return to action ... or is it

— छह हज़ार तैंतालीस — Last night marked my return to Action Movie Night—I hadn't been in four weeks, because two weeks ago I was spending my second of two nights in the ICU. So I had a few people either ask how I was doing, or asking exactly what happened, or simply say they were glad to see I was doing better. I learned that Andrew is a cyclist, and has been hit by cars seven or eight times. He's never gone to the hospital, but noted that he probably should have on a couple of the occasions. He made reference to "when, not if, this happens again." This is fascinating because so many cyclists go through the world convinced no one is paying attention to them and riding through the city is wildly dangerous. It seems worth noting that I have been commuting regularly by bike for half the year since first getting that bike in 2008, so that's eighteen years—it's not the first time I've crashed, but this was the first actual injury I have sustained. My theory is that my default as a cyclist is to stay out of the way of cars as much as I can, and rely heavily on protected bike lanes. I can't speak for Andrew specifically here, but I do think a lot of cyclists are very aggressive and act like they have as much right to the road as any car, which makes things more dangerous for them. And maybe they do have just as much right to the road, but that doesn't change who is going to win in any chicken match between a car and a bicycle. I mean, come on. I am very conscientious about things as nuanced as parked cars I ride past. Jennifer G, my onetime boss who retired from PCC over a decade ago, told me her son got injured once by someone in a parked car opening a door into him. That scenario has always scared me, so I try never to ride too close to even parked cars. What I need to do now is be as aware of parking garage entrances as I am of parked cars—always slow down when passing them, be on the lookout for oncoming cars, that kind of thing. This was what caused the accident two weeks ago. I think the state of my brakes may have also been a factor; I slammed on them too hard, and since my back brake is far more worn down than the front, that likely contributed to my losing control of the bike. I do plan to take the bike into the bike shop in the next couple of weeks just to get it looked over and make sure nothing is dangerously out of whack. I don't want to be taking any chances once I can finally ride again. — छह हज़ार तैंतालीस — — छह हज़ार तैंतालीस — Anyway, back to Action Movie Night. Shobhit made pasta, which is what we usually make. It was quite good. The one pizza brought had meat in it, so really the only other things we had to eat were pretty junky: fries from Dick's; Pringles potato chips; Safeway chocolate chip cookies. I also made myself my first legit cocktail since the accident, which was a Zevia Cherry Cola with rum—one shot of regular rum and one shot of coconut rum. It had been long enough since I'd had a cocktail that I was feeling it with the first few sips, but that dissipated quickly. It was Daniel's turn to choose the movie, and because the setup in the theater is still fucked up, it's currently required to bring a movie on DVD, which Tony plays on his personal DVD player with separate audio and video outputs. He has to run one cord to the wall and one cord to the projector; it's a janky setup but it works. Daniel did comply by bringing a DVD, but at first it seemed it wouldn't work because it was asking for a regional code. There was a few minutes there where there was discussion of choosing a backup from a flash drive Ryan has provided with a ton of relatively recent movies on it. Some people were not very kind about it, trying to say that Daniel would have to consider this his turn even though it was looking like we'd have to watch something besides what he actually brought: "You fucked up! You're supposed to bring a backup!" It was kind of unnecessarily bitchy, a kind of tone that is clearly pretending to be playful but has some clear truth to it. Tony had actually gone upstairs to his condo in the East Building to look for an alternative, but Daniel figured out that he was able to make the movie play by choosing DVD rather than Blu-Ray, or something like that. In any case, the movie played. Daniel had revealed that the movie was from the sixties, but called it a "foreign film." The movie was the 1965 Clint Eastwood film For a Few Dollars More. Daniel clearly thought he was being "clever" calling this a "foreign film" due to it being a Spaghetti Western—meaning it was technically a European production. Well, it had American stars and is a story of the American West, so really, come on. I know my dad used to like these movies. I remember his VHS recordings of this and A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Back in the late eighties and early nineties, these were thought of as "old movies" even then but were still recent enough to hold some cinematic nostalgia. I can't say it stands up as well on those grounds anymore. The movie was fine, but it was not all that exciting. I was struck by how Shobhit was not the only person audibly yawning (something he does a lot during these movies and I find rude and annoying). The group is usually pretty open minded about movie choices, and it's fine to choose things from genres that are not strictly "action movies." But, Daniel kept calling this an "action movie" and I was just left thinking he was incorrectly conflating action with Western. Just because there are fistfights and gunfights does not automatically make it an action movie. But, I suppose, by 1965 standards it might still reasonably be considered one. The movie is 2 hours and 12 minutes long, and by the time we even started it was well past 7:30, so it went later than usual last night. I was headed for bed very shortly after we went upstairs. I beelined for the bathroom when the movie ended and thus did not help load the dishwasher like I usually do, which I was happy to avoid this week due to the pain in my back, which was fine through most of the movie but was coming back as soon as I stood up again. Shobhit's starting to say that maybe I should start taking fewer Extra Strength Tylenols, but I'm going to keep taking them as long as I continue to have pain. For some reason I feel slightly more sore today, which may or may not have to do with how I slept, I'm not sure. — छह हज़ार तैंतालीस — [posted 12:36pm]

pain and excitement

— छह हज़ार बयालीस — I guess if I had to be hospitalized from a bike accident, it was best for it to happen in late May—right after the weekend trip with Gabriel to Lummi Island, and three weeks before Shobhit's and my weekend trip to Whistler, when I'll be recovered-ish. I'm really glad it didn't happen right before any of these trips, especially the trip to Amsterdam. It didn't rain today, so for the first time since being back in-office this week, I walked to work. I'll still take the bus home, which I'll probably do at least the rest of this week. It's good for me to be moving around and walking, but it's also tiring. Sleeping remains a mixed bag; I am able to sleep on my side now, but kind of barely, and I still have to shift back and forth between that and lying on my back with a pillow under my knees. I sure feel old and busted. Bleh. You know what's the worst? Putting on socks! What a pain in the pass. Or a pain in the back, to be more specific. The motion required to do that still hurts more than anything else I do now. It hurts slightly less each day I think, albeit by a barely perceptible amount. I can only hope I actually do feel fully recovered when this six-week period of doctor-ordered carefulness is over. I'm supposed to be able to ride my bike again after that time, but we'll see how I'm feeling. The pacing of this recovery feels truly glacial. In fact, there's also this: last night Shobhit and I watched a couple episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and then I went into the bedroom and watched the new Patton Oswalt comedy special, which he uploaded for free on YouTube. This means I spent a lot of time laughing last night, and guess what? It left me feeling fucking sore! I have to hold my chest in a little when I laugh so it doesn't hurt too much, and although I'm mostly okay today, I feel a little more sore than yesterday and I think it's just because the laughing sort of shook my organs that are still on the mend a little too much. It's not some major complication or anything, but I might do well to avoid comedy specials by genuinely funny comedians for a few weeks. Getting back to my feet. It's much easier just to wear sandals, but the problem there is that the soles of my sandals are so hard that walking in them creates a kind of impact with each step that's still hard on my recovering body. I thought about wearing sandals today, but decided to wear shoes (and therefore socks) because I wanted to walk to work, and I didn't want my back to be killing me by the time I got to work just because I was wearing the stupid sandals. Gabby mentioned in our 1x1 meeting yesterday how proud I had been during one of our P3 team meeting "ice breakers" of how long since I had ever had to stay in the hospital (overnight, at least). The two nights I spent in the hospital two weeks ago were the first time I stayed overnight in a hospital since I was five years old. I broke my leg trying to jump over a six-inch stool. At least the injury this time wasn't quite as pathetic. I can't remember how long Mom told me I was in the hospital but it was something like one or two weeks, and then I was in a leg-length cast (partially supported by cast halfway down the other leg with a bar wedged between my thighs) for some weeks after that. Comparatively, this time around I got off easy. Still, both Shobhit and I have had to go to the hospital for different reasons, Shobhit a couple of times now, since turning 50. It almost feels suspicious. — छह हज़ार बयालीस — — छह हज़ार बयालीस — In other news, Madonna is releasing a new album July 3, and although I've known about it for months and have even been jamming to the few tracks that have been pre-released, she released a ten-minute, promotional video medley that has my interest piqued about it in a way she hasn't managed since the 2005 release of Confessions on a Dance Floor, which this album is a sequel to. (It's actually called CONFESSIONS II.) This promotional rollout has me turning back around on Madonna in a way I wasn't sure was possible; she's been largely out of touch for ages, and some time ago I unfollowed her on Instagram because I was just constantly embarrassed for her and I couldn't take it anymore. But here's what I feel is the difference this time around. Madonna always had a knack for effectively calculated collaboration. She was always the center of any of said attention, sure, but I feel like the albums that came after Confessions on a Dance Floor were largely diminishing returns because she was more focused on what she was interested in than what might actually work as something marketable in the context of its time. Hard Candy, released the year she turned 50 in 2008 had one big hit (a duet with Justin Timberlake) but otherwise kind of fizzled; MDNA (2012) had one modest hit ("Give Me All Your Luvin") that was quickly dated and silly; I still maintain that Rebel Heart (2015) was the most generic, forgettable pop album she ever recorded. Each album has sold less than the last, to the point where her cultutal impact is almost nonexistent; her 2019 release, Madame X, continued that trend but at the very least it's arguably the most interesting artistic left-turn she's released since Ray of Light in 1998. It's now been seven years since then, by far the longest she's ever gone between full-length studio album releases (the longest prior to this was four years). It's kind of odd for her to be making a "sequel" album after so many years of saying she never wants to repeat herself, but to me there's also a counterpoint here: the songs feel fresh and infective, and Confessions on a Dance Floor was itself a return to her dance roots, something she's doing again now and was always where she most thrived artistically. Perhaps more crucially, she must have hired the right marketing team for this release, because it feels like she's being provocative in just the right ways, trying new things, and actually managing some relevance in ways she hasn't managed in twenty years. It's pretty clear this album won't have any track as iconic as "Hung Up" with its rare, and fabulously effective, sample of ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)," but for once she seems to understand that albums don't tend to succeed on the strength of one lead single anymore. This is why the medley video makes sense, as it serves as a promo for the album on the whole, which itself will exist in support of an expected world tour, and that's the way the industry has worked for decades now: arists once toured to support album sales; now they release albums to support concert ticket sales. And I bet anything Madonna will clean up when she goes on tour for this album, even at age 68 (the age she'll be on her birthday in August), just as she has done many times over with world tours in the past. I did last see her at her Celebration tour in 2024, the first tour she ever did that was not in support of any album release. They had billed her 2004 Re-Invention tour as a "Greatest Hits tour," but that was still in support of her 2003 album American Life, which by the standards of the era was her biggest commercial flop to date; she only performed a few songs from that album, and usually she quite pointedly weighs the set list with mostly tracks from whichever album she's touring. When she went on the Madame X tour in 2019, though, that was the first tour I skipped since going to every one of them prior since Drowned World in 2001, for two reasons: 1) she made this tour all mini-residencies in smaller theaters in only a select few sities and tickets were way too expensive; and 2) the closest stop on that tour was San Francisco, and although I actually did fly there to see her in 2001, I just didn't feel it was worth the expense of a trip on top of the exhorbitant ticket prices. More critically, I already had a lot of major travel planned that year, including both Tortonto and Las Vegas with Danielle. (The Vegas dates for the tour were in November; Danielle and I went at the end of September, and the trip had already been planned when tour dates were announced.) And then, the Madame X tour was cut short by covid anyway. When she toured again in 2024, she actually had a stop in Seattle, so how could I not go? I really thought that, given her age, that might be the last time I ever see her live, but that's clearly not going to be the case now; I knew nothing about CONFESSIONS II then. Historically she seems to switch back and forth between tours regarding whether she stops in Seattle; we'll see how it goes, but I kind of expect that her next tour she'll skip Seattle but have stops in both Vancouver, B.C. and Portland, like she did for the Rebel Heart tour in 2015. Hmm, if she does that though then I'll have a perfect excuse to visit Vancouver again! I should make a note of that, especially considering all the other travel I was already considering for both 2025 and 2026. But mark my words: I will see her on her next tour, I don't care how I have to make it happen. Anyway, back to the 14-minute video medley. Pussy lasers! Madonna's sense of humor is hit and miss at best historically, but again, I credit whoever was hired to put this stuff together. To me, it's kind of perfect. And people can start calling this her "horny grandma era" if they want. I think it works. I don't care how old she gets, I think staying on-brand with her sexual provocations is the best. I do think there are some lighting and touchup tricks making her less freakish with all the face work she's had done, but whatever. This video alone makes me more excited for both the album and her inevitable tour. — छह हज़ार बयालीस — [posted 12:25pm]