— छह हज़ार सत्ताईस —
I saw two movies last night, and that basically took up my whole evening, roughly an hour in between them spent on writing my review of the first.
That was
The Sheep Detectives, which was way better than that title alone would suggest. I met Laney over at the AMC Pacific Place to see the 4:30 showing, the perfect showtime for both of us really, and we were both pretty delighted by it.
Laney thought she was going to want to walk home but just take it slow, but we got less than two blocks and she changed her mind, due to soreness in her knees. She'll pretty typically walk to a movie and the bus back home, and I will happily bus with her, so that's what we did when we pivoted and walked over to Pike Street to catch the bus instead. A #10 bus came within just a couple of minutes.
It was frigid on that bus, probably because we had a high yesterday that broke 80°—quite the contrast to today, which has rain in the forecast and a comparatively chilly high of 60°. But yesterday, it was still warm enough not to wear a jacket when we left the theater at about 6:30. It wasn't
that hot by then, though, and walking onto that bus felt like walking into a walk-in refrigerator. It was like visiting Honolulu where you're super warm outside and freezing when you go inside any stores. Thankfully the bus ride was only maybe 10 minutes—even less for Laney, who got off at Broadway.
That standard of our return from hanging out downtown will only last the next couple of weeks, by the way. I only thought of that while writing this. She's in her last month at Pride Place right now, after while she'll move into her new van (which she can park in whatever part of town she wants to, really, provided it's in a spot that allows it). We have a BYOB "Happy Hour" planned at the new Barnes & Noble on Monday, and we'll have a lot to talk about: apparently she has an interview that morning, with people planning to do some kind of write-up about her in their newsletter. This is the very thing she spent a lot of time doing herself, about other people. In any case, this isn't exactly an "exit interview" so I don't think she'll lean much on the many criticisms there are now of Pride Place, but it'll be interesting to hear how it goes nonetheless.
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— छह हज़ार सत्ताईस —
As soon as I was done writing my review, I suggested to Shobhit that we watch the movie I had checked out of the library. He was kind of surprised by what it was:
Apollo 13. At first he thought this meant I had never seen it and he was shocked; I explained that of course I haven't seen it, just not in decades, and I have been thinking about rewatching it for what feels like eons. I couldn't tell you when I last watched it, but it's almost certainly been at least twenty years, and may even be closer to 30—and the movie was released 31 years ago. Shobhit immediately said its famous line: "Houston we have a problem!"
It certainly holds up. Shobhit and I were both pretty riveted by it from start to finish. I can't say the effects look quite as "state of the art" as they did in 1995, but they were certainly incredibly impressive
for 1995. Plus, I think a lot of people might be impressed to learn that the zero-gravity stuff was real, in-camera, done by taking a set up in an airplane and then quickly descending so everything not nailed down floats into the middle of the space. It's a very cool, and simple, if probably very expensive, in-camera trick.
Shobhit asked me about the ages of the three guys who play the astronauts on the ship: Tom Hanks was 38 when the movie was released; Bill Paxton was 40; and Kevn Bacon was 36. I was slightly bowled over to learn that this summer Tom Hanks will be 70 years old. But, I guess that's how time works, right? I just turned 50, after all.
Anyway,
Apollo 13 is 140 minutes long, and it was about 8:20 when we started it, meaning it was roughly 10:30 when the end credits began. I don't usually stay up that late for movies on weeknights, but I was eager to watch this one and it was worth it.
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Speaking of turning 50, I have a hard time keeping track of who I've added to my email travelogues distribution list. A good number of people from work are on it, but I can't necessarily remember all of them who are. I also forgot that I had linked to my 17-minute "
Matthew McFifty" lifetime retrospective video at the end of my second Birth Week email. So when Shelby suddenly came up to me yesterday and started raving about the video—both she and Gabby were evidently very taken with it, as they have indicated to me at separate times—at first I was kind of like: how did
you see that video? And then I finally realized: oh. I literally sent it to her. On the upside, it means she actually read the email to the end, so that's nice. I only get very sporadic responses to those emails from two or three people typically, and there are now 84 people on the distribution list.
I'd love to clean it up, but I don't want to remove someone who doesn't want to be removed by accident. I have been considering a shift to a newsletter style via Squarespace (which hosts my website), though, and that would include an unsubscribe button. I just haven't figured out how to do it so the formatting is simple enough to my liking, the way I have it in emails.
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[posted 12:33pm]
