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Yesterday I took myself to see the new Jason Statham movie,
Mutiny. Solid B, like I give nearly all his movies. Shobhit was surprised I even liked Jason Statham when I told him what movie I had seen after coming home, and that I liked it. Well, I'm not exactly a huge fan, but I have a strange respect for these movies that consitently fully deliver on what people come to see: Jason Statham shooting a bunch of bad guys in the head. There's a kind of integrity to that.
Granted, one Letterboxd reviewer noted the "White savior" aspect of the story, which I really should have clocked and noted in my own review. Oh well. You don't expect these movies to be especially earnest in any kind of woke-ness either. Given the type of movie it is, which again delivers on expectations, I sort of give it a pass; it also has a ton of nonwhite actors in the cast, albeit neither of them the male or female lead, so there's that.
The movie was barely more than ninety minutes long, had a 4:30 runtime, so it would have been around 6:30 when it let out; around 7:00 when I started the review; it was just shy of 8:00 when I
shared the link to both Bluesky and Letterboxd.
Shobhit decided to get an annual subscription to MSNOW, so he was engaged with either that or his current binge-watch of
Friday Night Lights on Prime Vide, which he had never seen; he's now in season 2. So, I took that time to finish up all the links in my working draft of the Summer Social Review, for the days spent in Europe. That's all done now; it feels nice to be able to wash my hands of any pressing work yet to be done regarding how I write about, record and catalogue my vacations. I may still eventually try to identify contingents among my photos of the World Pride Canal Parade, but it's not the end of the world if that never happens.
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I've already started looking at scheduling my holiday events for the year, even though August isn't even over yet. There's a couple of reasons for this. First, Amanda was able to send me the holiday concert schedule for her chorus, the Northwest Firelight Chorale, which for multiple years I have not made it to because it conflicted with other things I had planned. Now, I am able to mark my calendar
very early. I even coordinated with Gabby and we're going to go the same time: Saturday December 19, the matinee final show (of four).
And second, I had some email exchanges with Alexia, about the possibility of doing an overnight Christmastime trip to Vancouver B.C. this year, since my Family Vacation trip fell apart (had that still been happening, we'd be leaving for it tomorrow). Well, Alexia already has a trip to New York scheduled December 1-15, which really put a wrench in things. She didn't want to go inside the only-nine days between her return and Christmas Day, and that wouldn't have worked for me either since I'm already planning to take the week of Christmas off and it wasn't really feasible to take even more time off the previous week. I was totally open to going the weekend before she leaves, which is the weekend after Thanksgiving, but she wanted that time for putting up her Christmas decorations and otherwise taking it easy before her big trip.
So, just as Shobhit had suggested to begin with, in lieu of a trip to Vancouver, we're looking at returning to the Queen Mary Tea Room at Chriatmastime. This will mean three different Afternoon Teas in only the space of four months for me, but that's okay; I'll live! At my suggestion, though, Alexia and I marked our calendars for a holiday trip to Vancouver
next year—the weekend of December 4 and 5. I'm actually hoping we can make it two nights, which will allow us not to feel rushed, and that early in the month should not too badly affect the hoped-for trip t Asia and Australia in the last two weeks of that December, even if I take that Friday off. I'm just glad to have the dates marked, so we both have plenty of time to plan and know to plan other stuff around it. We're tageting Queen Mary Tea Room on Friday December 18
this year, so I've already got that, and a ton of other things, on my calendar from late November through December.
In fact I have a working list of like 18 things on my calendar already, and that's with several annual events I'm fine with skipping this year. I usually send Alexia a list of ideas for holiday events, though this year whatever happens between December 1 and December 15 she will be unavailable for. Still, we may do the opening night of Seattle Christmas Market, when the tickets are cheapest (like $7.50 I think); she's already expressed interest in joining for the Lighting of the Tree Ceremony the day after Thanksgiving; and we'll have the Queen Mary, hopefully. (It just occurred to me I can probably use my "Christmas events" budget line item to cover the cost of that.) She'll have to miss the Great Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition this year, though, and I don't know if Laney will be up for it. Laney's participation in any social engagement is still up in the air for the foreseeable future. I need to find another friend who is interested in this stuff! Tracy might be, I suppose.
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[posted 12:34pm]
