Highlights: Tommy was up and out of the house around 5 a.m. to head down for his dive rescue training in Monterey. He made a point of touching base with Lauren before leaving and telling her he loved her. That was sweet. We played SkipBo before heading out on an adventure and dropping her off at the train station. We went to downtown Mountain View. It has changed. It's been converted to support the increased Asian demographic. We had some amazing sponge cake, and there are many places we plan to try. It's weird to be thrilled to have all of the cultural influences we have in our area. However, it's still disorienting to have what I know as a hometown evolve into something different over the decades. Especially when a few pass between times, revisiting old haunts. I can't help but imagine this is an age-related phenomenon. When you live long enough to see things change, you're more aware that they have, well, the 30 or 40 youth years are spent in relative ignorance of the gradual effect of the world on your brief time in it. After dropping Lauren off at the train, we returned home and headed back to the Stanford for a double feature of Psycho and Strangers on a Train. It was only halfway through the movie that Jen shared having never seen it before. She knew the story. But had not seen the film. It was a wonderful experience, and I am thrilled to have had the rare opportunity to sit through a celluloid projection-based screening of psycho in a packed theater of fans and aficionados seated next to somebody experiencing it for the first time—her squeal when Martin Balsam was attacked by. Mrs. Bates at the top of the staircase was genuine and exhilarating. How amazing it is, some 20, some 60 years later, to sit and witness this masterpiece with such appreciation for all of the films I have seen and loved that were somehow touched or inspired by this director's skill, craft, and innovation. Anthony Perkins' portrayal of Norman Bates is Oscar-worthy. And to have a lead character so dramatically excised from the storyline in the first one-third reminded me of such films as Pulp Fiction and 1917, both of which likely owe this art of storytelling to Hitchcock It's also... a fun exercise to imagine seeing this movie for the first time, knowing nothing about it whatsoever, and how significantly and how fresh and new the storytelling and cinematography and even the violence and horror must have been to a generation that had not seen anything like it before. Now we get the same sort of horror in a cat food commercial. Strangers on a Train was equally enjoyable, as was having Velma and Kelly join us for that second feature. It's genuinely in my top five, if not top three. We returned to their home to sit on the patio and enjoy sangria, snacks, and conversation. We're blessed. We got home to find Tommy had Allison over and they were hanging out in the living room. I'm glad he's seemingly reached the point of being comfortable with somebody over at the house. His earlier texts inquiring about our plans for the evening and whether the priests were coming over or not indicated that he had something specific behind his inquiry. This was it. I wanna chill out and let him enjoy his chance to develop a healthy relationship.
