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I had thought maybe I'd get back into working on this year's calendars in the latter half of the past week, but, so much for that! Any spare time I had at home when not watching movies, I was watching TV with Shobhit: this week's episodes of
What We Do In the Shadows,
Abbott Elementary, and (last night in particular)
Dune Prophecy and
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, not to mention binging five of the nine episodes of the excellent FX on Huly series
Say Nothing, about Irish Republican Army violence in the sixties and seventies. In addition to all that, last night I had two episodes to catch up on with
Somebody Somewhere on Max. At least those episodes are only half an hour long, but damn I love that show.
Other than that, Friday I went straight downtown to Pacific Place to meet Laney at the AMC there and see
A Real Pain, which
was excellent. Yet another of this year's movies that actually held up to the excellent reviews, of which it feels like there has been an unusually large number. Actually narrowing this year's top 10 movies for me down to only ten is already proving to be a challenge.
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— पांच हजार सात सौ ग्यारह —
On Saturday, a rainy day that made this kind of plan perfect, Laney and Alexia both met at the Braeburn Condos theater for a rather unusual double feature, their biggest connection being that we were watching them in preparation for new movies in the next couple of weeks that are part of their IP. Thus, our double feature was the original
Gladiator from 2000, which I had not seen since then, and damn is that an entertaining movie; and
The Wizard of Oz. We watched in that order, and we were all utterly delighted by
The Wizard of Oz, even though Laney had seen it so many times as a kid that apparnetly she and her sisters used to put on a play of the entire story for their family every year. I've seen it many times as well of course, but not since I last watched it in 2009 before seeing
Wicked the Broadway musical when it came to Seattle. I couldn't even tell you the last time I had seen it before
that.
We are all seeing the film adaptation of
Wicked this coming Thursday—and even Lea is joining us! This came up over a phone conversation with Gabriel last week, and Lea asked when I was going, and had her tickets booked before the call was even over. Gabriel has zero interest in this movie, so this will make for a very unusual instance of socializing with Lea without him. It might even be the first time?
She had a friend in mind who told her, after she booked the tickets, that she wasn't that interested in this movie really. In the end, kind of to everyone's surprise, Tess agreed to come. So it's going to be quite the eclectic mix of my friends at that movie, and now also a planned dinner beforehand: Laney, Alexia, Lea, and Tess. I know Tess has met Laney but she likely doesn't remember her; she's never met Alexia; and neither Lea or Tess have ever met Alexia.
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Yesterday, when not watching TV like it's the only thing there is to do in the world, I was taking myself to yet another movie:
The Piano Lesson, which was
very good. Laney quite reasonably skipped joining me for this one, for two reasons: it's only playing at the Landmark Crest Cinema up in Shoreline; and it's a Netflix film that will be streaming there by next week. I wanted to see it in a theater though, even though it meant forking over another $9.14 since it's not an AMC theater.
Shobhit suggested I take the car, since he wasn't working. In the end I should have stuck with my original plan of taking light rail. I had Mapped the route and it said it would take me 20 minutes, so I left at 12:45 for a 1:15 movie, thinking I would get there with 10 minutes to spare. Instead, I hit such heavy traffic on the freeway that it was 1:18 before I was even finally parking. Ugh, what a pain in the ass.
I didn't miss any of the movie, thanks to trailers—after I quickly used the bathroom, I walked in the very second the movie was starting, with its production company logo. So it worked out fine in the end, it was just frustrating making such worse time in the getting there than it should have. With light rail, I'd have left 15 minutes earlier, but at least I could have relaxed, been on a mode of transport that is the most reliable and efficient, and I'd still have gotten there with minutes to spare—even walking the last mile from the Shoreline South light rail station. Note to self: fuck driving. It's the worst.
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[posted 12:35 pm]
