Speaking of the weather, I managed the great bi-annual jacket changeover this week, from my long winter overcoat to my lighter coat. It might have been a tad premature, but I powered through. I successfully transferred my building pass for work from one jacket to the other, and once I had managed that once I didn't want to get too fancy switching back and forth. (Of course, the building pass expires in one more week, with the whole contract still in limbo, but that's a rant for another day.)
Time's been on mind my mind, though not on my side, as usual.
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On Friday the 13th of this month, after the kids were down in bed for the night, I scooted over to the local microbrewery to refill a couple of growlers (because powering through season 4 of Game of Thrones is thirsty work). While I was waiting at the bar for my order to be filled, I was admiring a ceramic stein that seemed to be placed there for the admiring. It was branded with the name of the microbrewery and I suspected they were for sale to the public, so I asked how much they went for. The guy behind the bar told me ($35) and I must have made a face which was easily interpreted as that's-more-than-I-was-hoping-you-would-say. So the guy then proceeded to give me the spiel about how they're hand-made and high-quality (dishwasher safe!) and all that, but none of that really impacted me all that much.
So the guy shifted gears and explained that the stein held somewhere between 18 and 20 ounces, which is of course a few ounces more than a standard pint. But they fill, and re-fill, the stein while charging the same price as a pint. That, finally, made an impact, albeit a minimal one. Nevertheless the guy emphatically pointed out, "So, you come in, pay for a pint and get your stein filled, you only need to do that, like, 52 times and the stein pays for itself!"
Beer math is the best math, it's true, but I can't even fathom how long it would actually take me to go back to the microbrewery 52 times. Probably four years, minimum. I applaud the guy's salesmanship, but as of yet I've resisted the temptation to invest in free beers in the 2020's.
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Hopefully by now most people have had a chance to check out the "If Wes Anderson Directed X-Men Movies" parody on YouTube. (If not, voila.) I like Wes Anderson movies. I like the X-Men. I was amused.
But what the clip most keenly made me aware of was just how deeply the Alamo Drafthouse has gotten into my head. Because my first thought after watching the video was that it would be a great element of the pre-feature clip collection for either an X-Men movie or a Wes Anderson movie. In fact, apparently I want to recreate my own little Alamo experience in my house (mostly so I can curate the clip collections myself I reckon), since I briefly entertained the thought of showing my wife the We Anderson X-Men parody before we sit down to watch Grand Budapest Hotel some night. And then I thought IT IS ALREADY IMPOSSIBLE TO CARVE OUT AN UNINTERRUPTED HOUR AND A HALF TO WATCH A MOVIE WITH YOUR WIFE WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO ADD ON A 20 MINUTE PRE-SHOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?
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I just remembered that I've actually been down this road before. Back in the day when I was a young louche splitting a townhouse with buddies, we would from time to time host parties dedicated to playing the Star Wars drinking game. We would go through the entire trilogy, so these were all day affairs, and by the time we already had survived a couple they were drawing a fairly large crowd. This was around 1997 or so, too, so we were using VHS copies of the movies, which actually matters for the particulars of this anecdote. So, people descended on our townhouse at the appointed time early on a Saturday afternoon, and we were about ready to get started, go over the rules of the game, and so on. But to get everyone's attention, we started with a little video bonus: Hooper X's rant about the gentrification subtext of Star Wars from Chasing Amy. It related to the trilogy, it comes from one of my other favorite movies, and it's pretty hilarious, so it was worth it to physically cue the Chasing Amy videotape up to the scene in question in advance. I would have loved to have done a whole clip reel instead of one scene, but I'm sure that didn't even occur to me given the daunting logistics of popping multiple tapes in and out of the VCR. We had a lot more time on our hands back then, but not infinite time.
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I felt like I had a bunch more time-themed things to talk about, but maybe my mind was playing tricks on me. Too much time gone by in my life for my memory to be terribly reliable, I suppose, but I've known that for a while.
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