Am I deranged enough to embark on another review project? While cleaning toilets and vacuuming radiator nooks and crannies this evening, I thought of how difficult the next few months will be.* This was Best Friend’s favorite time of year, starting with Halloween and continuing through Christmas. I grabbed some of his music and video playlists so I can continue those traditions for him, if not this year then in the future. We also had a few joint rituals I won’t attempt without him.
After the holidays come our birthdays, which are only days apart, followed by the Australian Open. Much of the action in Melbourne takes place overnight for North American viewers and he usually watched it live, sending wry commentary at a rapid clip throughout the tournament (or cryptic jokes if he didn’t want to spoil a surprise). During Grand Slams we often emailed each other excessively, enough to have exhausted multiple Gmail threads containing 100 entries by championship weekend.** But we would also watch anything from Masters 1000s to mere 250s. There was even a summer when we followed World TeamTennis.
These tennis threads weren’t exclusively about tennis, of course. We used Gmail the way others might use texting or messenger apps; we liked that it kept everything tidy and easily searchable. Sometimes our missives were only a few sentences long and part of real-time exchanges, unlike the novella-length emails we once traded over AOL. By 2015, we were like an old married couple; he’d write “Have you seen the paprika?” at 10 pm on a Sunday and we’d kvetch about spices and pantry organization.
Getting back to the holidays, he went through a period where he got really into cheesy Hallmark movies and mysteries. I had an idea last year for a Hallmark holiday project we could do together one day, but I only discussed it with Crankenstein because he was struggling then and would’ve dismissed it out of hand. She thought the concept was funny and with her encouragement I reserved the URL. I was going to put up some solo content later this year and surprise him with it, then ask if he might want to contribute in the future.
Is this still worth pursuing without him? I’m not sure. Regardless of whether we collaborated, the fun was going to be in hearing his thoughts on any films I watched that he’d already seen. Maybe I’ll watch one this weekend for a better idea of whether it’s even feasible or if it makes me too sad.
* Our radiators are built into the walls, with heavy old covers that aren’t easy to remove. It makes them a pain to dust and vacuum and I’d create a custom vacuum attachment for this purpose if I had better engineering skills.
** Sometimes the subject lines had to do with tennis, sometimes they didn’t. In 2017, “Andy Murray’s Ass Shingles” contained 99 messages and was immediately followed by “Andy Murray’s Ass Shingles: The Final Chapter,” which also ended at 99. To commemorate Murray’s retirement this summer, “Andy Murray’s Ass Shingles: The Emotional Farewell” was a four-part event totaling 334 emails. Murray would be quite relieved to learn that he and his ass barely featured in those conversations.