— छह हज़ार अट्ठाईस —
We had an unusually large crowd at Action Movie Night last night—11 people, and in a theater with 14 seats that means there were only three empty seats: one empty seat per row. I'm really glad I have taken to writing down everyone present in my Notes app while actually there, because otherwise I'd have a much harder time remembering everyone when recounting it the next day. So thankfully I already have the list of those present handy: Tony, Jake, Ryan, Craig, Chris B, Andrew, Derek, Daniel, Dylan, Shobhit, and me.
Shobhit made a giant pan of vegetable lasagna, largely modified with his own alterations (some in the group were struck by the inclusion of beets, a vegetable Shobhit loves and I am not the biggest fan of). It was such a huge production for Shobhit in terms of hours of preparation that I even
took a photo of it
My point here is that I would call the dish a success, given that a solid half of that pan got eaten last night alone. There was pizza as well; someone brought two medium pizzas, one of them vegetarian and so I had a slice of that. More than one comment was made about it being an Italian-themed night with the food, even more so when Daniel came with a boxed slice of cake from Carmine's, the new Italian restaurant at the US Bank Center building.
As for the movie, it was chosen by an older guy named Craig, who is not at all a regular and who Tony brings to Action Movie Night when Craig has a movie to share. I don't know how he gets them, probably not legally, but both times so far (counting last night) he has a copy of a film not yet released in theaters. And: I have hated both of them. But whatever, this Craig guy seems very proud of his advance access to terrible indie movies that have not yet been released.
The movie this week was called April X, and its sole appeal is clearly that one of the leads is Connor Storrie, who is now insanely famous thanks to the HBO gay sex-romance Heated Rivalry. Shobhit kept commenting on this as though anyone in that group of otherwise very straight men would have any idea who Connor Storrie is. Also, the film was shot well before Heated Rivalry and is transparently being released now to capitalize on his fame. But, even though Storrie is amazing in Heated Rivalry, his acting in this project is not great.
I think the review I wrote on Letterboxd sums it up: Bad writing. Bad acting. Terrible editing. Decent cinematography.
I browsed through other people's reviews on Letterboxd, and most people were more generous than I was. There was a fair number of two-star reviews, and far fewer 1.5-star reviews, which was what I gave it. The overall average on Letterboxd is 3.2 out of 5 stars, which gives that movie way too much credit. A bunch of the reviews make it nakedly clear that they only came to watch it for Connor Storrie.
I liked that it was shot on location in Bucharest, which gave it an exotic, sort of brutalist visual vibe. But, that was about the only thing I liked about it. Any time any actor opened their mouth, the dialogue was dumb and the delivery was wooden. A lot of times these "Action Movie Nights" are legitimate endurance tests. How much can I stand how painfully awful this is?
— छह हज़ार अट्ठाईस —
— छह हज़ार अट्ठाईस —
In other news, last night, in parts both before and after Action Movie Night, I finalized some plans with Gabriel for next week. We're seeing The Mandalorian and Grogu together on Thursday night, keeping up the tradition of seeing every Star Wars movie since The Force Awakens with him in the first possible day of opening weekend: this will make the sixth. The first five were once a year for 5 years in a row between 2015 and 2019, but there have been no theatrically released Star Wars films since then.
I wouldn't even be that excited by any other Star Wars film based on a series excep that everyone loves how achingly cute Grogu (once known as "Baby Yoda") is, and I am no exception. My expectation is that this one will fall in the middle; Solo was pretty mid and The Rise of Skywalker feels more egregious with every rewatch, so I'll bet anything this will be better than those. It'll be hard pressed to match The Force Awakens, Rogue One or The Last Jedi though.
Anyway, I'm going to meet Gabriel, Lea, Tess and Tess's girlfriend Berkeley at Kent Station after work on Thursday next week; we booked our seats last night. The showtime is at 6:00 but we'll meet for dinner beforehand, and I will catch the Sounder to Kent Station right after work—it's just 20 minutes from King Street Station, which is convenient. And: all this is the day before Gabriel and I leave for our two-night trip to Lummi Island next weekend. So I'll basically be spending four days with him next week.
— छह हज़ार अट्ठाईस —
Lastly, the "P3" team just came back from our quarterly outing—we went to the new Pioneer Square location of
Moto Pizza, the pizza joint that was one of few places close to our old office location. We usually do these outings as Happy Hours after work, but when I saw a woman sit down with Moto Pizza in the Rainier Square lobby over lunch maybe a month ago, I took that to mean there must be one closer to here; I looked it up and, indeed, the new Pioneer Square location is 0.6 miles from here. I messaged the team over Teams to inform everyone of this, and after Gabby had solicited suggestions for where to go for our spring outing and getting none until I mentioned this, she pivoted to a team lunch at this Moto Pizza.
We all walked down there and back. There had been a chance of rain today in the forecast for a few days, but as of today no more rain in the forecast. It was still cooler than it had been, and quite breezy; we were all glad we had our jackets.
Brandy asked about my Birth Week and what I did, and I was only slightly cagey about it, sharing just a few of the things. I didn't want to have to spend the entire time manipulating the conversation with the fourteen different local and regional 1976 landmarks I found. I did tell her about Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve, though; and about Freeway Park. Gabby brought up that she and Nick had hosted us for dinner. She mentioned that they wanted to reciprocate after Shobhit and I had them over for dinner a couple of years ago, perhaps as a subtle indication of reasoning why they haven't invited anyone else on the team over for dinner.
Gabby did bring Nick's family recipe for that delicious rice for me this morning. He actually wrote it out by hand on a sheet of paper.
Anyway, we all walked back and now I need to get back to work.
— छह हज़ार अट्ठाईस —
[posted 12:29pm]
