at home behind the sun

As part of the step back and collect program, I watched Lagaan this weekend. I am not going to critique the movie, but I will say this: it was four hours long, its entire premise hinges on a cricket match, and I still do not understand how the game works. Am I the only Indian on earth that just cannot figure out cricket? As a sports enthusiast, this has always troubled me. All I have ever managed to grasp is this- people yell out wicket & sixer periodically. I think a sixer is a good thing, since my father has always used it as slang. If someone has cracked a particularly good joke or really taken the piss out of someone, my father likes to say, in Gujarati, that they've "hit a sixer." As for wicket, I am still not sure. Is it like a strike? Ow... my head hurts again.

I got what I needed out of this weekend, without much alcohol consumption, for those of you monitoring for the optimal time to stage an intervention. Also, something was in the air on Saturday that took the bro-seph, me, and the Chinese woman who runs the laundromat across the street from me out, fully out of commission, thanks to some nasty allergen. Because of this, I am not at all opposed to the torrential rainfall of the last 48 hours. As JP would say, "I love it when it rains, washing all the urine out of the Mission." Ah, my GBF, he is quite the poet.

On Saturday morning, my friend MM and her husband visited from SoCal. We met fairly early in the morning. I grumble about getting up to meet people at 9 a.m. on a Saturday, but once I have actually gotten out the door, it is always rather lovely. When I got to the restaurant, MM and h-unit were still on 280. So, I signed her name onto the waiting list, and pulled out a book. A few moments later, a dead ringer for Mark Ruffalo approached me and said, "Are you MM's friend?"

Mark Ruffalo-light was a friend of theirs who lives in the East Bay. We chatted for a while before the couple arrived, and he embodied the Ruffalo more and more over time. Okay, let me just say first that, even though he appears in craptastic film after craptastic film, I have a thing for the Ruffalo. You Can Count on Me? Come on. He has earned a long grace period thanks to that film.

Here's the problem with a Ruffalo in real life though. What do you like about the Ruffalo? You like that he wants to get it together, but hasn't quite managed it yet. You like his quiet, understated way, and the fact that a lot may be going on underneath the surface. Um, yeah- in real life? That is not nearly as charming. In fact, after about ten minutes of semi-awkward conversation, I nearly bear-hugged MM when she showed up. Mark Ruffalo-light, we hardly knew you. And maybe that was plenty.

See, I am not a nice person.