— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ सत्तर —
Another quiet evening at home alone last night, being the second night of
The Foreigner rehearsals for Shobhit, albeit this time in Tacoma rather than Olympia. Shobhit came in to use the bathroom this morning while I was getting ready, which gave me a minute to ask about how the first two rehearsals went. He said they went well, although so far they have just sat at tables running through the play.
He did tell me tonight's rehearsal got canceled. He still needs to drive down for a costume fitting this afternoon. Had I known this would happen I would have considered changing my movie plans with Laney so Shobhit and I could go see
Wuthering Heights, which I am still hoping to see tomorrow night but we'll see. As it stands, maybe Shobhit can meet me when this evening's relatively early showing ends (we had to book the 3:30 showtime today) and go check out the Belltown Art Walk, which would give Shobhit a lot of steps to get in.
Anyway, I filled up my entire evening watching either TV (this week's episode of
The Pitt, an unusually pointed acknowledgment of nurses this week, which I am sure was appreciated in spite of it being a little forced and heavy handed at times) or a movie (I watched a bunch of, but still have not finished, the HBO documentary
Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!).
Watching that documentary had me trying to research previous times I have seen his films—I was surprised to discover he has only directed 11, and the last one was in 1995. I always had deep ambivalence about
Blazing Saddles and thought I would never want to watch it again, but the clips they showed here really made me laugh, and I'm not sure I realized it was co-written by Richard Pryor, which does give it new context.
On the other hand, plenty of clips from other movies really made me laugh too, and I have long had issues with the pacing in Mel Brooks films; it's easy to make things look hilarious when you're showing clips, and quite different when you're sitting through a full movie. I can't decide whether I should give
Blazing Saddles another look or not. I know the last time I saw
History of the World Part I I didn't think it was nearly as good, or as funny, as I remembered it.
Anyway, when I got to
Robin Hood: Men in Tights in his filmography (and I have not yet gotten this far in the documentary), I remembered that I saw that with Lynn during its original theatrical run, in 1993. It occurred to me that I could find the exact date I saw it, in my written journals, and I
found it: September 5, 1993. This was after opening on July 28, almost six weeks later. Boy have theatrical windows changed—any movie would get less time in theaters today, unless it were a giant blockbuster like
Avatar, but especially a spoof movie like this would get just a couple of weeks at best.
I had completely forgotten that the day we went to see that movie was also the day I first met Lynn in person, after two years of writing exclusively in Spanish in an antra-high school Spanish class pen pal program. It was also when I met her asshole boyfriend Gary, the father of her first child and also her first husband. Zephyr is actually her third, but they've been together for 20 years—my oldest photo of him is from 2006! He's far outlasted anyone else Lynn has ever been with.
It was weirdly amusing to re-read that journal entry. It's pretty dull in terms of narrative and details, but it cracked me up that I said Gary "seemed to look like an asshole" (turned out he was one), and how "mature" Lynn seemed to me at the time. Really she was just fairly quiet and reserved, which I interpreted as "mature."
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ सत्तर —
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ सत्तर —
I just had my biweekly Zoom lunch with Karen, which I was unusually excited about because I was dying to hear about her recent trip to Belgium, where she received an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven. By sheer chance, LinkedIn emailed me a link to her post about the experience, in which she shared the
YouTube link to her acceptance speech, which I found very moving. Note that it begins with a few introductory minutes that are not in English, though they do include several photos of Karen throughout her life. But, the video of her taking the stage and giving a short speech starts at about the 3:45 mark, and that of course
is in English.
She acknowledges herself at the beginning of her speech how quite visibly emotional she is about receiving this honor, and that gratitude alone was very moving to me. But she absolutely, deeply deserves it.
And we did spend a good majority of the hour with her telling me about the trip, which sounded absolutely amazing—the one exception being that the coworker she traveled there with had one of her rolling bags snatched right out from under them at a train station on their way to an excursion to Brussels on the EuroStar train. Shobhit and I plan to take this train a lot, so although this really sucked for Karen's friend Joyce, it'll be a lesson for us: don't spend a lot of time at the train stations (which Karen had already been told are apparently notroious for pickpocketing) but also while at them keep a tight hold on all bags and luggage. Shobhit and I will need to be very conscientious about the mobility of the luggage we bring with us, something we have actually not thought a whole lot about thus far. I think as long as we're diligent, though, we'll be fine.
I sure feel bad for Joyce, though. That bag had all of her electronics and all the gifts she had bought to bring home. At least she had her phone and passport and money securly on her body.
At the very end of the hour, I thought to tell Karen that Shobhit and I are leaning toward making our anniversary trip in 2027 to Provincetown—which is in the state she grew up in, right on Cape Cod in fact. She agreed that planning to take transit from the airport to the Boston waterfront and then taking the ferry to Provincetown was far smarter than picking up a car and driving all the way around the cape. I'm thinking we might want to fold in a few days in Boston anyway.
But now I need to post this because I really need to pee.
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ सत्तर —
[posted 1:10pm]
