an Oddity scares the shit out of me

08312024-32

— पांच हजार छह सौ अड़सठ —

Last night was Action Movie Night at The Braeburn Condos theater . . . it sort of felt like a slightly less-attended week, and Shobhit even thought there had only been eight people. But, I had literally counted nine people there while we were eating in the kitchen before the movie.

Let's see if I can remember them all: Tony, Jake, Ryan, Chris G, Chris B, Derek, Daniel, Shobhit, and myself. That's nine!

It was Ryan's choice this week. He likes to bring multiple options, provide vague details and then ask us to vote. In the end we all told him, after a fair amount of discussion, that he's just supposed to choose. He did tell us, though, that he had three options: one from each year in 2022, 2023, and 2024; one "man-movie" (meaning: actual action movie), one "really fucked up" movie, and one horror movie that had the best reviews.

This left me unsure of how to choose, myself. I like to choose whatever has the best reviews but do not lean toward horror as a rule. "Fucked up" can mean all sorts of things so it could be fine for me or it could be deeply disturbing. And still, a title referred to as a "man movie" kind of puts that one at the bottom of my list.

In the end, Ryan went with the one with the best reviews: the horror movie. He also got points by managing to choose something not one of us had seen, or even heard of. I was kind of surprised not even Daniel, our newest regular, knew of it; he goes to advanced screenings constantly and probably sees movies in theaters even more often than I do.

It was an Irish film called Oddity, and not only was it surprisingly well constructed and crafted, it also scared the shit out of me. It also stars a woman named Carolyn Bracken as both Dani and Darcy, who are twin sisters. One is brunette though and one has short platinum blonde hair. I truly did not even register that it was the same actor until I looked it up while writing this.

Anyway. I've sat through horror movies at Action Movie Night several times now. I don't think any of the previous ones had me holding my hands over my eyes as much as this one, nor has any other left me feeling as unsettled.

As for the food before the movie, Shobhit and I brought pasta and garlic bread, which turned out to be the only vegetarian option there, aside from a bag of jalapeño potato chips. Shobhit gets legitimately resentful when others don't bring vegetarian options, but I don't think that's fair. We joined a long-existent group with their own norms, and all the rest of them eat meat. It's better just to be grateful that, most of the time, at least one other person brings something without meat in it, especially when they are under no official obligation to. This is precisely why Shobhit and I always bring food rather than just a drink: to guarantee we actually have something to eat.

One person did bring a pizza, with pepperoni on it; and Daniel came with lasagna, this time with meat in it as well. He tends to bring something like that, which has to be prepared in the oven or in the microwave, and it's not ready until most people have eaten something else. I think he was the only one who had any of the lasagna. About half of our farfalle pasta got eaten.

— पांच हजार छह सौ अड़सठ —

10022021-90

— पांच हजार छह सौ अड़सठ —

After the movie, Shobhit and I went back to our condo on the 4th floor of the East building, and we watched this week's episode of Only Murders in the Building—which, kind of amazingly, is now in its fourth season. Last week's season premiere had the trio going to Hollywood for a meeting about adapting their podcast into a film, and there was a bit of meta facetiousness about the "creepy" age gap between the two male leads (Steve Martin, age 79; and Martin Short, age 74) and the female lead (Selena Gomez, age 32). Somehow, though, the trio actually works—as evidenced by the show being in its third season.

We have lots of other TV to watch that we just haven't gotten to yet. Yesterday was the fourth season premiere of Slow Horses. Today is the second episode of season two of The Rings of Power. I feel like I might be missing something. Oh! We still have episodes to watch of Pachinko on Apple TV+. Also, I know The Penguin starts on HBO September 19 and I can only hope that's good. I suppose we should put season 4 of The Boys on our list; we never watched that and the run is already over.

— पांच हजार छह सौ अड़सठ —

06182022-47

[posted 12:28 pm]

tales of the sunny

08312024-14

— पांच हजार छह सौ सड़सठ —

Pretty low-key evening last night. Shobhit had a board meeting over Zoom when I got home from work, and then he went out for a while.

I spent most of the evening binging Sunny on Apple TV, a series about a woman who lives in Japan and gets a mysterious gift from her husband presumed to have died in a plane crash with their child: a "homebot," an AI home assistant robot.

The show isn't that great, really. But the robot is the title character and her behavior cracks me up.

— पांच हजार छह सौ सड़सठ —

08312024-16

— पांच हजार छह सौ सड़सठ —

My morning has been mostly putting out fires here and there, constant distraction from the primary task at hand that I am meant to be doing. I do love taking my breaks to read for half an hour out on the office patio—a feature we are likely to lose when we move office locations again in the next year or two. (To find a place "more aligned with our values," our CEO loves to say, even though it's mostly because this gorgeous office space contributes to wildly unfounded perceptions among store staff that we're all in here sitting in an ivory tower.)

I'm still waiting for Dune Messiah to become available for checkout at the library. I finished Sea of Tranquility which kind of disappointed me, and I found myself once again looking at my own bookshelf for something to read. Shobhit recently picked up More Tales of the City and Further Tales of the City for free at a Seattle Public Library booth book giveaway at some event I can't remember (I think it may have been Pride?), and at the time I thought it odd that he should consider reading those without reading the first book in the series. But then when I went to look at my shelved books, I was like: Holy shit! I have the original book already!

So anyway, now I'm reading Tales of the City. I have a record of having read it once before since I started logging my read books in 2003; I read it in 2006. I want to say I read it once before that, which would make this the third time I have read it; I thought I had read the second and third books in the series already but now I can't find any confirmation of that at all; if I did, it was in the nineties. But, there are now apparently ten books in the series (and there had been six by 2006, three more than perhaps I realized even then) and I currently find myself considering reading the whole lot of them.

They're a light, fun, breezy read in any case. Armistead Maupin also wrote a memoir a few years ago that may also be a fun read.

— पांच हजार छह सौ सड़सठ —

08312024-15

[posted 12:32 pm]