warm and lovely

saturday afternoon mikeliu came to yonkers to pick up me and mara from spring league. after being harassed by a guy impersonating the rock, getting my first slurpee in over a year, and making more than one wrong turn, we ended up back at the liu household for a pre-summer, house-leaving bbq.

it was my second time seeing garden state. it's such a wonderful movie. sometimes interactions between people are so awkward in real life, but movies just gloss them over and make them seem effortless and cheap. part of what makes garden state so touching is that it avoids doing this. in one of the first scenes, sam (natalie portman) gives andrew (zach braff) her headphones to listen to the shins. while he's listening, we see a long shot, 10 or so seconds, of her face. she does this thing where she smiles and then doesn't smile and then smiles and then half-smiles and then doesn't smile... that's what people DO when they get nervous, when they give someone else an opportunity to judge them and just have to wait for their response. it's just one example, but it's the one that comes most easily to my mind because sam is such an incredible character and natalie portman plays her so fucking well.

i just remembered going to see lost in translation with mara and mikeliu and london. walking out of the theater toward the subway, we kept hearing these sounds like firecrackers. sure enough, above the shadow of the park you could see fireworks going off. we sat on a ledge in the median and watched them until they finished. then we went to tomo and had sushi. it was such a perfect night.

after stuffing our faces with bbq we played taboo. we were all piled on top of each other in a circle in the living room, divided into good and evil teams. it was a close game, but the evil team won in the final sudden death round. it didn't matter, though. it was just fun to yell and shout and heckle each other and buzz that annoying buzzer at any taboo foul.

there was some animated discussion about faces/heads in food. i lost many games of ping-pong and othello. a smack-talking robot twenty-questions doodad was actually quite good at guessing things that we'd think up, much to gabi's surprise. and we got a nice ride home from eric, whom i miss tons.

my friends are incredible, smart, funny, clever, wonderful people. i live for days like this. they don't happen often enough anymore now that so many of us have moved/are moving on/away, but when they do they make me so happy. this is one of the best and most lasting things about playing ultimate in college: i got to meet some of the greatest people in the world.