I’ve been having a nice week of unpacking, reading, working a wee bit and having friends visit. Roz was in town in her new incarnation as a program
officer for the Jewish Fund for Justice. It was great to catch up on the big (friends and families) and little (the Mets and card games) over large plates
of meat and carbs at Panchita’s. I also caught Vin on the tail end of her whirlwind tour of the Bay Area. We had a sea otter dinner of oysters, mussels
and seared Ahi tuna. Despite stretching dinner into a four hour affair, I feel like we didn’t have nearly as much time together as I’d like. With Vin,
there’s always one more story to tell or funny to share. Tomorrow, Joannie’s good friend Komal and her partner will be coming to visit. Komal’s a
comedienne in town to perform for Trikone’s KultureKulcha. More info. at www.komalb.com.
I’m primed for a real funny after clenching my jaws and cringing my way through Touching the Void. That movie is like a Jack London primer—don’t mess
with nature, especially when it’s glacial and at 21,000 ft. above sea level. What’s up with the straight white men with thrill seeking issues? You will
never find a queer person of color trying to claw their way up a sheer ice wall with some souped up ice picks. In spite of the macro problems of risking life and spending a ridiculous amount of money to climb a mountain, I was fascinated by the survival instincts of these two
climbers. Spoilers ahead…
So the story is that these two dudes decide to reach the summit of some mountain in the Peruvian Andes. They make it up there with relative ease, but
Joe breaks his leg on the way down. More specifically, Joe’s kneecap decides it’d be a character building made for movie moment to migrate up to his thigh bone. Joe decides he’s a goner. But Joe’s climbing buddy—Simon (who looks oddly like Wallace of Wallace and Gromit) rigs a plan to lower Joe down the mountain 150 ft at a time—from 21,000 ft. From jump you get the sense that this is not going to work. To cut to the chase, Joe ends up hanging at the end of the rope with Simon holding on for dear life. Neither one of them can see, hear or otherwise signal to each other. After some time, Simon figures Joe is dead and cuts the rope. This sends Joe into another jaw clenching plunge. This time into a deep, dark, icy crevice. Miracle of all miracles, Joe manages to crawl out of the crevice, slide down the icy slopes, hops along a field of boulders using his glorified ice pick as a walking stick, and drags himself through the camp latrine to the relative safety of Simon and their other gear watching duty buddy Richard. I couldn’t get over this guy’s willpower or maybe it’s a sense of entitlement.
I would probably figure that being abandoned with a broken leg, no food, no water, not a yak, donkey or other living creature in site in sub-zero weather
is a sure recipe for the end of Lunamania. But this guy things, “No! This is not the order of things! I am Joe! Young, ridiculous, fearless white mountain
climbing dude! I can conquer these odds!”
Anyway, I need to stop obsessing about this movie.