O Great Figgy Pudding Martina 2024

It's been another busy Holiday Events weekend! Although to be fair, the three holiday events I've had scheduled this week were all yesterday alone—that's what most of this post will be dedicated to. Just briefly, I will note that there were two movies scheduled for this weekend, both with Laney: one on Friday and one today. Shobhit joined us somewhat last-minute on Friday, when I realized he was not working in the evening, and he might be interested in what Laney and I had planned that evening: Queer, which both Laney and I liked quite a lot, in spite of its nebulous script and narrative. Shobhit, not so much. I think it very likely that three things convinced him to join us, in spite of the relative likelihood that Daniel Craig will get a SAG Award nomination which would later grant him a screener: 1) it's a gay story and there was a definite promise of hot gay male nudity in it; 2) I had $10 in AMC A-list reward points to put toward his ticket, so all it cost me was barely more than four bucks; and 3) probably most persuasive for Shobhit, it would give him another Social Review point when Laney was already bound to get two, and possibly three (in the end it was also just two), this weekend. Side note: after this weekend, Shobhit has indeed eked ahead in the Social Review standings again, thanks actually to his joining us Friday or else they would be tied: Shobhit is at 25 points as I write this, and Laney is at 24. So, presumably, Shobhit was glad to have joined us for Queer, even though he was definitely bored and fell asleep a few times—even in spite of all the truly hot young gay men Daniel Craig's character has sex with, more than one of which is shown with full frontal nudity. That usually perks Shobhit right up. We were already at Pacific Place, so right after the movie, Shobhit and Laney and I all went around to look at this year's Fleurs de Villes NOËL 2024 holiday floral displays, many of them this year based on classic Christmas movies. I got over 30 photos out of that, adding yet another album to my working Christmas 2024 collection, which is on track to total 15 albums by the end of the season. That's an objectively large number, and still would be the fewest I've had since 2021. The 20 I had in 2022 and 18 last year both felt like a little much though, to be honest. We'll see though; I could have unexpected ones added this year, which was what padded out the numbers the past couple of years. Anyway! Let's talk about yesterday. It started with the Great Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition, apparently the 39th annual—and the first one, that I have ever known about, to occur on a weekend afternoon rather than an evening. I have no idea what the thinking was behind that. It's less photogenic with things like Christmas lights in Pike Place Market, but does make it easier to get candid shots otherwise. I also made a bit of a mistake in suggesting to Alexia that we get down there at 1:00 rather than at noon when it starts. My thinking was to save an excess of being out and about when we already had the Dina Martina Christmas Show to go to at 3:00. But, I did not realize that all the competing chorus groups do their singing in the first hour—the hour that we missed. We did, however, get to see finalists singing on the main stage, so that still made it worth going to. I'll just have to make a note of actually getting there at the event's start time next year. And still, I did get a 22-shot photo album out of it. A lot fewer than last year's 40 shots, and even slightly less than the 23 shots I got in 2014, but that's okay. We saw maybe three or four choruses perform, and given that they were the ones voted as finalists and they were on the mainstage, one could argue we simply got to see the best of them anyway. I'm still hoping to remember next year to go at the start of the event, though. Being able to choose for ourselves which groups are the best is more fun. Laney had considered joining yesterday, but needed to be available to FaceTime with Jessica on a particularly significant day for her, so she skipped it. I think we could have managed more elbow room during the competition portion of Figgy Pudding, but after I got Alexia and myself close enough to get good pictures of the mainstage, the crowd was so sardine-thick that I know Laney wouldn't have been comfortable with it anyway. I did move us over to stand just inside the main entrance to Pike Place Market, though, so that at least we had reliable shelter over our heads: it was a kind of wet day yesterday. It never rained too heavily, but having shelter made it a lot easier to take pictures and video clips without also having to hold up my umbrella—which I did bring, and I did use briefly. I should have just gone with my rain jacket, but the forecast made it very difficult to decide how best to dress. Anyway. Figuring that Alexia would be hungry, I suggested we find a place to get a light lunch. At first she suggested finding a place in the Market, but it was so crowded down there that I suggested we find a place outside of there. In the end I suggested "Asean Streat," the new-ish Asian food court on the ground floor of Westlake Center, which Shobhit and I ate at once. It's kind takes some getting used to as you have to order from any of the vendor booths from kiosks and we were a bit rushed, but we figured it out. We both wound up independently ordering from the same banh mi place, although of course she had meat on hers and mine had tofu. I usually skip lunch, and this one was not quite as "light" as I'd hoped. It was a pretty large sandwich and I ate the whole thing. It sure was tasty though. Alexia's took a bit longer to be ready. and she managed half of hers before we were up and walking over to ACT Theater. That took us to this year's Dina Martina Christmas Show, which was fantastic and hilarious as usual. Alexia had told me beforehand that she would refuse to do it if Dina asked her to come onstage with her. Thankfully, when that part of the show happened—she brings someone onstage to give several oddball gifts to—Dina even prefaced it by saying she would only take a volunteer, so not to worry. Still, when we sat in our seats in the front row to on the side of the stage, the lady sitting behind Alexia leaned forward and said, "She's gonna pick on you!" I immediately said, "Don't tell her that, you're going to make her panic!" I then noted that the space we were sitting in would make it too difficult to pull Alexia onstage anyway: they're sort of like box seats, so she'd either have to walk far around the seats or literally climb over a four-foot wall. I knew that wouldn't happen. And yet! There was an interaction between Dina and Alexia. There was a moment when Dina unrapped a confection candy, something like a white chocolate Werther's. She walked over and just placed it, unwrapped, into Alexia's hand. They even exchanged a couple of comments, though I can't remember what they said. A moment later, Dina came back, took the candy back out of Alexia's hand, and popped it onto her mouth and ate it. I later told Alexia that Dina was sure putting a lot of faith in the audience having clean hands. I was sure Alexia's hands were clean, but Dina Martina doesn't know that. We also talked about what might have happened had Alexia decided to eat it herself. Alexia said she probably has the bit prepared for either possibility, and I'm sure she's right. Alexia had parked right across the street from my building, so we walked downtown together, and then walked back together. Shobhit had been home from work for a while, and by this point we had only an hour to eat the very delicious meal he had made—with scratch-made parathas, yummy—before we had to leave for yet another thing. This was the French holiday concert by a new French chorus that Ellen, the friend of Shobhit's we had over for dinner last weekend with her husband, told us about and said we should come. I ordered us two "sliding scale" $9 tickets online (regular price was $19), which I actually did on my phone while Alexia and I were walking over to ACT Theatre. The concert was at a church on 19th and Prospect, which was a roughly half-hour walk for Shobhit and me. It was also entirely in French. The program offered a QR code where you could see the French lyrics alongside English translations, which was cool, but too distracting to read along while trying to listen to the performances, which were genuinely well done and very pretty. They also had a very young conductor who is in graduate school and was very cute. There's a lot more I could share, about Ellen founding this chorus and how and why, but that's all kind of not my story to tell. They had a little reception in the basement afterward with lots of very tasty sweet treats. So between that and the concert itself, it was very worth going to. Oh, there was also a guy from SLGC there! I exchanged texts with Laney to confirm. It was Chris V, who had been the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus accompanist. He looked a lot older, which makes sense. I left that chorus in 2004 and thus have likely not seen him in twenty years. Shobhit and I spoke briefly with Ellen during the reception after but I never did got a chance to mention my peripheral connection to Chris to her. Anyway Shobhit and I walked home after that and I spent some more time processing the day's photos. There were only barely more than thirty this time. [posted 6:30 pm]

Ham for the Holidays 2017

-- चार हजार दो सौ और चार -- I finally found someone to come with me to this year's Ham for the Holidays show with Lisa Koch and Peggy Platt -- I was on Facebook Messenger with Evan on Wednesday night, and asked if she was working the next (Thursday) night -- she said no, and when I offered her my extra ticket, for free, she accepted. The alternative was for it to go to waste because Laney didn't want to go this year; Danielle was unavailable; and Shobhit refused to go. It's just as well; it was honestly one of their weaker shows -- I mean, I still enjoyed it but I was glad I got the half-price Preview Night tickets. Evan had a good time. She told me she saw it once with me several years ago but I discovered this morning she has to have it confused with some other show. I actually went through my archives and figured out all the times I've seen Ham for the Holidays -- and I've seen it way more than I thought. Eleven times! Here's the rundown of all the shows I went to and who I saw them with: 1. 2000: Barbara
2. 2002: Barbara
3. December 2, 2004: Barbara
4. December 22, 2007: Shobhit and Barbara
5. November 28, 2009: Shobhit and Barbara
6. December 10, 2010: Susan
7. December 4, 2011: Susan
8. December 22, 2013: Shobhit
9. December 20, 2015: Laney
10. December 23, 2016: Laney and Jessica
11. November 30, 2017: Evan I saw it with Barbara five times; with Shobhit three times; with Susan and Laney each twice; and Jessica and Evan each once. I can only tell you about the shows I saw pre-2004 because of my journal entry about seeing it that year, in which I wrote that Barbara laughed so hard she cried. Last night's show was entertaining but wasn't near that funny, although, to be fair, the 2004 show was apparently a "best of" retrospective of many years of Ham for the Holidays even before that. I also noted that as of that year, Lisa and Peggy had been performing together for 15 years, which would mean they started in 1989. As of this year then, they've been performing together for 28 years! I have to admit, there's a slight element of their shows having gone into a slight rut: at least three of their skits have been recurring every year in recent memory, including "The Spudds" -- specifically with the mother-daughter duo putting on some ridiculous stage play, this year being The Music Manchurian Candidate; the Slam Poet; and the Sequim Gay Men's Chorus. As I said, all skits were still entertaining this year -- just not their best. Another moderate disappointment: the last couple of years featured a young gay performer named Joel Domenico, who was very fit, super hot, and super talented, with a great singing voice -- after last year's show I started following him on Instagram. (He has a more than passing resemblance to Tommy, my previous roommate, incidentally -- although I was not especially attracted to him; too young.) I don't know if it was scheduling conflicts, or what -- he currently performs with The Can Can -- but this year the role of "hot young gay supporting player" was filled by another guy, who was both cute and talented enough, but honestly doesn't hold a candle to Joel. Of course, Evan would be aware of none of this; everything about it -- the skits, the performers -- was new to her. I, only the other hand, have seen Peggy Platt dressed as a member of the Sequim Gay Men's Chorus deliver the punch line, "I'm a bass 'cause I'm a bear; grr!", easily five times over now. It gets a laugh every time, which means clearly most people are not the devoted fans that I have been for going on two decades. I'll probably want to go again next year; for me it's a Christmas tradition, even if who I go with widely varies over the years. I think I'll deliberately go to Preview Night again next year, though, just to get the tickets cheap. The house was hardly even half full last night and the show was indeed in need of some slight polish, but for fifteen bucks a ticket it was still totally worth it. I'm not sure I would have felt the same had I spent $30 per ticket. -- चार हजार दो सौ और चार -- -- चार हजार दो सौ और चार -- Evan, as it happens, is much more consistently aligned with my other Christmas tradition of a show to see, which I'll be seeing for the fifth time with her this year -- the Dina Martina Christmas show. She asked if I wanted to meet for drinks before the show, which had me leaving on short notice and earlier than expected; the bus was in terrible traffic and I wound up getting off and grabbing a Spin Cycle, meeting her at Elephant & Castle and finding them far too busy. We then walked over to the bar at the Sheraton Hotel and we each had one cocktail there. While there, one of the things we talked about was Dina Martina -- and we finally purchased our tickets, settling on December 30. We had previously agreed on December 22, but she kept having to postpone for budgetary reasons, until I told her yesterday that day's show was already sold out. Anyway, Evan said Dina Martina was her one Christmas tradition; she's been going for many years before she started going with me in 2013. Last year was the first year with Elden, her boyfriend; he'll be there this year too, and maybe even some other friends of theirs as well. Like the history of Ham for the Holidays, I drew up a history of Dina Martina and who I saw her with as well: 1. December 18, 2013: Evan
2. December 20, 2014: Evan
3. April 18, 2015: Evan [spring show]
4. December 31, 2015: Evan
5. May 15, 2016: Shobhit [spring show in L.A.]
6. December 4, 2016: Evan and Elden
7. December 30, 2017: Evan and Elden So! As if this year, I will have seen Dina Martina with Evan six times; specifically the Christmas show five times; and overall seven times -- thanks to the one time I saw her in L.A. with Shobhit. Shobhit was not super impressed, so there's no need to ask him to come to that show anymore either. Shobhit just doesn't like fun stuff, and wants instead just to complain about spending money. At least he seems to be looking forward to going to Yellowstone National Park for our anniversary next year. Anyway, even I would say the L.A. show was the weakest of all shows I've seen, thanks to its much smaller, tighter and less elaborate set and venue. She's always hilarious, though. I wish I could get Gabriel to come see her with me sometime; I'm certain he would enjoy it. But Gabriel can never plan far in advance and these shows always sell out. Maybe one of these years I should just buy him a ticket for Christmas and then he'll be forced to come! I was home beforehand for maybe forty minutes after I arrived from work, and Shobhit had already made chili mac for dinner -- at my request! It was super tasty, too. We watched an episode of The Golden Girls. Once I was back again, it was already hitting 10 pm and it was time to get ready for bed. -- चार हजार दो सौ और चार -- [posted 12: 22pm]