— छह हज़ार एक सौ पच्चीस —
Last night was Shobhit's and my first time back to Action Movie Night in four weeks, because we missed the last one to go see a play. Plus, it was Greg's turn to choose the movie; his choice history suggested it would be a movie I would not at all be into; his choice indicated on the Movie List,
Chronicles of Riddick, bears that out. Shobhit and I definitely had a better time at
the play.
This week, the choice was Tony's.
His history is much better; historically, he has good taste in movies. Well, this week he chose a favorite from his youth, a teen comedy from 1985 called
Better Off Dead.
I did start to recognize it a few scenes into it. I thought:
Is this the "I want my two dollars" movie? Indeed, it was. This brought back memories of my sister, Gina, referencing the movie once, ages ago, quoting that very line: "I want my two dollars!"
I'm all for absurdist humor, which is what this movie is all about—when it's done well. Maybe it was a newer concept in 1985 and could get away with that sure comes across as filmmaking laziness now, I don't know. I do know it's very much a time capsule of mid-eighties entertainment, the kind of stuff that would never get made today nor resonate with audiences. But many, many people
love this movie. I do not.
Neither did Shobhit. When we all filed out of the theater and into the kitchen, he said, "I didn't care for that movie, I'm sorry." Tony, who told us all when he started the movie that he has probably seen this movie the second-most number of times (after
The Big Lebowski—which, according to the Movie List, was something the group saw on a "Field Trip" in 2014; I should ask Tony about this), laughed and replied, "I appreciate the honesty."
This makes me think of
The Goonies, which I have long felt does not hold up nearly as much as its adorers think it does. It was one the last "zeitgeisty" American movies I introduced Shobhit to, and the verdict in the end was: that actually wasn't that great. This came up this week with Frank at work, who said he'd be watching it with his 21-year-old son who wanted to see it, even though Frank had made it this far in live without ever having to. The next day he informed me my assessment was right. This is the case with a lot of eighties so-called "classics," I think.
Anyway here is this week's Action Movie Night had 11 in attendance, a more sizable group than we've had in a while: Tony, Jake, Ryan, Chris B, Derek, Andrew, Daniel, Brian, Dylan, Shobhit, and me. One of these guys is very young and very cute—younger than I realized, even: I was informed later that he's 21. Yikes, he's barely more than a kid. Did the rest of us seem like geezers to him? That's just my age-insecurity talking; he seemed to have a perfectly good time.
He was also a vegetarian, but he ate before arriving. I don't think anyone mentioned there are other vegetarians in the group (Shobhit and me), though as always we noted that the gnocchi with vegetables and a cheesy pesto sauce Shobhit made was vegetarian. I wonder if the kid was vegan? He only said he was vegetarian, though. I'd sure like to have more vegetarians around than just Shobhit and me, though. Sometimes it feels like others are either going out of their way or apologizing just four our sake. Two pizzas were brought last night and they both had pepperoni; fine by me, I need to ease up on my eating, and this helped me stick with the gnocchi. And potato chips. And a cookie.
Shobhit brought the potato chip bag into the theater, and kept crinkling the bag to reach in to eat. The other guy who is annoying did something similar a few months ago and annoyed Ryan so much that he turned and said back at him, "That's it, you can't eat in here anymore." No one acted annoyed with Shobhit, but I sure was self-conscious about it, and relieved when he fucking stopped eating out of that bag.
After the movie ended and we all parted ways, Shobhit and I went upstairs and watched the first episode of
The Rings of Power's fourth season.
— छह हज़ार एक सौ पच्चीस —
— छह हज़ार एक सौ पच्चीस —
Amy, on the Merchandising Enablement Team ("the MET"), is very pregnant, and will be startin her maternity leave in a couple of weeks. Today, Gabby threw her a lunchtime baby shower.
Our replacement for Beth, who previously led the Category Management team (now "Space Planning"), just started this week. Her name is Liana, and I was delighted to discover in Gabby's welcome email she sent out that she is a lesbian! For a split second I was like,
Why didn't I know this already?, but of course, when else would I find out? It's not like Gabby was going to say in casual conversation, "By the way she's a lesbian." Also, queerness is far from uncommon around here. And we have many trans people, at least two of whom work here at the office—maybe more, for all I know; there are many who work from home most days. One person is named February in IT and I've totally been thinking that was an entirely new staff person for months, until I was on a Teams call a couple of weeks ago and learned only then that it was someone I recognized from IT but had no idea was transitioning:
Ohhh, that's who that is!
Anyway, why did I bring up Liana? Oh! We had an extremely rare moment of everyone on our team being together in person today—including Anna, who was an intern last year and is going to be Amy's temp replacement; she's been training her for a while. So technically, the MET has eight permanent staff members, but currently there are nine with Anna here, and we got a photo taken of all of us during the baby shower lunch: Gabby, Cathryn, Brandy, Liana, Kevin, Mackenzie, Amy, Anna, and me. I don't even know whether all nine of us will ever be in the same room again, depending on whether Anna moves on to something else next year.
Gabby ordered MOTO pizza for us all to eat, so once again I had more food than I really needed to be consuming. That's delicious pizza, though, and Amy loves pizza. Cathryn also bought some bite-size candy bar wrappers that are blue and say "It's a boy!" I took just a few photos myself; between my photos and the few team photos that were taken, I'll wind up with only six or seven shots of this event, but it's not nothing!
Several other people were in attendance, including Adrienne, Fran, Lexis, Justine, Erik, a woman whose name I don't know, and a few others. I got into a fairly involved conversation with Justine and Adrienne about all the things I love about the Seattle Public Library, so that was cool. Gabby also had root beer floats ready to make for dessert, and she prepared several for people herself, including for me. It was a lovely lunch that Gabby did a great job with, including the decor.
— छह हज़ार एक सौ पच्चीस —
They're doing a weird rollout of season 4 of
The Rings of Power: four episodes dropped last night; two will drop next week, and two the week after. Shobhit and I only had time to watch the first episode, and won't be able to continue until at least Sunday, depending on what time he gets back from Bellevue. Shobhit heads over there on Light Rail this afternoon, and is staying three nights in a hotel, for the annual
Leather Reign conference. Even though he'll barely be out of town (not even out of the metro area), I guess you could say this is his solo trip for the year, and Las Vegas in January will be mine—although I am going there with Tracy.
In any case, I've got the next three days to myself. I have plenty planned, naturally. I'm taking myself to Steamworks tonight and to a movie tomorrow. Saturday will be a day in Federal Way: BYOB "Happy Hour" with Laney at her apartment in the afternoon; then likely going to Gabriel and Lea's for a movie watch afterward. It will add to the travel time significantly, but I think I will take transit, even though Shobhit is leaving the car behind as well. I'd rather not have to fill up the gas tank. A bus from Laney's to Gabriel's will take like half an hour but that's fine. It'll give me a chance to complain endlessly about how much Federal Way sucks, just like Gabriel does about Seattle when he comes into town!
— छह हज़ार एक सौ पच्चीस —
[posted 12:58pm]
