— षट् सहस्राणि चत्वारि —
Last night was Action Movie Night. The movie was so terrible, for the first time I actually wondered what the value was in continuing to come to these movie nights. I needed to remind myself that the movies are not always terrible; they may even be at least moderately compelling slightly more often than they are less so. On the other hand, we do get these painfully awful movies often enough, and combining that with at least one guy in the group who annoys everyone but no one knows how to get rid of without feeling like an asshole, and these biweekly Wednesdays start to feel like a bit of a chore.
The annoying guy has no direct connection to this group, either. He is far from being part of the original core group that pre-dates Shobhit's and my attendance by a full decade, and he is not nor has he ever been a resident of the building. He was brought by a resident who almost never comes, and then he just kept coming. I have said this before though, and it seems worth repeating: he does have good taste in movies. It did occur to me for the first time last night that he may be in some way neurodivergent. His responses to social cues are not exactly far off the mark but neither are they fully adept; he also seems impervious to embarrassment. He spent so much time crinkling a wrapper of some kind during the movie last night that another guy, the one who has long been the most openly annoyed with him, straight up told him he can't eat inside the theater anymore. "It's fucking distracting." And this guy responded with an "Okay" that had no detectable emotion attached to it at all.
Anyway, I hated the movie so much that I posted my
half-star review on Letterboxd maybe three quarters of the way through. Shobhit had looked up the runtime and was tracking how much time was left during the movie, and my state of being was not far off from that. I will say about Shobhit, he really needs to be more conscious of how loudly he yawns. If he's constantly yawning audibly then people are going to wonder why he bothers coming at all—granted, seeing this particular movie moved me closer to thinking the same about myself. Still, regularly yawning audibly is rude.
The movie was called
Trailer Park of Terror. It was about as good as that title would suggest. These types of movies, so low-budget you wonder if it ever even got a theatrical release and with flatly terrible writing, are very on-brand (the exact phrase Derek used after the movie ended) for Jake, who made the choice and told us all he and his wife "adore" this movie. It's very gory just for the sake of being gory, and has zero characters of interest or even with a modicum of charisma. I know there are people out there who get a kick out of these kinds of movies; I do not.
Honestly I was relieved when, after I was the first one to go back out into the kitchen when the movie ended, next were Shobhit and Ryan, and Ryan said, "I am not a fan of that movie." And that's saying a lot; Ryan has himself chosen films I found not far removed from this a couple of times. "Yeah, me neither," I said, as I rinsed off dishes and put them into the dishwasher, as I do pretty much every time. I'm one of very few actual residents in this group and I like to be at least a little bit useful. I found absolutely no use in that movie, though.
— षट् सहस्राणि चत्वारि —
— षट् सहस्राणि चत्वारि —
The group was a bit smaller than usual this week, only seven in attendance: Tony, Jake, Ryan, Derek, Daniel, Shobhit, and me. Shobhit made pasta salad and, for the record, I totally expected it would be good, but the final product still exceeded my expectations. It was also pretty popular; we made a 16oz bag of pasta with a ton of baked chopped vegetables, the final amount filling a huge glass serving bowl. There might have been three or four quarts' worth in that bowl, and there was only about a quart of leftovers in the end.
The only other person to bring food this week was Daniel, who brought a scallop potato dish from Trader Joe's. He always brings some frozen food from a grocery store. It was vegetarian, though, which we appreciated, and I was amused to realize that the only food available at all this week was vegetarian. I'm not sure that had ever happened before. And Shobhit made a good point: before he and I started coming, and being the only ones who reliably bring food every time, did they sometimes have weeks where no food was brought at all? They must have. Had Shobhit and I not been there, and Daniel weren't coming, there would have been no food last night.
There were also some technical difficulties with the theater projector. Tony only managed to get it to work by going upstairs and fetching his own DVD player and connecting it directly to the back of the projector. Laney and I have a double feature on Saturday, which had to be rescheduled to that day even though someone else already has the theater reserved. Well, we had planned to watch in the condo for that reason, but if the projector cord connection to the DVD player is still fucked then it's just as well.
This theater is our building's best amenity, but it doesn't mean much when it doesn't fucking work. It's been interesting to see how many times we've had technical difficulties at Action Movie Night but then I have my own movies down there and everything works fine. It was even my choice at Action Movie Night last month and it worked fine for me then as well. Shobhit is slated to choose on the 29th of this month, but that's the day Barbara arrives for my Birth Week and I'm not sure we'll bother with Action Movie that week; Shobhit may bump to the next one.
Anyway, it was shortly after 9:00 when we got back upstairs again. We watched an episode of season one of
Deadloch and then I went to bed.
— षट् सहस्राणि चत्वारि —
[posted 12:30pm]
