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I did a lot this weekend, but nothing that will require description in great detail. We'll see if that stops me.
I watched four movies between Saturday and Sunday. I watched three on Saturday alone. On Friday, though, Shobhit and I went to a stage play—our second this month! I couldn't even tell you the last time I went to a play with him. (I'm not positive about this, but the last one I saw with anyone might have been
Six, the ticket for which Danielle shared with me kind of last-minute in July of last year, at the Paramount.) Oh, wait! Shobhit and I went to see
Moulin Rouge! at The Paramount in December 2022.
In any event, seeing plays with Shobhit is usually a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing. But we saw two local productions in September alone, both at his suggestion! Actually it's just occuring to me now, as I write this, that there's a good chance this is at least in part a byproduct of his getting
on the board at Theater Puget Sound.
Anyway, Friday's play was in Seattle, at ArtsWest Theater, a production of
Guards at the Taj. Shobhit was partly interested in this because it's
a coproduction with Pratidhwani, which his old friend Agastya is involved with. (Agastya also taught the Hindi class Karen and I took in 2005 and 2006—it's where she and I met—but, I haven't seen him in eons. My
most recent photo of him is from 2008, at the second of three annual NW ichild Heritage Day events Karen asked me to come to and take photos.) I thought at first that we might see Agastya there, but, nope. He's not directly involved with the production.
Shobhit at first told me the play is based on the story of Shah Jahan ordering chopping off the hands of all workers who built the Taj Mahal, so that nothing so beautiful could be built again. Shobhit made it sound like this story was true, but I did a little googling and apparently
this is a myth.
It still makes for a compelling story, though, and although it's some pretty heavy stuff, the play included a surprising lot of light humor in it—until, of course, the two total actors in it (along with two musicians who sat on the floor to the side of the stage), are discussing having had to do this. In the second act, they come out and "set the stage" by dumping bucketfuls of fake severed hands all over the stage floor. The follow this by pouring other bucketfuls of tiny pebbles dyed a bright red color, clearly meant to evoke blood all over the floor.
When the play ended, I have to be honest: I couldn't quite decide what to make of it. Shobhit was openly impressed with it. I will say that the production was very well done, especially for regional theater. The acting was great, and they did a very good job with limited resources on set design. It's the play itself I can't decide what to make of. I left kind of at a loss as to what the point was of telling the story.
We had noticed a dessert place nearby, while we were looking for parking before the play, called
A La Mode Pies. We decided to go there after the play to share a slice of pie. We got the apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. It was unbelievable, easily one of the best pies I have ever had. Totally worth the calories!
— पाँच हजार छह सौ तिरासी —
— पाँच हजार छह सौ तिरासी —
On Saturday, I actually saw two movies with separate friends. The first one was
The Wild Robot, which I saw with Laney at 11:45 a.m. at Pacific Place. Shobhit probably would have enjoyed that one, but he had rehearsal from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Laney and I both enjoyed it a lot, although I had to admit I kind of fell victim to the hype that made it sound like an animated masterpiece, which it was not. The animation was genuinely beautiful, though. And it was a beautiful fall day, sunny but crisp, in which to walk with Laney both downtown and back.
I went home and wrote the review afterward, and pretty much right after that, it was time to go downstairs to the Braeburn theater, which Gabriel, Lea and Tess all came to around 5:00 to watch a movie Gabriel and I had been talking about watching for a few months because it was a cultural blind spot for him: the seminal documentary about the late eighties ballroom scene in New York City,
Paris Is Burning.
It's on Max right now, so it was easy to stream from my laptop. I had declared I had not watched it in eons, but afterwards I checked Letterboxd and discovered I had actually watched it last on December 31, 2018! I could find no indication I had actually watched it with anyone, though; I didn't even mention it in any blog post at the time. I checked my Netflix watch history though, and that confirmed it. I must have just watched it on my own that day. Shobhit worked 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. that day so that was probably when I watched it. I honestly can't remember if I had already seen it sometime many years before that. I kind of feel like maybe I did, but I have no record to prove it.
Anyway. Gabriel and Lea were on their way to a friend's party in West Seattle right after; this was how the suggestion to watch in my theater came up, because they were going to be in Seattle anyway. Still, I had to start the movie within minutes of their arrival (shortly after a predictable text from Gabriel:
I hate Seattle so hard. —hey maybe the feeling is mutual!), and once the movie ended, after its rather tight runtime of 71 minutes, Gabriel noted he had only two minutes left of parking, so they were off quite quickly after that. I probably got around ninety minutes total with them. But hey, Gabriel has finally seen that movie!
Tess was really interested in seeing it too. She wasn't going to the party in West Seattle though, so she actually drove herself and was just going to drive back home after. I keep forgetting that she's old enough to drive, and apparently even has her own car. "She's gotten so old, it makes me want to barf," I said.
Shortly after they arrived, Tess also complimented my blog. She literally said, "Matthew I love your blog so much. I read it a lot." To clarify, she was talking about
the movie reviews feed. I have heard no indication that she reads this feed of personal blog posts, which can't possibly interest her as much (and if Gabriel prayed, he would be praying it didn't interest her in the slightest; I even removed all posts tagged with him after Tess discovered the movie reviews feed).
Gabriel's immediate response to Tess's compliment was "Don't feed his head!" My reaction was one of uncharacteristic humility; I just chuckled and said thank you. Getting complimented by a teenager is alien enough; when said teenager is the child of one of your best friends, or this particular one anyway, we move into tricky waters. Why they should be tricky would take an encyclopedic volume of deeply nuanced explanations, so we'll just move on.
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There was also a Netflix releast his weekend that I really wanted to watch and review, which incidentally also had to do with the trans experience, and made for a fascinating double feature experience after
Paris Is Burning: after I went back upstairs Saturday evening, I watched
Will & Harper. I waited until yesterday morning to write the review.
That contributed significantly to what felt like a packed day yesterday, though. Shobhit wanted to go for a walk and run a few errands, and wanted me to go with him. I barely finished and posted the review, and then spent the hour getting ready for the day, with just enough time to do that: we walked to QFC for him to buy his lottery tickets; we walked to the Capitol Hill Farmers Market; we walked to Walgreens to pick up his medication; and we walked to Salt & Straw to buy a pint of ice cream we decided to take to Alexia's.
And this was where we got to the final movie I watched over the weekend. Yesterday was scheduled for the latest in the "Harrison Ford-athon" with Alexia, this being the second to last film in that series we'll watch: the 2015 film
The Age of Adaline.
It was all right.
Before watching the movie, we all walked down to Flying Pie Pizzeria, which Alexia ordered for us all online before leaving. We stopped again at the salmon fish hatcherie. We saw a lot more salmom this time, including countless dead ones that didn't quite make it to their destination, littering all along the creek.
Alexia had said the pizza place had really good pizza. Honestly, and this is rare, I am actually kind of with Shobhit on this: the calzone we shared was decent, but not especially flavorful or any kind of standout. Shobhit also ordered a 10-pack of breadsticks he expected to be better seasoned than they were. He does love his bread, though, so that hardly stopped him from eating it. He had two of them during the movie and at least one more at home later in the evening.
We also later broke briefly to share some of the ice cream: "Jack-O-Lantern Pumkin Bread."
That stuff was phenomenal. Alexia dished us all our dishes, giving us pretty small portions, which I was actually happy about. I'd have dished myself too much of it, and the two small scoops she gave me perfectly hit the spot.
We drove home shortly after the movie, and along the way stopped to do some grocery shopping, first at Mayuri Foods in Redmond, then PCC in the Central District. Once home, I made us chai, and then we watched our Sunday TV:
The Penguin and then
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO/Max.
I
was going to get to bed early, but I decided to write up a "quick" email to Laney with several new movie ideas for the fall. I wound up spending a solid hour on that. The chai was keeping me wide awake anyway. I should perhaps be more careful with the chai; it seems to keep me up more consistently than it used to.
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[posted 1:16 pm]
