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Last night was Action Movie Night at the Braeburn Condos theater. There were ten of us: Tony, Jake, Ben, Ryan, Chris B, Andrew, Tom, Derek, Shobhit, and me. Notable absences of regulars included Chris G (who usually brings a vegetarian pizza; bummer!), and Daniel, who this week seemed to just disappear without a peep. There was no RSVP from him either.
It was Ryan's choice this week, and he went with a movie he apparently went out of his way to make sure was one for which I had not posted a review:
A Working Man. He noted before the reveal of the movie that it was still in theaters—he's technically right about that, but it's not currently in any theaters in Seattle proper.
Here's the kind of funny thing: I wasn't super compelled by the premise of a guy getting revenge for the kidnapping of a young woman for kidnapping, plus the reviews were bad. I actually made a conscious decision
not to go see that movie, which actually was pretty bad. More specifically, it was incredibly dull. Shobhit quipped that now I'll have to write a review for it, but the movie opened three weeks ago, which is long enough that there's not much sense in writing a full review. It's already out of theaters in Seattle proper, after all, as I said. In any case, now I
have seen it, and my shorter
letterboxd review will just have to suffice.
Something kind of interesting did happen during the potluck-hangout before the movie, though. My
movie review blog came up in conversation. This has happened many times before, of course, but perhaps not when Ben was around: he reacted as though first hearing of it, and asked what the website was. "Fruitcake Enterprises dot com," I said, and he immediately brought it up on his phone. "There it is," he said. "Bookmarking now!" This was also amusing because Ben and I differ significantly in opinion on most movies, with a few notable exceptions (we both love Tom Cruise action movies, in spite of him being a Scientology wacko).
I feel like someone else looked it up during the conversation, too. Andrew, maybe? I know I already once emailed it to Tony, some time go. And clearly Ryan is already familiar, if he was checking to see whether I had already reviewed this week's movie. I noted that there was nothing playing right now that I haven't already seen that looks that great to me, so my expectations were low.
Ryan has a mixed history with movie choices and how much I liked them. His last choice, in September, was
Oddity, which scared the shit out of me but I was also actually
pretty impressed with. Other past choices of his included both the magnificent
Triangle of Sadness and the bonkers-bad
Mad Heidi, so Ryan's choices really run the gamut. I think he usually chooses movies he's never seen himself either, so I can't necessarily judge him too harshly for the bad ones.
I could have guessed when it came to
A Working Man, though. When people were looking up my blog (and the feed of movie reviews is the landing page when you go to
fruitcakeenterprises.com), I went to take a look myself: the current crop of recent reviews really lend weight to Gabriel's constantly criticisim that I "only" give movies grades between B-minus and B-plus. This isn't actually true over time, of course, and this is sort of that time of year: even the better movies available to go see are just pretty-good at best. Also, in my defense, I saw the surprisingly fantastic
A Nice Indian Boy only four movies ago, and I gave that one an A-minus.
Had I written a review for
A Working Man it would have gotten a solid C at best, maybe even a C-minus. And here's the kicker about that: the reason I don't give a lot of movies a grade lower than B-minus is because it's usually easy to tell which movies will be bad, and so I don't bother seeing them. If you want me to write more reviews to bad movies, then fucking pay me to do it! I'm not going to subject myself to something I already know is shit just for the sake of "diversity of opinion" within the context of what's just a hobby of mine.
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Anyway. I did also think about how anyone looking up my movie reviews who happens to go exploring on the site will quite easily find themselves on this very feed, the one for my personal blog. Good thing I try not to talk shit about people at Action Movie Night! I try not to talk shit about anyone, honestly—Gabriel's perception that I constantly get things wrong notwithstanding.
Shobhit made a Magi (Indian noodle, in the vein of top ramen) dish with added sauteed vegetables and tofu. After getting spoiled with an abundance of vegetarian offerings last time (including three different vegetarian pizzas), the dish we brought this time was the only vegetarian option we had. Ben tends to go back and forth between vegetarian or not; this week he brought a medium pizza with anchovies.
I had already eaten too much of the Steph's Tofu samples left out at work yesterday, so the limitation was kind of welcome, and helped keep me from overeating my dinner. I just had the one serving of the magi, plus the mango nectar cocktail I made for myself with vodka and peach schnapps. My weight was still up this morning.
In other news, I got a call from Danielle just as we were all leaving the movie; I was in the middle of putting dishes into the Community Kitchen dishwasher and so did not answer. About 15 minutes later, up in the condo, I called her back. We then proceeded to chat for about an hour and 15 minutes.
We talked about a lot of stuff, but the big thing was the news she wanted to share: she got approved for temporary residence in Mexico. I didn't even know she was applying until the last time we hung out, on Sunday two weekends ago. She's very excited and wanted to share it with someone. It sounded like she tried Jeanna first but she was already in bed; she gets up really early. More than once Danielle said, "Thanks for being the first friend to hear the news!"
I did tell her, "I'm happy for you. I'm not as happy for me." She said, "Why?" And I said, "Because I'll miss you!" On the upside, I guess, I'll have someone to visit—and perhaps even stay with—once I finally one day make my first visit ever to Mexico. Danielle loves it down there and has now gone several times. It's wild to think of her living outside the country; the possibility never crossed my mind until she mentioned having gone to the Mexican Consulate earlier this month.
She really wants to just get out of the U.S., President Fuckwit has fucked things up so badly. On the one hand, I get it. On the other hand, the good people abandoning ship is only going to make it worse for the rest of us. But, we all have to follow our own path. I'm kind of with Rylee on this one, who does not want to move down there with her mom: "I have a life here." Indeed. Presumably she'll live with her dad if it comes down to it, although there is more to process so it could be a while before Danielle makes an actual move. She hasn't even decided what to do with her house.
She did tell me she's also "done with suburbia," which was also new to me. She's lived in Renton for over twenty years now, something I have never been able to fathom doing—but, this is what the majority of people with families do: the move to the suburbs. Especially in Seattle, which has the
third-lowest percentage population of children of all cities in the U.S., at 15%, behind (predictably) San Francisco at #1 (13.4%) and, randomly, Quincy, Massachusetts (14.6%). Quicny is a suburb of Boston (7th-lowest, 15.9%), which makes Seattle the second-lowest percentage of people under the age of 18, among all American cities that are anchor cities of major metropolitan areas. I think everyone would assume the one city with a lower percentage would be San Francisco. (Pretty interesting to see Pittsburgh ranked right after us, though.) Anyway, the point is: the suburbs are where the children go, especially those in middle-class families.
And, well, one of Danielle's children is grown and out of her hands (much to her relief), and Rylee has a couple of years to go. Danielle's need for suburban living is dissipating in real time.
The city she wants to move to is Puerto Vallarta: population 224,000 (metro population 479,000—this actually makes it only slightly smaller than Spokane, where both she and I grew up). I told her perhaps this means one day we can visit Mexico City together, and she said, "Fuck. Yes!" She then mentioned it's about a 10-hour bus ride from Puerto Vallarta, and I said, "Uh, I would fly. It's a ninety-minute flight." It occurs to me now that maybe we could just meet there; she coming from Puerto Vallarta and me flying direct from the U.S.—depending on the state of borders and customs, anyway; who the fuck knows with President Fuckwit in charge? Or, maybe one day we can combine both into one trip. If Danielle is down there for four or five years—she does talk right now as though eventually she'd come back, but who knows—it's possible I could visit multiple times, though. If I have a free place to stay that clearly changes the calculus significantly.
I'd still really miss her, though. We'd have to make it a point to get on FaceTime a lot more often.
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[posted 12:32pm]
