panelism

— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ चौहत्तर — I had my 1x1 meeting with Gabby yesterday afternoon, because she's got another commitment all morning on Friday, when we usually have them. Wednesday is also the day most of the Merchandising department is asked to come work in the office, so we had the meeting in person. We had a surprising lot to discuss, especially after the weekly Wednesday Team Meeting with her and Amy in the morning ended after only about 15 minutes, for lack of things to cover. One of the things she brought up was having me take part in the interview panel for Shelley's replacement. This wasn't the first time she brought it up, and when she initially asked if I'd want to be a part of it, I gave a pretty casual "No," because, frankly I'm not that emotionally invested in it. Gabby gave a very "Why not?" response, and asked me to think it over. She asked yesterday if I had thought it over, and I hadn't much really, but she was so encouraging that I do it that I was finally kind of like, "Okay fine." I got an email from her this morning, CCing Justine, which began with, I spoke with Justine yesterday and she thinks it’s a great idea for you to be involved in the interviews for the open Grocery Merchandiser position. I mean, I'm not that surprised Justine thought it was a great idea, although I have no idea whether Gabby told her about my reticence or if she kind of let Justine assume it was my idea. I feel like the former is more likely, but whatever. Over the past year in particular, I really seem to have shifted into a position of respect around here—not that that has included any change in title or salary—and to be honest, I have struggled to embrace it. This isn't false modesty, either. It's really a resistance to the potential for new challenges I don't particularly want, but whatever I can envision those challenges to be is pretty nebulous so I can't say I have a very strong basis for it. Gabby, I think, is very interested in pushing me toward it, whatever it might entail. Given the turnover over the past decade or so, I really am left with more insight about certain things than most others left. It's happened by default, because I am what's left after others fall away. It's like, actual evolution. I wonder if that last fish with legs left after all the ones with nubs died off was like, "Oh great. Now I have to walk for everyone who comes after me. Fuck." Anyway. The interview process won't likely start until April. And now I'll have to work that into my work schedule. It will be a new, valuable learning experience. I suppose. I have long been walking around here saying I have no ambition, and until now the general response has been for others to keep a hands-off approach to ideas regarding any kind of job advancement for me. In a way, Gabby is taking the initiative to be ambitious for me. I'm okay with that, so long as what boundaries I still have remai clear. You could not pay me enough to be a Merchandiser, for example. — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ चौहत्तर — — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ चौहत्तर — Shobhit worked unusually late last night, until 10:00. I had no movie to go see, so I spent the evening at home, and I wound up watching two movies. I had a library DVD copy of Like Water for Chocolate, which I checked out because of a recent conversation with Gabriel. It came up while I was telling him about seeing The Taste of Things, which, incidentally, is a far better film. I really felt like a lot of Like Water for Chocolate, a Mexican film made in 1992, did not age well (the main character's mother being a nearly unrepentant bitch; a scene very much suggesting her sister is about to be raped, with no follow-up whatsoever about the ramifications; the main character's lover marrying her sister "just to be near her" and how blithely the movie regards that sister's honestly innocent position in all this, but she gets treated like shit anyway . . . honestly I could go on). But hey, there are two scenes where sexual passion results in spontaneous combustion, so that's fun! I wound up watching a second movie spontaneously, just because, after finishing the latest Rory Scovel comedy special on HBO, I noticed it as an option and had heard a few references to it on podcasts I listen to: Albert Brooks: Defending My Life. It was, I guess I'd say, good enough. I am noticing something about the way I track movie watching on Letterboxd. Before I went all-in with that website, the only thing I tracked carefully was movies I reviewed, which were always first-run films. With Letterboxd, I track every single movie I watch, or rewatch, whether in the theater or at home, whether new or old. And I watch a shit ton of movies. We are 60 days into the year 2024, and I have watched a movie 49 times in that span. That's an average of one movie every 1.22 days. To put it more succinctly, I watch a movie on most days. In fact, my current average cadence is very close to watching a movie 5 out of every 6 days. That's a lot, right? — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ चौहत्तर — [posted 12:32 pm]

SHŌGUNATION

— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ तिहत्तर — The highlight since I last updated was that Shobhit and I watched the first two episodes of the FX series Shogun on Hulu, and it was great. I already have a favorite line: "I've had enough of your Christian nonsense." Ha! I only knew about this series because podcasters I listen to talked about how excited they were about it. I knew absolutely nothing about the story's legacy: first published as a novel in 1975 by an Australian author baned James Clavell, apparently a huge bestseller; then adapted into a 1980 NBC miniseries, apparently a giant cultural event, nearly on par with Roots (that one I have heard of). I must say, though, that I am perfectly happy for this new iteration to be the first I have been exposed to, particularly considering the novel and original minieries were presented from the point of view of John Blackthorne, the English navigator whose ship runs ashore in 1600 Japan. In this version, although Blackthorne remains a major and key figure, the story is contextualized almost exclusively from the point of view of the Japanese people. This makes the current show very much an Asian-majority cast, who actually speak Japanese most of the time—apparently this also happened with the 1980 miniseries, but without subtitles (because in that version we are meant to experience it from Blackthorne's eyes)—and we get nearly all of what they say translated in subtitles. The one kind of weird thing is that, among the White characters, there are English and Portuguese people, their status as enemies to each other another key plot point. For some reason, when we are meant to understand the White characters are actually speaking Portuguese, the actors speak in English. I was telling Noah about that this morning, and I'm kind of on the same page with him when his basic reaction was: why? We've got tons of subtitles for real Japanese being spoken, what reason is there not to have actors actually speaking Portuguese? I can think of two reasons, neither of which are great reasons in my opinion. One of them is: with Portuguese actually spoken as such by the White actors, very little actual English would be spoken onscreen, because the English characters speak Portuguese, but the Portguguese characters do not speak English. (So what?) The other is: perhaps the idea is that keeping all the White people equally understandable draws a stronger delineation between Western and Eastern characters. (Why is that so important?) That quibble aside, the way it handles language somewhat illogically still works, and the show is very compelling so far. I'm really looking forward to having a new episode to see every week for the next eight weeks. — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ तिहत्तर — — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ तिहत्तर — Shobhit and I decided to make pasta for dinner last night, choosing angel hair noodles and adding chopped eggplant that might have otherwise gone bad to the pasta sauce. Those noodles really absorbed the pasta sauce and it could have taken a whole second jar, really. Nonetheless, it was super tasty and we both had too much of it, resulting in a slight increase in weight for both of us this morning. Shobhit wanted to get our tax filing done last night and thus resisted turning the show on at first. But, we were obviously not going to do the taxes while eating, so I turned on the first episode when we sat down to eat. We broke between episodes to take care of the taxes, which Shobhit needed to have done by tomorrow before apparently the filing fee goes up (this was why he wasn't waiting until the filing deadline of April 15). We got through it surprisingly quickly, though, and then moved right on to the second episode of Shogun. This new show's creators are a married couple, by the way: Rachel Kondo, who (thankfully) is of Japanese descent, and Justin Marks, who is White. Marks also wrote the screenplay for the wonderful 2016 live action version of The Jungle Book, and was co-writer on Top Gun Maverick. This new Shogun is getting nearly universal critical acclaim and, so far, I'd say it's deserved. That is, in spite of what I found to be a bit of variance when it comes to actor performances; I like some better than others. But the storytelling is really fantastic, as is the production value. — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ तिहत्तर — [posted 12:31 pm]