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If I can manage to make my dream of a 20th anniversary trip to Toronto with Shobhit a reality this year, it only hit me recently—when
I went with Danielle, that was in 2019.
And? 2019 was
five years ago. Like: what. What the shit? So much of 2019 feels so much more recent than that, including
a lot of travel: the trips to Toronto, Niagara Falls and Syracuse with Danielle, as well as Las Vegas with her in later September and early October. Shobhit and I went to visit Sara in Denver that year (I since went back a second time, in 2022). This is all very much part of the Pandemic Effect, as a couple of years there time passed in a very different way. When I look back at a lot of what happened in 2019, it feels like a pretty long time ago—and at the same time, so many of the memories feel so much more recent than that.
We were also saving for our first trip to Australia that year, in early 2020. These are the two primary reasons I did not travel anywhere to see Madonna on tour that year: I had already spent enough on an unusual amount of other travel that year, plus we needed to save for Australia. I just couldn't justify yet another trip that year. Although in retrospect, had I known early enough that Madonna would have three dates in Vegas in November, maybe Danielle and I could have shifted the dates of our trip. On the other hand, ticket prices were really expensive for that tour too. In the end, the
Madame X tour was the only Madonna tour I did
not see among all her tours between 2001 and 2024—and Madonna had eight world tours in the span of those years.
Getting back to Toronto, though, it's such a wonderfully dense, urban city, by some distance the largest in Canada (to be fair, only
10th largest in North America; 9th largest in the U.S. and Canada; but it has the
highest population density of any urban area in the U.S. and Canada—albeit much lower in density when comparing only city proper), it has the
third-largest number of skyscrapers in the Western Hemisphere, behind only New York City and Chicago. In other words, all those other metrics aside, Toronto has the third-largest visual impact of its downtown area of the entire Western Hemisphere. And Danielle and I only got to experience it for a couple of days, I have long wanted to go back, and I really think Shobhit would like it, and its urban feel.
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Anyway. Speaking of people going on tour: Friday evening Alexia joined me for a standup comedy night—we went to Laughs Comedy Club to see one of my favorite touring comedians, Amy Miller. I've seen her twice before, both of them also at Laughs Comedy Club: in
March 2018, with Gabriel; and then in
March 2019, when I had hoped to go with Gabriel but when he proved unavailable, Shobhit actually went with me.
I had a plan to see her again in March 2020. You can likely guess what happened there: covid canceled the show. Amy Miller has been back multiple times since, but this was just the first time I managed to track the date of her return
and not have something else booked on the same date. And after I went to a comedy show on Capitol Hill with Danielle a few months ago and told Alexia about it, Alexia surprised me by saying she'd be interested in going to one with me. And since Alexia is about 95% reliable when it comes to sticking to plans, she was really the best person to plan going to Amy Miller with.
It was a really fun show. The previous two shows I was a lot closer to the stage, and we were actually seated right in front at first. The young lady seating us even asked if that was okay. I told Alexia I'd love to sit up there, but warned here, "They might talk to us." Alexia tentatively agreed but was clearly nervous about that. I went to use the bathroom, and decided while I was on the toilet that when I came back I'd tell her if she wanted to move that would be fine. She already had our coats in her hand and was moving her way back as she said, "I just can't do it, I'm sorry!" We found seats closer to the back of the room. I would have much preferred closer seats, but it was fine. We could hear her, and all the comedians were pretty funny, which included a moderately good young man who served as host, and a comedian from Portland as an opener who was Samoan and very funny. Amy Miller was by far the best, of course, and I was pleased to see that, evidently, she's doing well enough that she actually sold out the early (7:30) show we went to. The previous shows I went to were not sold out.
One quasi-issue with the second time I saw her, only a year after the first, was that she covered a lot of the same material. This time it was nearly all original material, the closest to an exception being her mention of her insomnia, which she brings up at every show. (She even spoke to Gabriel briefly about it at the 2018 show, because she asks the audience if anyone else suffers from it.) She even openly referred to notes and said she was trying out some new material, about a breast cancer scare she had last year (turns out she didn't have it), which was actually hilarious. She could have just skipped saying she was trying new stuff, because it seemed pretty polished to me.
I might deliberately wait, say, two or three years before seeing her again, lest the show be too similar. On the other hand, she talks to the crowd often enough that each show is different enough. So maybe I'll see her again sooner.
Alexia had never heard of her, and told me she had a really good time. Laughs Comedy Club says they have a two-item minimum on their menu, but I discovoered on Friday that they don't really enforce it. I never said anything to Alexia about it, and neither did the server; she just ordered a soda water, so it cost like two bucks. I ordered a cherry coke and whiskey drink, mostly because it was at the lower end of price at nine bucks, and a basket of mozzarella sticks. I told Alexia to feel free to share it with me and she didn't touch it. Still, I had budgeted $40 for this evening, and since Alexia offered $5 for the tip, all I had to pay was barely over $22. Nice. (Mind you, the tickets to the show were separate, about $25 each with fees, and had been purchased separately in advace.)
Alexia had parked maybe half a mile away. On the way home, I saw a thumbmail of a woman on the screen in her dashboard, and, assuming it was a singer, I said, "Who's that?" She told me it was Megyn Kelly, from her podcast. Yeesh. Shobhit often refers to Alexia as conservative and I tend to kind of defend her as more of a moderate progressive, but any interest in Megyn Kelly—who claims DEI is "descrimination" and scoffs at nombinary pronouns—doesn't exactly help that defense. I'd still call Alexia moderate, but, her "within limits" belief in abortion rights notwithstanding, I'm beginning to think maybe she leans closer to moderate conservative. To be fair, she has had conversations with me about gender with a fairly open mind. (Also, just because a person listens to a given podcast doesn't mean they agree with everything they say. It does paint a bit of a picture though.)
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— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ इकहत्तर —
I'm going to jump ahead briefly now, to Sunday, or yesterday. I was supposed to hang out with Laney both today
and today: rewatch of
Dune Part One at the Braeburn Condos theater yesterday; Happy Hour at Lost Lake Cafe after work today. They both got scrapped, because, finally, Laney has tested positive for covid.
I was rewatching
The Dark Knight Rises in the morning, during which I made myself a cup of chai, to take with me down to the theater. Between my focus on the movie and also preparing for going downstairs while it played, expecting Laney to arrive at 12:30, I missed her first text for a while, as it was sent at 11:51. It was about 25 minutes later when I noticed it, she even included a photo of the double-line test, the second line faint but definitely there.
Because I had taken a while to get back to her, she also left a voice mail. I texted her back as soon as I listened to it. It should be noted, as I mentioned to Gabriel on the phone last night, Laney has been more careful than anyone in my life
besides Gabriel. And this part of one of her texts has really stood out to me:
I have no idea where I got covid but I do know that all the caution in the world isn't 100% effective. Indeed. Even Tess got it a few months ago, bringing it into Gabriel's home for the first time—somewhat miraculously, neither Gabriel or Lea ever got it. Now they, and I believe Ivan still, are the only people I know well who have never gotten it. Katy, who used to work at UNFI, did post to Instagram a week or two ago her own photo of a positive test: "So long, super immunity," she wrote. She was definitely not as careful as Laney though.
All of this underscores, in spite of nothing being 100% effective—realistically, the virus is eventually coming for everyone—the usefulness of being careful. And I have to admit, I have been less careful in recent weeks: I don't mask in restaurants because it's pointless when taking a mask off to eat, and I was in at least two crowded restaurant environments since Valentine's Day. We went to the Madonna concert on Sunday last weekend. Shobhit and I went to a SAG Awards viewing party on Saturday, and that was also a restaurant but it's not one of the two crowded restaurants I was referring to (Valentine's Day dinner with Shobhit at Kedai Makan across the street; Laughs Comedy Club on Friday). Nevertheless, I continue to mask consistently at movie theaters, in grocery stores, and especially on public transit (where the highest numbers of transmissable people are likely to be). I do use
Covyxil nasal spray when I think about it; I spaced it the day of the Madonna concert but I did use it on Friday before going to the comedy club, and again on Saturday before going to Elysian Fields with Shobhit—who also used some, for the first time.
Gabriel was the one to tell me about Covyxil, and I told Laney about it. She uses it constantly. She even used it before the double feature we had
last weekend, when Shobhit joined us for the second movie. As with all layers of mitigation, it merely lowers risk, it doesn't mitigate it. And I would presume someone who has never had covid before, as fully vaccinated as she was, might have a bit of greater risk by default.
What I have no idea about is whether I am just counting the clock until I wind up with it a second time. Presumably my immunity is helped by being both fully vaccinated
and having had it before (many of the people I know who got it recently either never had it before or were not up to date on vaccinations), but that may be less the case given it's now been two years since I had it. So, who the hell knows? I could have just gotten lucky. And I intend to be more mindfully careful going forward, between the news from Laney and other stuff I have coming up that I really don't want to ruin with getting sick.
Here's a bit of an irony: Laney might not have bothered testing yesterday morning, except she had slightly swollen glands in her throat. She decided she'd better test just to be sure, expecting it would be negative and she'd still just wear a mask (which I would have been fine with). But, then she tested positive. And then, on my end: I don't always test when hanging out with her anymore, but because of the crowded environments I had been in since last seeing her, I
did test yesterday morning—and it was negative. I'm now down to just one test left, among a large number I had managed to get for free over the past few years. For the first time I actually bought tests from Amazon, and two more tests are on their way and expected to arrive around next weekend.
In the end, not wanting to waste the theater reservation, I still went downstairs to watch
Dune Part One. The only thing that sucked about that is how it's great to see it in a literal theater environment, but because I was streaming it via public wifi, the picture quality was often not the best. It would have been way better on the TV in the condo. Oh well.
Laney and briefly considered watching the movie concurrently from our respective locations and just live texting it. For a minute we were even going to do that, and although I had gotten 20 minutes in I was going to wait for her to send out some texts and start over. But then she had to bail because of some stuff she had to take care of in order to get her Paxlovid prescription delivered. (She had read online that this can't be taken at the same time as hear medications, but learned yesterday that's not necessarily true, and her doctor prescribed it after all.)
I had a great time watching the movie anyway, and feel primed for seeing
Dune Part Two with Tracy on Thursday. And again with Alexia next Sunday. And then a third time, with Laney, on March 12.
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As I just mentioned a moment ago, the Big Event on Saturday as our local SAG-Awards viewing party. Shobhit worked until 2:00 that day, and the event started at 4:00, but the telecast itself —for the first time streaming on Netflix—did not start until 5:00. After Shobhit got home from work, we decided we would walk the roughly two miles down there to Elysian Fields, and then we would take the bus home. We left about a quarter after 3, so we arrived pretty soon after 4:00.
We've managed to attend a local SAG Awards viewing party here in Seattle only once before,
in 2018, and there were definitely more people at that one than this one. Our party had a selected section of the restaurant near the back, including maybe 10 four-top tables, and anywhere from 2 to 4 people sat at about eight of those tables.
Ry, who had been one of Shobhit's seven opponents in the Seattle City Council District 3 primary election last year, also happens to be a local SAG-AFTRA member, so they came to the event yesterday as well. Ry came with a woman friend who was actually introduced
twice but still neither Shobhit nor I can remember her name. She and Ry came to join us at our table, which was actually kind of nice.
I took only one photo at that event, when Barbra Streisand was giving her acceptance speech for this year's Lifetime Achievement award. You can see her on the mounted TV monitors, beyond the backs of Ry's and the woman-friend's heads. I really thought I would take another photo during Lily Gladstone's acceptance speech if she won, and then when she
did win for
Killers of the Flower Moon I was so relieved, and delighted to watch her acceptance speech, I didn't even think to take another picture.
Lily Gladstone was the guest on today's episode of
WTF with Marc Maron. It was a great episode. She was very gracious about even the possibility of not winning the Oscar, but this episode would have been recorded before her SAG Award win on Saturday, which basically cements her position in front-runner status for the Best Actress Oscar,
Gold Derby odds notwithstanding. It will be an amazing, historic win if she gets that Oscar, making her the first Native American actor to get one.
Anyway, Shobhit got into the even free as a SAG-AFTRA member, and just as was the case in 2018, got me in as a guest for ten bucks. We each got one drink ticket, which was a second cocktail for both Shobhit and me: we took homemade cocktails to go that we drank on our walk down there. There were also snacks served, about half of which were vegetarian: pita bread and hummus, vegetables and ranch dip, small slices of bread and cheese balls and tomatoes, tortilla chips and salsa. Shobhit and I both had plenty.
The show ended shortly after 7:00, and we walked the 12 blocks up to Marion Street to catch the #12, which we took all the way to Trader Joe's and then walked the three blocks home from there. PBS wasn't airing
As Time Goes By on Saturday night this week (I hate when they randomly do that!), so I rewatched
All of Us Strangers, and had Shobhit watch it with me, now that that beautiful movie is on Hulu. Shobhit was fairly absorbed by it but also kind of didn't get it. It's sort of hard to explain how much that movie moves me, because if you approach it trying to process it logically, it stops working.
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[posted 12:30 pm]
