Moving along

As I'm packing to move yet again, I came across this nearly twenty year old list of places to live.

A couple took longer than the ~10 years allotted, but I've managed to check off six.

Movies

I posted last December when I first got the moviepass. Below is the list of movies I've seen since then. Without a doubt, I've seen waaaaaaay more movies in theaters than I normally would. I mean, I really like seeing movies in theaters, but really hate the cost. But when you live in a little teeny town (pop 1,100), there is often nothing much better to do than go to the "big city" next door (pop. 3,900) and see a movie, so the moviepass was a great idea for me.

* Some favorites: The Princess Bride, Lady Bird, The Disaster Artist, and Love, Simon. 

All pretty much excellent. I honestly had no idea what to expect going 

* Least favorites: The Greatest Showman, Justice League, The 15:17 to Paris, Red Sparrow

Okay, look: I really don't like superhero movies as a genre, I hate musicals, the 15:17 to Paris was rah rah fuck yeah 'murika bullshit, and Red Sparrow was full of toxic femininity and a ridiculous plotline to boot. And I have a hard time with movies set in foreign countries, with mostly supposedly foreign characters, speaking mostly fluent English, with bad accents. 

* Seriously meh even though many people raved about them: Black Panther, The Post, Call Me By Your Name.

The Post was kinda boring and overwrought. Call Me By Your Name tried hard and meant well but was really overdone and regularly silly (let's not even talk about the masturbating into a peach scene.) And Black Panther, while an important social phenomenon, was just a shitty movie, full of bombastic overdone silliness, and brimming with hyper toxic masculinity. 

* Movies there is no way I would have seen if not for Moviepass and living in a little teeny town where there is often little better to do than drive to the slightly less teeny town nearby: at least 7/8 of them.

* Approximate amount I've cost Moviepass in the just over four months I've had it: at least $300 (a number of the below movies were in Boston and DC and the ticket price was as much as $16.) Their financial model is a mystery to me, so I'm getting as much out of it as I can before it collapses. 

Note that my theater options (when I'm not traveling) are limited by the fact that I have one first-run theater within easy driving distance (and that's still a half hour each way.) And it kinda sucks. Right now it's playing two bible thumpers (and it plays EVERY bible thumper that comes through), it was playing Jumanji until last week, it had Peter Rabbit on two screens (out of fucking eight screens!) until last week. The upside is that at least five or six times I've literally had the entire theater to myself, and there are rarely more than five or ten other people in stadium style theaters that seat over 100 easily. 

An aside: why do almost all of the movies about queer people have to be about very very privileged, very very white, queer people? I know: Love, Simon ended up having a person of color be one of the heroes in the end, but he notably wasn't featured in any of the pre-movie publicity, and in fact no queer POC characters were in the promotional materials (and fuck you if you say "well, it woulda been a spoiler...") 

Anyway, here is the whole list as of now: 

Chappaquiddick

A Quiet Place

Foxtrot

Annihilation

The Forgiven

Love Simon

Hurricane Heist

Red Sparrow

Death Wish (2018)

The 15:17 to Paris

Game Night

Black Panther

Winchester

Call Me By Your Name

I, Tonya

Proud Mary

Insidious

Darkest Hour

The Post

The Princess Bride

The Greatest Showman

Downsizing

The Shape of Water

Lady Bird

Star Wars Episode VIII

The Disaster Artist

Coco

Wonder

Justice League

Summary: I'm getting plenty of use out of moviepass, and will continue to do so while it lasts. But I'm not super optimistic. 

Movies

Knives and tinysizing

This is (most) of my current knife collection, trotted out last night for a good thorough cleaning with q-tips, cotton balls, and rubbing alcohol while watching netflix. As longtime readers know, I like to keep my tools clean.

It's kinda like your kids: you love them all, but if you're being honest, you love them differently. Each one of these has a specific role and purpose. Yes, there's a little redundancy with the three Leatherman Waves, but one lives in the car, one is EDC on my belt, and the middle (with the lanyard) is both a really nice tool, and has some sentimental value.

While it's a lot of knives, it doesn't add enough meaningful bulk to my tinysizing project to worry about it much. What's this tinysizing project, you ask? Making everything I own fit in, or on, my car. Used to be everything I owned fit in a two door Ford Festiva. Now the project is to get somewhere back close to that.

In case you're wondering about any of these, you should ask! The weird looking pull knife, second from the right, is the largest blade I could legally carry in Boston, and is pretty wicked looking open: