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It's strange how memory and nostalgia works. As I write this, I am listening to last year's Troye Sivan album,
Something to Give Each Other, probably my favorite album by anyone in several years. And it's giving me this increadibly wistful yearning for a return to what a great time we had in Australia.
Here's what's weird about that. We went to Australia nearly a year ago, leaving in late February and returning in early March. This album didn't even come out until mid-October. But, because Troye Sivan is from Australia, and I used his lead single to this album as the first track in my "
2023 in Ten Minutes" video—more than a third of which consists of the two-week visit to Australia—this music and that trip are now intrinsically linked in my head. It has become the soundtrack to my memory of it, even though I wasn't listening to music at all while we were actually there. (It was not for lack of trying: my Apple Music subscription did not work while traveling internationally.)
Incidentally, I have actually had this exact same thing happen, specifically with Troye Sivan before, but linked to a different trip: when I visited Ivan in Vancouver, B.C. in 2018.
That trip occurred in August, and I bought both of Troye Sivan's first two albums shortly after—his second album, the wonderful
Bloom, in fact, came out August 31, and I did not buy it until September. But, as I recall, I was listening to those albums on repeat while captioning a visit to Vancouver that I really enjoyed, and the result was my brain forever associating that music with that trip, even though I wasn't even aware of the music while the trip was actually happening.
Australia, of course, was a much more significant trip. And I did experience something new with that trip, in that every day felt pretty normal and relatively unremarkable minute to minute, and yet I was constantly conscious of how my memory of the trip overall was going to romanticize it in retrospect—because this is how nostalgia works. I had a specific moment, standing on the street to watch the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, feeling like it wasn't quite as exciting as I remembered it being when we saw that parade the first time, in 2020. And still I knew, even then: I was going to love the memory of it later just as much. And I can tell you now, nearly a year later, this is true.
There's a potential trap here, though. Because my wistful yearning for the great time I really did objectively have on that trip is based on an evolving memory of it, rather than the actual experience itself. It's an odd thing to think about. And besides, does it really matter? If the memory of something is what you treasure anyway, doesn't that make it worth doing?
— पांच हजार पांच सौ बावन —
— पांच हजार पांच सौ बावन —
I had a relatively eventful weekend, though nothing in particular that will necessitate writing a great deal about. Shobhit and I spent Friday evening watching movies. I wanted to see his SAG Awards screener of
The Color Purple, the musical that came out last year, so I could finally get it seen and review it. I had been ambivalent about seeing it for weeks, and now it's not even in theaters anymore—but, I did have access to that screener.
Shobhit, however, had never seen the Steven Spielberg film adaptation from 1985, and I discovered it was available on Max. So, we watched that first, thus watching the two movies back to back.
I then wrote my review of the newer film, indicating that watching the two films so close together
did this new one no favors. The new one is pretty good, but we both felt the 1985 one was objectively better. There's something kind of unfortunate about that, given the new one was directed by a Black person and the original wasn't. A big part of it, honestly, to me was the very act of adding all these musical numbers (this being based on the Broadway musical), which by necessity compressed the storytelling the rest of the time, and this story spans decades. There's also the clear issue of adapting a stage play into film. I still conceded that it's entirely possible the Broadway show was itself a great experience.
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Shobhit worked all day Saturday, during which time Laney and I met up at
A Pizza Mart on 11th Avenue just a few blocks from either of our homes. I was thinking I had never been there before, but then a search on Facebook revealed that
indeed I had—Shobhit and I not only went there back in 2019, the year it opened (Laney asked), but I even declared at the time that it was excellent.
I found
my blog post from 2019, when apparently Shobhit and I ordered way too much food, but were very impressed with what we got. I truly have no memory of any of this, not even when re-reading a blog post I wrote about it, which is always a strange experience. What I do know is that we had calzones, but on Saturday this past weekend Laney and I had pizza by the slice—and still we were really impressed with it. Knowing that I once loved their calzones, however, after Laney and I mentioned more than once how we're eager to go back there sooner than later, I might budget for getting a calzone next time.
Mind you, this was merely the second time I had been to that particular location, on Capitol Hill. As it happened, when Shivi was visiting us the first time, on New Year's Eve to ring in 2023
we all went out to the A Pizza Mart that's Downtown, right off Denny Way at Sixth Avenue, largely to kill time and because Shobhit was craving a snack. My
blog post from
that visit indicates we split a medium pizza rather than pay the "ridiculous" price of $6 for pizza by the slice—which, as it turns out, I was perfectly happy to pay for this past weekend. But, the difference was that I chose two $6 slices (which are quite big, and very tasty, so in the end I found them to be a good value) over the alternative of, for instance, a $19 calzone. Their Happy Hour house cocktails (and we were thrilled this was one of the limited number of places with actual Happy Hour over the weekend, which was why we waited until 4:00 to go) were $10, so having two of those and two slices of pizza, my early dinner on Friday came to about $42 with tip. I had budgeted $50 though, so technically I was under budget.
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On Sunday—yesterday—I saw yet another movie, this one with Laney in the theater. I met her at her building at 11:30 and then we walked together down to the Regal Meridian to see
Origin, which we were both very impressed with.
Browsing the internet later, I was struck by how this film is getting generally positive reviews from critics, but seems to be a bit polarizing among regular viewers. It has a 77/100 rating on MetaCritic, where the user rating is 6.1/10. The average Letterbod rating is 3.5 out of 5 stars, which I guess is higher than the user rating on MetaCritic, so there's that.
Here's something that struck me reading through some of the harsh criticism of it, though. This seems like a movie where it's pretty easy to hear persuasive arguments on either side: you can sound smart whether you loved or hated this movie. I found myself wondering, a couple of times, if I had been wrong. But, so far, as I returned to my original response, which was that it was mind-expanding and very impressive. I liked it a lot, and even got very complimentary responses from both Laney and Barbara after I posted my review.
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Beyond all that, Shobhit and I watched TV shows over the weekend, including last night's legitimately creepy episode of
True Detective: Night Country. Also, we watched two episodes of the Showtime show
Fellow Travelers, which is phenomenal. Shobhit will be deciding whether to vote for Matt Bomer in the SAG Awards, for Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series.
Given what just happened at the Emmy Awards, I'll be shocked if Steven Yeun doesn't win for
Beef. Matt Bomer is excellent and I would be tempted to vote for him, but am still leaning towarf Yeun myself. Shobhit never watched
Beef though, so I won't be surprised if he votes for Bomer.
Fellow Travelers is packed with hot, surprisingly explicit gay sex, and Shobhit's going to be swayed by that, I bet you anything.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ बावन —
[posted 12:32 pm]
