it's true: that film came out six years ago and he hasn't been in anything since. Granted, he's had multiple wide gaps between film roles before, but prior to this, the record was five years. It may be time to take him at his word. But, you never know.
He's only had 20 theatrical film roles in a forty-year career, incidentally. Between 1997 and 2017, there were only seven. I won't dispute any of the claims of him being "the greatest living actor," but I still bristle at the stories of his method acting, which I find wildly pretentious, egotistical and unnecessary, not to mention insufferable, no matter how talented the person is.
Anyway! After the movie, Gabriel and Lea and I all chatted some more in the kitchen before I packed up and left. I got some new insights on a frustrating job application process he had recently been through, separate from the actual new job he just started at the beginning of last week, which he's been utterly delighted by so far, which makes me happy. (Check out his iconic photo on their public
staff page. It's also what he's using on Letterboxd.) After sixteen years as a teacher, he's returning to what he refers to as "the nonprofit space," is getting to spend more time on outdoorsy shit (that's my phrasing, not his), and is clearly dealing with a lot less stress. I suspect that is partly what's informing the time and energy he now has for the aforementioned "movie renaissance." So maybe we can make these movie watches a bit more of a regular occurrence.
I was headed out at around 6:00, at which point Shobhit, who got off work at 5:00, was still riding the #8 bus home. He must have been near the bus stop by then though. He was in the middle of preparing a lovely dinner when I arrived, having bought fresh naan at Roti near the bus stop where he got on before transferring in Lower Queen Anne, and otherwise made a pretty simple dish of sauteed potatoes, onions and chopped veggie hot dogs, with several Indian spices mixed in. It was perfect, and I made us both hot toddies using apple cider whiskey. We watched two episodes of the new season 4 of
Sex Education on Netflix while we ate.
Besides all that, I did a little bit of reading, and also started some work on the 2024 calendars, over the weekend. All in all, it was both a very sociable and a relatively productive weekend.
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[posted 12:35 pm]
