— पांच हजार चार सौ बयालीस —
This past weekend wound up a lot more eventful than I even intended, and I already planned to see three movies in as many days. Thankfully the movie I saw on Sunday was not a new one, and thus with that one, at least, I didn't have to write a review.
That one was at the outdoor cinema that is right now being called "
Center City Cinema," organized by Seattle Parks and Recreation themselves. And, after Shobhit felt so successful passing out campaign talking cards to the crowd at the inaugural Summer Series at the Amphitheater concert at Volunteer Park on Thursday the 13th, he took the suggestion of attempting to do the same with the gathered crowd before the outdoor movie at Cal Anderson Park on Friday night.
A lot about this was different than anticipated. Summer series of outdoor cinema at Cal Anderson in years past—before the pandemic—was projected onto a
very large, blow-up screen set up near the restrooms, and typically organized by Three Dollar Bill Cinema. The last one we went to, the year before the pandemic, was in summer 2019.
That area now is where the community garden that sprung up during the Capitol Hill Organized Protest ("CHOP") in the wake of the George Floyd protests is located, and I only just now see on Google Maps that it even has a name: "
Black Lives Memorial Garden." I hadn't even realized it had been thus named. (The huge BLACK LIVES MATTER painted into the street on Pine along the south border of Cal Anderson Park also remains.) What this means for outdoor cinema, though, is that, as we discovered on Friday, it's been relocated in the park: they had the screen, now an actual large mounted monitor on which DVDs get played, set up in the north side of the park, just east of the fountain.
This screen, while definitely of better picture quality, had to have been roughly half the size of the old blow-up projector screen. The gathered crowd was nothing like I've seen it in previous years, and I don't know if that had to do with post-pandemic numbers still being lower by default, or lack of adequate promotion of the event, or less interest due to the relocation and resizing of the screen, or maybe some mixture of all of the above. All I can say is, there must have been 50-75 people there to watch the movie at most, whereas when we saw
Kinky Boots in 2019, there must have been two or three hundred.
So, Shobhit did go around passing out his talking cards, but, he didn't have nearly as many to pass them out to as anticipated.
I'm glad we got there when we did, around 8:00 maybe. I really expected them to wait until dusk to start the movie, but instead it started at 8:30 sharp, much more quickly than I thought they would. I guess now they always start them at 8:30. Friday this week they're showing
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I suspect may draw a larger crowd.
This time, though, they showed what specifically had drawn me to come:
Some Like It Hot, not just one of the funniest comedies ever made but one of the best films ever made. I was surprised to discover Shobhit had never seen it. And: he had a blast. It was really fun to go out there and watch, and have Shobhit so into it and laughing so much. (Plus, so many lines in that movie, ostensibly never meant to contain deliberately "queer content," are stunningly ahead of their time. A lot of cheers from the crowd.)
— पांच हजार चार सौ बयालीस —
— पांच हजार चार सौ बयालीस —
Saturday and Sunday were my two days of actual movie-going, broadly to take part in the zeitgeist moment of the weekend: "Barbenheimer."
Saturday I met up with Tracy at the IMAX theater at Seattle Center to see
Oppenheimer. I had bought the tickets at the Pacific Science Center box office on the 5th, $21 each. I had advocated for going out of our way to see it in IMAX because it had been filmed entirely in IMAX film stock.
Maybe it would have made a difference had we managed to get in early enough to get more central seats, and instead we were only six or seven rows from the front and off to the side. The angle was a little bit off. Still, it remains true that the vast majority of the film is just people talking in rooms, and time spent on nuclear explosions was comparatively fleeting. As I noted in the review, I didn't really see the necessity for the premium pricing of seeing it at an IMAX theater. The move was very well done, but hardly necessitated a gargantuan screen. I'd be tempted to see it again at an AMC just to compare, but sitting through three hours again is a bit of a time commitment, especially when I already committed to seeing
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One again so Alexia has someone to go see it with. (We're likely doing that tomorrow.)
Yesterday I met up with Laney to see the other half of "Barbenheimer":
Barbie, which I really loved, to the point that I am pretty convinced it will wind up on my top ten for the year. Laney loved it too.
We saw that one at the AMC at Pacific Place, and Laney took the express #101 bus from downtown Renton, which is only a few blocks from her apartment building, to downtown Seattle, delighted to discover it only takes about half an hour. She'll definitely be doing that again, likely this coming weekend. Doing that is almost certainly faster, even, than driving to Tukwila Station to park-and-ride the Light Rail to Westlake Station in Seattle.
I figured Laney would want to spend some time chatting about the movie, and she suggested we just find a coffee shop to get a drink to go and then chat at Westlake Park. I had to remind her the Starbucks at Westlake Mall has been closed, and so we just went up to the food court in Westlake Mall to find a drink and/or a snack. We found a place, and were even in the middle of placing an order on a screen, when the fire alarm went off. We tried to finish our orders, but a lady at the place said, "Don't order. You have to go outside." I wanted to say, "It doesn't look like you're going outside, lady!" But, we went outside. And had to find some other place, since we had no idea when we'd be able to go back into Westlake Mall.
I suggested Veggie Grill, which was only another block away, on the other side of Westlake Park. I had been trying to get an order of onion rings at the place in Westlake Mall, and thought Veggie Grill also had onion rings, but goddammit, they did not. I really could have just skipped getting anything altogether but I got an order of French fries. It'll add to my points membership there so whatever.
Laney got a canned white wine and so I did too, along with my fries, and we found a lovely little table to sit at in Westlake Park to chat about the movie, in really fine weather. It was really nice, just as it had when Tracy and I had eaten our dinner there after
Mission: Impossible on Friday
last weekend.
— पांच हजार चार सौ बयालीस —
Shobhit had decided to go back to tabling at Cal Anderson Park for his campaign yesterday, something he seems to go back and forth about continuing, and as I had other plans, he got Sachin to come up and join him for that for a few hours. Sachin was still there wheb I got home, probably the only reason Shobhit had not yet texted me about how long I was taking—Laney and I chatted a lot longer than I expected we would, probably ninety minutes at least. I talked a little about both the movies I'd gone to see this weekend with Sachin, and then went to the bedroom to write my review.
Barbara complimented my writing on both of them. She's always liked my writing, but even for her that was kind of unusual.
I had not yet even started writing the review when I got a call from Danielle, asking what I was doing. I told her, and then she said she was probably going to have an extra ticket to
Six the Musical at The Paramount and would I like to come. I was like, "Sure!"
Shobhit was clearly disappointed that I would be leaving yet again, rather than spending the rest of the evening with him. Sometimes things just come up, though. I decided to give the choice to him, and told him I'd stay home if he wanted to. He told me to go. And I'm sure glad I did, because that show, which I had heard the name of but otherwise really knew nothing about, was a blast. I even found the broadway cast recording on Apple Music to listen to while working this morning.
When Danielle called, she had already been in Seattle for an IV infusion gig, but was headed back home to Renton to change out of her work clothes, only to turn around and come right back for the show. This context may be the only reason she got back in such good time; usually Danielle is running late. It was about a quarter after four when she first called, and the showtime was 6:30. I left to walk down at about 6:00, and she had just finished parking when I got there, and was standing right across the street.
She had wanted to take Rylee, who is already listening to the cast recording a lot. I guess they had some kind of argument or something, and Rylee changed her mind about going. That never would have flown when I was a kid, but maybe Danielle already delt with so much more with Morgan that with any teen drama involving Rylee (who is fourteen), she just rolls with the punches with much more of a "whatever" attitude. She just gave me the ticket instead. And I'm glad she did! I really loved the show. The music was fantastic.
Danielle hadn't had enough to eat, though, and even asked me to bring her some Aleve, which she swallowed while we were in line, without even a drink of water. Her headache apparently persisted through the show, and at one point she even said, "We can duck out early if you want," and, all other considerations aside, I really didn't want to. "I'm really enjoying this," I said. She did say she was fine either way, and I said, "Are you sure?" So, we stayed. We did duck out just before the encore, and I was okay with that, as it allowed us to completely beat the leaving crowd. We did watch a little bit of the encore on TV monitors in the lobby before leaving.
By the way, I was not the only person in there wearing a mask, but I was one of very few. I put it on outside while still in the line, but it was packing so tightly that even outside I was like, this is the time to put a mask on. Danielle was one of the many who did not bother, but she has had a pretty lax attitude all along, probably largely because she never got sick with covid. (She did get vaccinated, for the record.)
I'm trying to decide how best to characterize the look she gave me when I put my mask on, because there definitely was a look. It wasn't an eye roll, but kind of almost an eye roll, with a slight smirk. The message on her face was more like, "Oh,
you"—it conveyed moderate amusement more than anything. Still, kind of surprising, coming from a nurse.
Perhaps it is borne of the knowledge that we have widesread community immunity to covid at this point, after three years of both infections and vaccinations. The odds of my getting covid, particularly again, at this point are very, very low. That alone is perhaps why someone like Danielle finds a mask unnecessary. My persective has long extended well beyond covid, though, because we know from mountains and mountains of data that
masks work, and are effective at preventing all manner of infections, not just covid. When Tracy and I left
Mission: Impossible last week, she suddenly told me she thought she might be coming down with something—and, indeed, she did. She had not been wearing a mask in the movie theater, but I was. And even though masks are far more effective at preventing you from infecting others, they also provide some protection against getting infected. I could not have been happier that I have stuck with wearing a mask in movie theaters. It may be that I still would not have caught whatever Tracy had without my wearing a mask, but I certainly cut down the risk notably by wearing it.
And then? After the show at The Paramount, which was sold out by the way so it was a huge crowd, Danielle wanted to go somewhere to get some appetizers and get some food of substance in her. We found ourselves at a place called Andare Kitchen & Bar, barely more than a block north of The Paramount. Moments after we sat down, Danielle told me she thought she might be catching a cold.
All the more reason for me to have worn the mask throughout the show. Going out to eat afterward was trickier; I didn't mask up at the restaurant. I ordered a mushroom bruschetta that was excellent but arguably more expensive than it was worth; by the time I Venmoed my portion to Danielle and covered my portion of tax and tip, it came to $22. For one appetizer. But, that's increasingly normal, to be fair. Inflation is a thing. I was able to afford it, after all. It just meant that, between the fries with Laney and the appetizer with Danielle, twice yesterday I had unplanned expenses. And I could have chosen not to buy anything in either case. I need to start keeping that fact in mind more.
But also: you know, whatever. It was nice to have a spontaneous chance to hang out with Danielle. Some months ago we agreed to make more of an effort to hang out more often, and I even created a Google calendar event to try setting up some kind of hang-out time roughly once every five weeks. They keep happening on weekends I have no easy way to get together with her, and the last reminder was three weeks ago. That said, the last time we hung out was precisely five weeks ago, so that worked out!
She had also forgotten a jacket at our place, that has been thrown over the back of one of our dining table chairs ever since. Danielle drove me home and I went to fetch the jacket for her. Sometimes everything just works out in the end.
— पांच हजार चार सौ बयालीस —
[posted 12:28 pm]
