— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ इक्यासी —
I had a bonkers number of meetings this morning—for me, anyway: three half-hour meetings and one one-hour meeting, that last one cutting into my usual lunch break as it's scheduled 11:30 to 12:30. I took my lunch break directly after. So, in the five hours between when I start work at 7:30 (I actually arrived 10 minutes late today, don't tell anyone) and 12:30, a solid half of that was in meetings. This is the very kind of thing I prefer to avoid. But, Gabby pushed our usual Friday 1:1 meeting to today, to sort of split the difference since she's out at Expo West in Anaheim the rest of this week; that would also be a big reason, probably, why all of my meetings this week are crammed into Monday. There are no other meetings the whole rest of the week, which is expected to be so slow in-office due to so many people being at Expo that Gabby even told the P3 team to feel free to skip this week's in-office day. (I mean, skip coming in, not skip work.)
I guess I'll be fair and mention that more than one of these meetings ended early. Gabby and I finished our 1:1 meeting after maybe 20 minutes; the Promo Planning call, scheduled for half an hour, lasted 15. I still had to be back in meetings not long after, though—just 15 minutes later for the biweekly POS call after the Promo Planning call. I should also note that
all of these meetings today were over Microsoft Teams rather than in-person, but they still collectively sucked up a ton of my time this morning.
All of which is to say, I'm rather glad I already
posted yesterday about Friday and Saturday of my weekend, mostly about Shobhit and me doing the Downtown Art Walk on Friday. That leaves me with only the obligation today to update you on the SAG Awards—I mean, the
rebranded "Actor Awards," and the SAG-AFTRA Seattle Local viewing party, again taking place at Central Cinema.
They've done viewing parties at bars in the past; doing it in an actual cinema is way better, even if what we're watching is actually TV—or more specifically now, streaming: it airs now on Netflix, which means to key differences: no strict time constraint; and no bleeping of profanity. I'd say it works pretty well.
Anyway, Shobhit and I left shortly after 3:30 and walked down there—it's barely more than half a mile from us—even though the ceremony didn't start until 5:00. But, since Shobhit is on the Board, he wanted to be on hand to help if needed. He wound up helping set up and break down the large SAG-AFTRA backdrop for photos, just like he did last year. At the end of the event, they had all local SAG-AFTRA members in attendance assemble for a
group photo. One guy had come all the way from where he lives in Sequim to view the ceremony with the group.
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ इक्यासी —
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ इक्यासी —
They passed out ballots for our predictions, and once again they had prizes—quite a lot, actually. But, for the second year in a row, I won 1st prize with the most accurately predicted wins. This might start to get embarrassing. Should I sit it out next year? I mean, they hand out a ton of prizes so maybe not. The second-place winner got a blanket, after all, and I didn't!
I did get
a ton of shit in my First Prize tote bag, though—including two of the same things I got last year (a small SAG-AFTRA branded cutting board; a mobile charger); a pair of socks; a cake shop gift card; a SAG-AFTRA insulated mugs (and we have a ton of such mugs already, but I do like the different lid on this one); an a pouch full of a bunch of smaller supplies like pens and a notepad and lotions and such.
They gave a prize for most correct wins predicted; second-most correct wins predicted; and even one for the worst score (the person who got that had three right, I think). They mostly left out the two Stunt Ensemble categories (movie and TV) because those were announced pre-ceremony—a bit disrespectful to the stunt workers, I thought—which left 13 categories to be competing in; I got 10 of them right. One other person also did, so they used the stunt categories as a tie breaker. I got both of those right. Mostly because I was pretty sure I had heard what the winners were during the Red Carpet pre-show, but whatever. The second place winner got a blanket! Also I still probably would have gotten the stunt winners right. Or at least one of them.
Shobhit was helping break down equipment after the ceremony and I was just waiting around for him, so I killed time by setting out all my winnings on the table we'd sat at so I could get that picture. I did
the exact same thing last year, when I got far fewer things but one thing that was the coolest: a SAG Awards branded BlueTooth speaker, which I now use regularly in the bathroom since the old one I had been using for years stopped keeping a charge that lasted more than five minutes.
I should have taken a photo of the goodies table. What the hell, Matthew? Get your shit together! It had a bunch of bags of popcorn for us to take; between Shobhit and me we ate three of them. There was also candy, which Shobhit took none of but I took a plastic pouch of gummy candy that I ate
way too much of. We also got a single drink ticket; Shobhit and I had a glass of wine each, and Shobhit ordered a beer from the same menu I ordered from using their at-table QR code they've just kept using since covid. We also split a mushroom and onion pizza that was quite tasty. Oh, they also did raffle tickets with several prizes; I didn't win any of those. Shobhit was barred from playing because he's on the Board.
I couldn't say how many people were there, but there couldn't have been more than, I don't know, around 30? There was a lot of empty seats. I was slightly surprised, although the groups for these Seattle watch parties have never been huge. The
25 local SAG-AFTRA chapters nationwide did get a shoutout during the ceremony, noting that a lot of local chapter watch parties were happening.
As for the ceremony itself, there was one notable surprise: Timothée Chalamet did not win for
Marty Supreme, as everyone expected; Michael B. Jordan did, for
Sinners, a film that really seems to be surging in awards popularity. There's a lot of talk about whether that will win Best Picture at the Oscars, though I still lean toward
One Battle After Another (an objectively better film, in my opinion—but, both of them are good). The
Oscar odds on Goldderby still has
One Battle After Another far ahead, even after
Sinners won Best Ensemble at the Actor Awards; it also still has Timothée Chalemet pretty significantly ahead of Michael B. Jordan for Best Actor, although the margin there has narrowed a fair amount.
Anyway, it was a fun event as always; Shobhit and I walked home after and he made parathas with which we made quesadillas and they were delicious. We spent the rest of the evening watching
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and then several episodes of season two of
Going Dutch, which is super dumb but funny.
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ इक्यासी —
[posted 1:01pm]
