I didn’t even have to turn my head away from the TV for this view.
I was walking down Market Street just now, on my way home from the gym, wearing a white hooded sweatshirt, black yoga pants, and bright yellow sneakers, with my brown hair in a messy knot, carrying a nylon bag, when a girl about my age crossed the street and started walking a couple feet in front of me, in the same direction as me, at the same pace as me, wearing a white hooded sweatshirt, black yoga pants, and bright pink sneakers, with her brown hair in a messy knot, carrying a nylon bag.
Only her sweatshirt and yoga pants and sneakers and nylon bag looked newer and cleaner and nicer than mine, and her messy hair knot looked more voluminous. I was already walking briskly but I picked up my pace and speed-walked so that we wouldn’t be near each other anymore. And I thought about what she must have thought when she saw me pass her.
And I felt like this face: :S
Ed and I got back to San Francisco late last night, and this afternoon we took the streetcar down Market Street to see Harry Potter.
Watching a movie adaptation of any beloved book is always an intensely fraught experience for me, but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 vastly exceeded my expectations. The last book is fairly saggy, and could certainly have used some editorial tightening, and I assumed that only seeing the first half of the end would be at least somewhat unsatisfying.
But I was so delighted with the way Steve Kloves and David Yates handled the material, I left the theater wishing I could hug them. I thought this was easily the best Harry Potter movie so far, and was thrilled with the choice to split the book into two movies. Personally, I feel pretty passionately that if Steve Kloves had written the screenplay for Order of the Phoenix, if David Yates had directed Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire, and if Half-Blood Prince had also been split into two parts, the entire series would be essentially perfect. The directorial flourishes in Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire infuriate me, in part because I think they are overwrought and clumsy, but mostly because of how much plot had to be cut or oversimplified in order to leave room for ineffective showiness. But Yates’s direction has so much more finesse, and in my opinion, Kloves did a fine job shaping the meandering narrative into enough of an arc. Splitting Deathly Hallows into two parts gave them both so much more room to operate, and I think that really paid off. I wish they’d had the opportunity to do the same thing with Half-Blood Prince. Unfortunately, Snape and Voldemort’s backstories, which could easily fill a whole extra movie, were lost in the adaptation, and the series is far shallower as a result.
So, this afternoon I was walking along Market Street, on my way home from the gym, when the same guy from a few weeks ago raced up to me and said exactly the same thing: “Excuse me, you are beautiful, I just had to tell you, you are breathtaking.”
Do I have a stalker? He doesn’t look or smell like the usual Market Street crazy person, but maybe this is his regular hobby, running up to girls on the sidewalk and giving them the same line, verbatim? Maybe he has a fetish for sweaty, unflattering workout apparel?
I don’t know whether to be freaked out or flattered.
This is the vision that prompted a random guy to sprint down Market Street and follow me into 24 Hour Fitness because he “just had to” tell me that I’m “beautiful” and “breathtaking.”
He didn’t even ask if I had any spare change.
