Last night in Wapato (This is a 'Five Nights At Freddy's' riff...anything there? Is this thing on?)
Tried to distill the last six weeks of lovely Wapato memories that I'll treasure forever into an enjoyable 10-minute read. Anyway, next stop: Portland!
In the immortal words of Elvis Presley, “Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.” This quote is particularly relevant to me for two reasons:
The recent release of Sofia Coppola’s marvelous ‘Priscilla,’ a harrowing
biopicpsychological thriller detailing Priscilla Presely’s six-year marriage to Elvis, and……the film’s main takeaway is that Elvis was an abusive, insecure husband who was, almost exclusively, always wrong.
In the spirit of championing ‘Priscilla,’ I have personally chosen to prove Elvis posthumously incorrect once more in the context of his musings on ambition: I last wrote something for this Substack on Halloween, and with four posts published in October, I carried the modest expectation that I’d continue to write at least something throughout the duration of the year. Then, November passed my by without so much as saying hello, and for good measure, the first half of December kicked me in the shins and pushed me into a puddle, then stole my identity and ruined my credit. Six weeks without writing! So much for a V8 engine. Turns out my ambition is more like one of those Pinewood Derby cars I had to make in 4th grade Boy Scouts. That is to say, it has no engine at all, the wheels fell off halfway through the course, and I’m more interested in collecting Webkinz than being a boy scout, anyway.
The good thing is, these last six weeks have been filled with an abundance of lovely trips to see movies and sip cocktails, so much so that I’ve got a true pirate’s bounty of memories to treasure. I’m writing this on December 11th, my final evening in Wapato. Tomorrow morning, I’ll pack my car and drive back to Spokane for the holidays. Then, come January, Cassidy’s work is taking us to Portland for our next stretch of 13 weeks. I’m currently sitting in a little booth at the Cowiche Canyon Kitchen—my favorite spot1 for a drink in Downtown Yakima—nursing a Negroni and thinking about movies, which is, to me, the pinnacle of the human experience. I’ve seen a number of films recently that have inspired me to write, if only time had allowed it. Those have included franchise fare—Cass and I watched all of the Alien movies blind, which was such a treat, and I also went through all of The Hunger Games and Austin Powers on my own; a deep dive into Alexander Payne’s filmography, including first-time watches of ‘Citizen Ruth,’ ‘Election,’ and ‘Sideways,’ three films that I adored; and a number of 2023 releases that will be at/near the top of my 2023 list, including ‘Anatomy of a Fall,’ ‘The Holdovers,’ ‘May December,’ and ‘The Boy and the Heron.’ (Also, a special shoutout to the delightful straight-to-Hulu ‘Quiz Lady,’ which is funny and tender and may have earned Will Ferrell a spot on my Best Supporting Actor list.)
I’m feeling thankful for the time I got to spend in the Wapato/Yakima area: for the dinners with my cousins, for the face-to-face time I got to put in with their young children who (hopefully) now think of me as an uncle, and especially for the many, many card games I lost to my grandparents. It was a very important few months of extra time with my family, time that felt…not unearned, exactly, but precious. Like a secret I was taking advantage of. This was time I didn’t expect I’d get even just a few months ago, and my lack of writing reflects—at least to me—that I made the most of it. How’s a boy to find the time to write when his time is always occupied by people he loves?
But I’m writing now and I’ll be quick about it, thank you very much. As I say farewell, some highlights of my movie-going and cocktail-drinking here include:
A triumphant return to the Orion Theater!
As was expansively documented in this post, my first two trips to the Orion Theater were, to put it generously, substandard. To put it less generously, if more accurately, they were like stepping into the realm of Satan himself, with nefarious goons either keeping me from buying a ticket or talking through the entire screening of ‘The Creator.’ Nevertheless, my evergreen enthusiasm for the magic of the theatrical experience—particularly when that theatrical experience contains alcoholic beverages—won out. I made two more pilgrimages to the Orion, and I’m happy to report that both of them qualified on the Richter Scale as “normal trips to the movies.” Sure, they don’t dim the lights nearly as much as they should, and sure, the in-theater servers talk at full-volume whenever they go take someone’s order. But it’s unquestionably the most luxurious movie-going experience in all of Yakima, and whatever woes the Orion may carry, it’s nothing that a Frosty Lemons or two can’t fix.
On my first trip back, my cousins and I saw ‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.’ It is always my goal to drag my loved ones out to the theater with me, and though none of us had read the prequel novel the film was based on, we’re all in the sweet-spot age group for The Hunger Games franchise having consumed our late-middle school/early-high school minds, so it wasn’t a difficult sell. Before the movie, we stopped at EZ Tiger next door, an Asian Fusion restaurant that never seems to be open when Apple Maps tells me it will be. BUT: they do have the best happy hour I’ve found in Yakima with very solid Margaritas and Lemon Drops for just $5 from 3:00-5:00 in the afternoon. A boy like me could drink himself silly in there for the low, low price of, like, $15 dollars. And with a movie theater literally next door? That’s a dangerous, dangerous game. That proved to be an excellent vibe to head into ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ with. And then I actually thought it was quite good! It’s a sort of throwback blockbuster, a really earnest/dramatic (but not self-serious) genre-piece that avoided the dull humor and wit of, say, a Marvel movie. I thought the budget was reflected well on screen, the leads did a nice job, and while the narrative momentum screeched to a halt in the third act, I left feeling satisfied about the money I spent, possessing a renewed interest in the world of Panem, and further entrenched in the cult of 2023 Jason Schwartzman. (What a heater he is on this year!) Maybe it was just three $5 margaritas and a couple of Frosty Lemons talking, but I wish more big-ticket blockbusters were as enjoyable and well-made as ‘Songbirds and Snakes.’
My second return trip to the Orion was to see Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon,’ and, well…the less said about that, the better.
Wait! You! Stop reading this now. Have you? No you haven’t, because you’re still reading this current sentence. Stopped yet? Okay, good. Now that I have your attention, I recently was a guest on the wonderful podcast Commedia dell'Cinema: A Comedy Movie Podcast, hosted by the incomparable Jordan Wold and Emily Walborn. We had a great talk about ‘Eurovision: The Story of Fire Saga’ and you should go listen right now, wherever you get your podcasts! And don’t forget to join our campaign to get ‘Eurovision’ on the Criterion Collection. Call your Congressman right now, please!
Some Dangerous Night Double Features in Seattle!
My favorite bonding activity with my little sister, Montanna, is to take her into downtown Spokane to see an absurdly programmed double feature. This tradition began in the summer of 2019 when we saw ‘Toy Story 4’ and (much to the chagrin of our brother-in-law) ‘Midsommar.’ By the summer of 2021 when we saw ‘Pig’ and ‘Escape Room: Tournament of Champions,’ season 2 of I Think You Should Leave was released, and we unofficially started calling our adventures “Dangerous Nights.” From there, the lore continued to expand: we started incorporating fancy dinners into the mix when we saw an early screening of ‘Dear Evan Hansen,’ where we wore our most elegant attire and dined beforehand at a swanky restaurant.
That ultimately escalated to us having sloppy steaks at Churchill’s before seeing ‘Marcel the Shell with Shoes On’ and ‘M3GAN.’ Churchill’s is Spokane’s finest steakhouse, and it can now boast that its hallowed history includes Montanna and I pouring water onto our steaks to make the night so much more fun.
The rest of the movie-going world finally caught up to our level with this summer’s ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon. (For the record, we did ‘Oppenheimer,’ then had dinner, and then went back for ‘Barbie.’)
Montanna started college this fall at the University of Washington in Seattle. It only takes a few hours to drive there from Wapato, so I’ve been able to make it over a few times over the last few months. During two of those visits, Montanna and I went out for another…Dangerous Night! First, in September, we met up with our cousins at AMC Pacific Place 11 in Downtown Seattle for ‘Saw X’ followed immediately by the re-release of ‘Stop Making Sense.’ While my best efforts to get “Stop Making Saw-nse” trending never caught on, it was still a delectable experience at the movies, with Jigsaw’s torturous traps equalled in notoriety only by David Byrne’s oversized suit.
Then, in mid-November, Cassidy and I drove up for a weekend in Seattle to see a Seahawks game. I, of course, incorporated into our plans built-in time to catch a few movies that didn’t make their way to Yakima: ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ on Friday, and then on Saturday, a Dangerous Night Double Feature of ‘The Holdovers’ (back at AMC Pacific Place 11) and ‘It’s A Wonderful Knife’ (at Regal Meridian, the nicest Regal Theater I’ve ever been to2). This double feature is the ideal encapsulation of what a Dangerous Night should be: two movies, both alike in dignity…okay, maybe not that. But both alike in some general, nebulous theme (both of these were Christmas movies!), but as incongruous as one could imagine in tone, genre, and quality. That, with a break for an absurd cocktail in the middle, is the perfect recipe for a Dangerous Night.
I adored ‘The Holdovers’ and I do feel compelled to write about it, either in some standalone piece down the line or in a wrap-up of my favorite movies of 2023. So stay tuned for that. As for ‘It’s A Wonderful Knife,’ go read what my sister wrote about it for her college’s 100% women-run site! She’s a good writer and I’m very proud of her, even though she doesn’t appreciate all the work that Henry Waters does to keep his town afloat.
My various misadventures at Yakima’s Multiplexes!
Other than the Orion, the immediate Yakima area has two other movie theaters, both multiplexes owned by the same person: Yakima Cinemas and the Majestic Theater in Union Gap. I do not know the person who owns these, but chances are very high that he is one of the seven people who read this Substack, so I will implore to you directly: please diversify your screening times! Both of those theaters show movies not in waves, but all at once: all of the screens start a movie between 12:15 and 12:45, and then there is a long gap until all of the screens start another movie between 3:15 and 3:45, and so on and so forth. And both theaters do this, at the same times! So if one had the GALL to to want to see a movie at 1:15 on a Saturday in Yakima, Washington…well, one would be greeted with a hearty “fuck you, and goodnight.” My rant is over now, and it is perhaps so niche in its gripe that I have lost the original path I set out at the beginning of this article and turned into Elvis myself: lonely, myopic, petty, and, most importantly, taller than Jacob Elordi3.
All of my issues with the Yakima cinema landscape aside, I did manage to make a few trips to the movies during my time here. Cass and I ventured out to see ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ in November and ‘Next Goal Wins’ in December, and on my own, I made time for the aforementioned ‘Priscilla,’ plus ‘Thanksgiving’ and ‘Godzilla Minus One.’ The best experience of all was with my cousin Abby just this past weekend, when we saw ‘The Boy and the Heron’ at the Majestic Theater, and then unpacked it over drinks at the Second Street Grill in Downtown Yakima. Now that’s a movie that BEGS to be discussed over a cocktail afterwards (kids who see it should do this, too). We saw it two nights ago and I left the theater feeling bullish on it, but in the short time since, I’ve essentially come around to it as a true masterpiece. More to come on this later on in the month, but I’m so floored by its beauty. Miyazaki is the master. And for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, as I said in my Letterboxd review, don’t think of it as a puzzle to be solved. It’s not. It’s just a feeling. (And do yourself a favor and go listen to Joe Hisaishi’s absolutely breathtaking score! The 36-tracks are, collectively, the song of the summer!)
That’s all for little old me, signing off from Wapato, Washington. As we approach the end of the year and this Substack continues to evolve and hopefully find its tone and lane in 2024, I’ve got some fun stuff planned, provided I find enough engine to actually write it all. If you are one of the few people who reads this, thanks a ton! Send it to your friends, because that would make me happy, and if you do it, I’ll make you a custom cocktail next time I see you! Until then, be well and happy holidays. And remember, only Henry Waters can answer if you’re naught or nice!
And one of the only spots for a quality drink around here…Yakima is not exactly a bustling metropolis. For example, the pizza place next door to our home is closed Monday-Wednesday, and shuts their doors at 5:00pm on Sundays. Recently, we walked in at 5:01pm (a reasonable hour to want to eat dinner) on a Sunday and were sent back into the cold Wapato night, the closest open restaurant a 25-minute drive away. I won’t miss that.
The Regal Meridian is one of many Seattle movie theaters with a walk-up bar in the lobby. Just before ‘It’s A Wonderful Knife’ started, Cassidy and I each ordered a margarita. I got a traditional one, and I highly suspect that the bartender forgot to put sweetener in it—it mostly tasted like tequila with a LOT of lime juice. Cass got a watermelon margarita that was “garnished” with sour patch watermelons. (And by “garnished,” I mean they poured about eight loose pieces of candy from a big ziplock bag on top of her drink so she could fish them out as she sipped. It was the happiest I have ever seen her.) The movies are back!
I am taller than Jacob Elordi. Just for the record. Someone tell me why I am not a famous actor? I’m 6’6”, Hollywood agents. Throw me on screen and it doesn’t matter what I say. Everyone will be too hypnotized by my condition.