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I had a pretty eventful weekend, though not overly special. Kind of standard on that front, although I did spend a couple of hours Friday evening at Steamworks. It was one of the lesser experiences I've had there. I mean, I basically got what I came for, and I've had far worse experiences there in the past; at least I didn't wind up leaving with nothing having happened. I've just also had far better experiences, particularly in recent visits—though I hadn't gone since January 15.
It was also super dead there on Friday. I want to say it was because of the line around the block for the Harry Styles album release party happening on the corner, and this line blocked both the entrance and the exit to Steamworks. But, it's not uncommon for it to be this dead that early in the evening, and I deliberately arrived before 6:00 so I would not have to pay weekend rates. By the time I left, the crowd was actually picking up a bit, but I was done, and I had TV to catch up on with Shobhit anyway. So I went home and did that.
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Saturday was a Braeburn Condos Double Feature with Alexia: we did a Dick Van Dyke 100-year-appreciation day (he turned 100 in December) and watched
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which we both found to be weird as hell but I think I found it a bit more entertaining than Alexia did (though even I won't go out of my way to watch that one again); and
Mary Poppins, which is a straight up, five-star classic.
Usually, when doing double features, I'm pretty strict about watching the movies in chronological order of their original theatrical release. But, for me
Mary Poppins is an all-timer, so in this case I decided to watch them the other way around so that it wouldn't feel like a come-down. These movies were only released four years apart, but they are in wildly different categories of cinema quality. Even though I still think my
2018 assessment of
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is "like Mary Poppins on acid."
Alexia quite openly appreciated the order we watched them in too; the more she talked about it, the more distaste she seemed to have for
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Outside of the movies, we talked a bit about our planned day trip to Whidbey Island with her and Shobhit on March 22, the day that had been originally planned for us to go see Shobhit in
The Foreigner. It had been my idea that we still drive roughly as far out of town, just in a totally different direction from Olympia, as a fun alternative and something that won't remind us of what could have been. I mentioned to her that Dad had drawn up a Whidbey Island travel itinerary for us as a Christmas gift in 2009, which we went and did the following February; I later emailed her the link to
my photo album for that day, along with a proposed list of stops, including roughly six of the eight stops from the 2010 drive, plus a couple more from when Shobhit and I drove through there again
in 2022, as part of that year's trip to the Tulip Festival. Oh, right: Shobhit wants to make a plan to get up there this year too, so I need to look at open dates on my calendar in April.
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That was only the first of two emails I sent to friends with a list of things over the weekend, by the way. I sent another to Gabriel, because he asked for a list of gay bars that a friend of a friend might enjoy as a gay man on the older side (around 50, like me).
I spoke to Gabriel a couple of times on the phone yesterday. The first was just because I hadn't talked to him in a while, so I called him just to say hi. I was shocked I caught him at a time when he was just sitting at home not really doing anything; he's usually pretty busy. He told me he was reconnecting with some older friends he had kind of fallent out of touch with, and was meeting one of them for lunch.
And this was what precipitated the next phone call. I learned yesterday that Lea and her best friend Josh track each other on their phones, which I found to be a little bonkers; I can't fathom doing that with
any of my friends, not even the closest ones. I don't even do that with Shobhit. I don't do it with anyone. Although come to think of it, I think I did do it briefly with Susan, like two decades ago when Google offered a very early version of this service (you saw little icons of people in a car on a map, if I recall correctly), but that was mostly because Susan was always so public with her location—to this day she keeps a live webcam on in her condo. I figured at the time I'd try it out, but it was fairly short lived (until Google dropped the service, I think) and I never did it with anyone else. I think Laney and Jessica do this on their phones, and that makes sense as a mother and daughter (both of them being grown notwithstanding), but the idea of doing that with any of my other friends now seems pretty alien to me.
In any case, Lea apparently alerted Gabriel to the fact that Josh was somewhere close to right across the street from the place he'd had lunch with his old friend from when he was teaching. Josh was in the gay bar in White Center, called The Lumberyard. He walked in without anyone giving Josh a heads up, so apparently Josh was so shocked to see him there it took him a few beats to register it was Gabriel he was seeing. "What are you doing here?" he asked; Gabriel replied, "I come here every Sunday!" Apparently Josh said, "You liar." Or presumably something to that effect; these are just the quotes Gabriel gave me.
I asked Shobhit later if he'd ever been to The Lumberyard; he said he'd gone there once. He doesn't go all the way down there though because he doesn't like the idea of driving home after having a drink. Good for him. I'm pretty sure I have never been there.
But, back to Gabriel's friend:
that person has a gay friend who recently moved to Seattle and is looking for gay bars that are good for older gay men. So I later send Gabriel an email with a whole list, complete with link, of all the places I know have pretty mixed crowds, including a broad range of ages: five places on Capitol Hill alone (The Cuff, CC's, Madison Pub, Diesel, Pony); Changes in Wallingford; and The Lumberyard itself, in White Center. These are all places that are either dive bars or have sections (as in The Cuff) with a dive bar vibe, and any gay man around the age of 50 would fit right in. I probably sent way more information than he needed but you know, I have to stay on brand.
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Yesterday is the day that all of today's Daily Lunch Update (DLU) photos come from: it was our local Women's March. I had movie plans during the march itself, which is too bad; but, I did get about 15 photos walking quickly through the rally on my way to meet Laney.
This made the
third Women's March I have attended even for a little bit; the first two having been the first massive wave of protests after President Fuckwit's first election—so: in 2017 and 2018. The momentum quickly waned after 2018, however, and then there was all the
complicated controversy after the first couple of years that arguably most contributed to that lost momentum. But, with new leadership and much fresher issues to highlight now—not to mention
a website that at the very least included laguage more pointedly inclusive than in the past, it seemed it was a good time to see if there was any useful momentum there.
Well, it must be said: while I did not witness the march,
the rally was pretty paltry compared to the first couple of years. Probably at least one factor was the weather, though: the rally was advertised as starting at 11 a.m., and I actually walked down to Cal Anderson Park right after that time at first, but I had chai with me and thought I could just wear a rain jacket and leave my umbrella so I could keep my other hand free for photos. This was a mistake. My shoes were not quite soaked after walking three blocks, but I knew they absolutely would get there if I stayed out there like that for the next ninety minutes until I needed to meet with Laney.
Plus, I didn't see anyone! Previous rallies at Cal Anderson Park have gathered at the Bobby Morris Playfield, which was completely empty. I saw some tents over at the other end of the park, but I knew it was also Capitol Hill Farmers Market Sunday and figured that's what that was. Otherwise I saw only like four people with signs wearing rain ponchos on the corner. I thought about walking over to the other end of the park to be sure, but I was already so wet that I decided just to walk back home. That was when I called Gabriel, actually. He commented on the kind of privilege I had to walk back home just because the weather was inconvenient. I noted that I'd have stayed longer if anyone was there but they weren't.
Well, that turned out to be not quite true. When I went to walk back to meet up with Laney, I had like five extra minutes as I passed Cal Anderson Park, and this time I saw a
line of parked motorcycles that had to have been connected to the Women's March. I looked over and saw many more people this time, over in the middle of the park; to my surprise, it turned out, they had gathered in the middle of the park, in the grassy area over there, rather than at Bobby Morris Playfield as usual.
They must have known the crowd would be smaller than those first Women's Marches a decade ago. And I mean, it was
much smaller. It was big enough to catch attention, at the very least. I walked through the crowd a bit to get a few pictures, but even now it was lightly raining and the ground was wet and in some spots very muddy. I had to be careful. If I had realized the rally was over in this part of the park, I'd have returned a bit earlier to soak it in better. But, I had only the few minutes passing through, which is why my third Women's March is only 15 shots as compared to 40 shots from 2017 and 31 shots from 2018.
Actually this year's is going to go up to 16. I took a photo of a discarded sign on the sidewalk on my walk to work this morning.
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So I walked over to meet Laney on the corner of Broadway & Pike; we both had our umbrellas handy. We walked down to Pacific Place and saw
The Bride! I thought it had delightful elements but was such a narrative mess that it ultimately wasn't all that successful—great performances notwithstanding.
Laney found the movie overall delightful. That was her word. I could tell within the first few minutes that she was loving the movie. When she came out of the bathroom after the movie I said, "I could tell you liked it better than I did." And she said, "I found it delightful!"
We rode the bus back together, and Shobhit was out on a walk when I got home, which allowed me to sit down and write my review. Sometimes I have to think about what I want to say about a movie, but in this case the review just flowed right out of me. Laney clearly disagrees with a lot of it, and that's okay. I'm genuinely glad she had a great time.
The rest of the evening, Shobhit and I caught up on TV. We watched two episodes of
Down Cemetery Road on Apple TV. We watched the premiere of
Rooster on HBO Max, which turned out to be quite fun. And we watched this week's episode of
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Somewhere in the middle of that I took roughly an hour break, both to write the aforementioned email to Gabriel and to do my ironing. Laundry completely done, I accomplished something this weekend!
[posted 12:35pm]
