Month: April 2019

The Perfect Date: Grating, Not Great

3SMReviews: The Perfect Date

The review:

A few years ago, I re-watched She’s All That and found that a movie that I had enjoyed on first viewing was not very good.* The Perfect Date is about at the level of She’s All That, but minus an awesome mid-movie dance scene and an enjoyable first time viewing experience. Noah Centineo isn’t very good at his craft right now,** and there wasn’t much else to recommend.

The verdict:

Skip, unless you have a thing for this guy. In which case you should also watch To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and Sierra Burgess is a Big Fat Loser.

Cost: Netflix Monthly Fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

Further sentences:

*Acting: not very good. Funny parts: not as many as I remembered. Character development: uneven
**For some reason he was fine in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and bugged the crap out of me in this movie.

3SMReviews: The Perfect Date

It Had to be You: A Rom-com About Not Wanting to Get Married

It Had to Be You movie review

The review:

As a person in a long-term relationship who does not want to be married, I was interested in Sasha Gordon’s It Had to Be You, a romantic comedy about a woman who freaks out when her boyfriend proposes. Cristin Miloti is laugh-out-loud funny in parts of this film and there’s a lot of sadness, what with all the trying to figure out what to do with a relationship where two people want different things. I could feel the movie hitting its beats* and I still found that watching it was a good way to spend my Sunday evening time.

The verdict: Good

Cost: free via Kanopy, the Multnomah County Library‘s streaming service
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*Which isn’t great, but is much better than the movie not hitting its beats and me wondering when this endless film will be over.

The orange sign says that a house will go.

The orange sign was hanging on the gate outside the door of the church near my house. Because that church is within 300 yards of a demolition, it got a warning.

I felt very sad, because I thought this beautiful house had escaped the demolition fate. So I took a bunch of pictures.

And then I eventually figured out that the address said Kilpatrick street, not Interstate. Somehow, this house has survived! You can see the temporary chain link fence where they are cutting off the backyard.

Unfortunately, the smaller house around the corner is the one that will be demoed, along with the building on the corner. You can see a picture of these buildings by going to this post. And I suppose that means the lilac tree will also be on it’s way out. I hate to lose a good lilac tree.

You can see what might be coming by reading this post.

Unicorn Store: Brie Larson is a steely candy confection

The review:

Unicorn Store is Brie Larson’s directorial debut, and much like Chris Evans’ directorial debut, it’s fine way to pass the time. Larson walks the line between steely and fantastical and Samuel L. Jackson looks like he is having a lot of fun. It’s also required viewing for people who are fans of whimsical costuming as it is packed full of candy-colored couture.

The verdict: Good

Cost: Netflix monthly rental fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching*:

  • Other Avengers with directorial debuts**:
    • Before We Go (Metascore 31, Chris Evans)
    • Sympathy for Deliciousness (Metascore 44, Mark Ruffalo)
    • Miles Ahead (Metascore 64, Don Cheadle)
    • Shelter (Metascore 43, Paul Bettany)
    • Of note: the Metascore for The Unicorn store is 45.

The caveats:

*Note that I can only vouch for the film I’ve watched. Report back to me if you have something to stay about the others.
**That would make a fun bar trivia question. Which of the Avengers have directed movies? Of course, you would have to define who the Avengers are.

Unicorn Store quote

When it takes two planners, two pens and a phone to plan out your weekend.

One of the things that always bugged me about the standard two-page planners I used from ages 20–35 was that Saturday and Sunday had to share a space that was the same size as every other day of the week got.

I’ve always had much more to do on the weekends, and I hated trying to cram everything into the smaller space.

The plus of the bullet journal is that you get to make you own size of pages for the day, and on this one both Saturday and Sunday each got their own page.

I’ve taken to doing a little journaling in a cheap composition book to determine my priorities. I have four categories (rest, chores, work, rituals) and I find that doing some free-form writing shakes out all the things and helps me put them in some sort of priority order.

The phone is where my calendar lives, so I needed that to remind me of official appointments. Once I have those down in the cheap composition book, I can start listing all the other things.

This was a weekend with more things at set times than I like. So I set this up in more of a time format. On other weekends I list my time-based appointments at the top, and then made two other lists: things that need to be done; things that would be nice to get done.

It’s been working well.

Alex Gino at the North Portland Library

Thanks to the Multnomah County Library’s commitment to bringing authors of children’s literature to local audiences, I got to see Alex Gino, author of George and You Don’t Know Everything Jilly P. at the North Portland Library. Gino is non-binary and uses the pronouns they, them, and their.

Things I learned:

Alex prefers to refer to their book George as Melissa’s Story, because George is a name that Melissa would prefer to never hear again. This had me wondering at the process to pick the book’s title.

There were many questions from the audience, which we submitted on index cards. The audience was at least half young people which might be the cause of Alex’s encouragement to write down questions that begin with something besides “what.” (Although my question What is your favorite part about being an author? also began with “what” so perhaps we all needed that encouragement.)

There was a question about navigating the world as a non-binary person and they said that it is hard, but it used to be harder, namely because there wasn’t a term. They were 19 before they found the term genderqueer.

Their next book Rick is coming in 2020 and they wrote it as a companion book to Melissa’s Story. They cited the reason that they did not write a sequel to Melissa’s Story is that for a book to happen, plot would have to happen and that means that bad things would have to happen to Melissa. They are not about having bad things happen to Melissa. Instead, Rick is a story investigating what it means to be so unsure of yourself that you hang out with the bully.

When asked about Melissa’s Story becoming an OBOB Book (Oregon Battle of the Books) they said that they grew up in a world where being queer on purpose around children wasn’t a thing. There were certainly people who were queer around children, but they had to hide that part of them. For their book to be recognized as literature is phenomenal and it gives them hope that things are moving in a good direction.

This led to a story of the signing event that happened on Sunday in Canby, Oregon. Apparently there were 250 people in attendance. The person sitting next to me was in attendance for the Canby signing and said that attendance was so high because Melissa’s Story was excluded from Canby’s OBOB tournament and the Canby Mayor rejected a proclamation honoring International Transgender Day of Visibility. So people of Canby made themselves visible in support of the author.

They ended their talk by saying that they believed that books saved lives and what their hope is for Melissa’s Story is that someday a trans woman will be walking late at night and someone coming toward her might be a very big guy, who is also drunk, and who recognizes this person as trans. And instead of doing what happens to so many trans people now–harassment or assault–that person will think of Melissa and just walk on by and everyone will get home safe.

The temporary chain link fence in Portland, Oregon: a harbinger of deconstruction to come.

It’s become a familiar sight in Portland. Chain link fence anchored by cement blocks surrounding an unused building or house. Soon the space behind the fence will be transformed. The buildings or houses will disappear and something newer and taller will grow in its place.

Here’s what Next Portland reported on 3/29/2016:

Early Assistance has been requested for a project at 8106 N Interstate Ave:

Proposal is for a new five story building with 120 apartment units including 64 group living units with shared kitchens. Proposed 33% parking ratio minus a 25% bike parking reduction will be provided in an undergrd garage.

And here’s what it says on 4/20/2018

Early Assistance has been requested by Habit for Humanity for a project at 8124 N Interstate Ave:

More than likely – future code -with not a lot of impact to the site/project by the changes: New construction of 30 units of multi-dwelling housing development. It will be two (2) 3-story buildings to be constructed in two phases. All units will be sold as permanently affordable condos through the City of Portland preference policy. This project is to move through the GATR fast-track process with oversight from PHB.

So we might be getting more permanently affordable condos in the neighborhood. I live in one, so I should be the first to say Welcome to the Neighborhood.

I do worry about parking, though. Right now, our situation is good. Add 30-plus cars? Perhaps not so good.