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It was an unusual Action Movie Night last night, for multiple reasons. Most significantly, it was because Greg, whose choice it was, brought his movie on a tiny drive that slots into a gaming controller he brought and expected to be able to connect to the HDMI port for the theater. He said he did the same thing the last two times it was his choice, and neither he nor Tony could figure out why they couldn't get the connection to work. They could get the screen to work, but not the sound. They tried multiple ways to get it to work, including a new guy Tony invited (I can't remember his name) who lives across the street and actually went home to bring back a BlueTooth speaker to try connecting. It still didn't work.
It got to be well after 8:00, and Ben in particular was talking about calling it. I think Tony was deeply dedicated to making it work, largely because by all accounts, they have never canceled a movie viewing in this group's 13-and-a-half-year history, at least not after the group had already assembled. They have faced technical difficulties many times, but always found a way to make it work.
In the end, the group moved up to Tony's condo on the fourth floor of the East Building—this is the neighboring unit to Shobhit's and mine. This is also the second time this has happened. After it happened the last time, it sounded like Sarah, Tony's wife, was not especially keen on this happening a lot. I'm definitely projecting here, but I can only assume she wasn't thrilled by the development last night. She was nowhere to be found, though; either she was hiding in a bedroom or she went out (I suspect the latter).
On the upside for her I suppose, only a portion of the group actually went upstairs once that decision was finally made. During the pre-movie, potluck portion of the evening, there were ten people present: Tony, Ryan, Ben, Ben's work friend from Alaska whose name I forgot, Chris B, Derek, Greg, Daniel, Tony's new friend from across the street whose name I also forget, and myself. It could have been at least 12 if not for two other regulars who didn't make it: Jake, who needed to "single-parent" and declined the invitation to bring his preteen son; and Shobhit, who was at rehearsal.
By the time we all moved upstairs, however, Ben, Ben's work friend, Chris, and Derek had all bailed. That left only six up in Tony's condo, where Greg finally got his movie to play: Tony, Ryan, Daniel, Greg, the friend from across the street, and myself.
I had already looked at Greg's past two movie choices and concluded that I would probably think this week's choice was terrible. In his defense, it was the least terrible of his three choices to date:
Hard Target, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme from 1993 and John Woo's first American film. On the other hand, still: oh my god, it was bad. I did enjoy seeing Van Damme knock out a live snake by punching it in the head. That was hilarious.
Greg kept saying things like, "This movie rocks." Ryan, whose opinions really run the gamut of what I can respect, somewhat surprised me when he said he loved this movie when he saw it with his dad as a kid, but didn't think it was so great now.
It was just after 10:00 by the time the movie finally ended. Thank god it was only 97 minutes long. And for me, it was a very long 97 minutes. But at least we had already loaded the dishwasher downstairs in the Community Kitchen before we all came upstairs, and I only had to go right next door to go home.
I have to go back again to the pre-movie time down in the kitchen, though, to note more of what made this week's Action Movie Night unusual. The few of us who did not already know learned that Ben was appointed one of only 25 VPs at Alaska Airlines. This is a pretty major promotion, it sounds like; and Ben's position is a
pretty big deal. The other friend from Alaska, again whose name I can't remember, brought a "chocolate chip cookie cake" and a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
The bottle of champagne never got opened, but the cookie cake sure did. The friend opened that up and sliced it himself, passing small plates of it around to all of us until there was only one slice left. I'm not sure where he got the cake from, the plastic casing made it look kind of like it came from a grocery store deli, but it was delicious.
I had made bowtie pasta, and although no one specifically commented on it, most of the group had some. So I took that as enough of a compliment in itself. The only other food I had last night was a slice of the delicious mushroom pizza Ben brought, and some of a surprisingly tasty quiche.
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And now, buried deep into this post, I feel compelled to mention another one of the regulars, the one I won't name for obvious reasons but who I have long disliked and who I think it may be safe to say is widely disliked by the rest of the group. The guy is frustratingly oblivious, right down to the massive amount of shit he packs around with him, from layers of jackets to multiple bags. I should ask him sometime where the hell he works, or where he's coming from every week with all this shit. He typically takes it all into the theater with him and fills the seat next to him with it. Often he will balance the empty plate of the second meal's worth of seconds he always dishes up and brings into the theater with him, something no one else in the group ever does and perhaps he should take that as a hint. Several months ago he tried to sit next to another guy in the group with that full plate of food and the guy actually spoke up and said he'd rather he not sit and eat next to him. He just got up and moved to the back row, which unfortunately means he now always sits about two seats over from me. Sometimes, on weeks when we have a larger group, he sits in the seat right next to me. At least one time he had a kind of body odor that smalled vaguely of urine.
This guy was unusually annoying and clueless last night, though, even for him. While Ben's objectively impressive achievement was being discussed, this guy asked how many VPs Alaska has. This is the only reason I know they have about 25 of them, because that was Ben's answer. And Annyoing Guy replied, "Oh. So, a lot." What a dipshit. It was pretty dismissive in tone, and I thought it was deeply rude—not to mention inaccurate. I just looked this up: Alaska employs over 30,000 people. If we take at face value that there are 25 VPs, that's one in 1,200. Twenty-five is a tiny number compared to 30,000. And what leadership position do
you hold wherever the fuck you work, Annoying Guy?
On top of this, while the technical issues were ongoing with Greg's movie choice, Annoying Guy wandered into the theater, evidently to assess the situation for himself. He was in there for some time, and for the rest of us still hanging out in the kitchen, I must admit it was somewhat of a relief.
But, after a while, out came . . . I'll call him "TA." TA is usually arguably the most diplomatic among us, and still he came out saying, "I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill him." I kind of thought:
Whoa. TA continued: "Adding him to the equation in there is making everything a thousand percent worse," or something to that effect. To this came a retort by, I'll call him RM: "Well if you had done something about it a long time ago, but you didn't want to," or something to that effect. The trouble here is: exactly what should any of us do about this? Do we pick someone to literally say to the annoying guy, "None of us likes you, please stop coming"? Maybe one of us should write in to an advice columnist.
When I thought maybe the connection was close to getting resolved, I went into the theater, and sat in my usual seat in the back row. Annoying guy was standing up front, near the theatre, saying things that were very obvious: "Settings? Profile?" while Greg was navigating a menu on the screen. TA was standing in front of where I sat, and he turned back to me and said something to the effect of how he couldn't take it. He's reached his breaking point. I kind of chuckled and said, "I don't know what to tell you." Because, truly: I had no idea what I could say about it. I also can't stand the guy, and have been struggling to tolerate him just as long as everyone else.
He only comes around because another resident he was staying with briefly, who I will also not name here, introduced him to the group. He's been coming ever since. He missed a string of Action Movie Nights last year and there was some excited speculation as to whether he was no longer coming. No such luck.
This is the weirdest thing about this guy. No one wants to hurt his feelings, but I can also imagine him, were he asked to stop coming, just being like, "Oh. Okay" and just moving on. That wouldn't mean his feelings aren't hurt, though. It feels like a pretty thorny situation all around.
Anyway. There was a moment when it seemed we might actually call it and not see the movie, for the first time ever. I can only hope I can get the movies to play correctly when I have my next Double Feature with Laney this coming Sunday. Ben kept saying, I would say only half-jokingly, that we should institute a rule where only physical media movies are allowed. The movie likely would have played had Greg brought in on DVD. (I do plan to play my movies on Sunday on VOD or streamers. Ben acted like it's not a big ask for people whose choice it is to buy the DVD they choose, but I kind of disagree: what are the chances that DVD would ever even get used again? It would feel like a waste.)
I was happy when the movie still went forward upstairs, though, for a very selfish reason: next time, two weeks from now, is finally back around to my choice, and I didn't want that to get bumped yet another two weeks down the road. I haven't gotten to choose since last July; at first I averaged once every six months but the list of people has grown longer so now it takes seven months to cycle through. I'm going to choose a movie I've been wanting to show from day one of Shobhit's and my regular attendance, but I kept having reasons to choose something else. I'm finally going to do it this time though. As it happens, I don't own this one on DVD, but I do have it on hold at the library. There are no other holds on it, so I'll easily have it on hand by March 4.
Shobhit will again be at rehearsal though, so he's going to miss it. He'll be available March 18 when it next happens, but that's okay. That alone doesn't make me want to postpone.
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[posted 12:30pm]
