Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

no surprises

It’s seemingly impossible to make anything a “surprise” anymore in this Internet age. I’ve had a couple attempts at surprising my boyfriend go awry in the past few weeks, all because it’s laughably easy to find out what’s going on. (And maybe I’m also just laughably bad at keeping secrets.)

• Earlier this month, as soon as I heard she was coming to town, I bought two tickets to one of Aimee Mann’s concerts at the Birchmere in Alexandria. As soon as the transaction was complete, I IM’ed Rob to tell him to block off that evening. Seconds later, he responded with a joke about his favorite Mann song, and I knew the jig was up: He’d looked up what events were going on locally that night.
  
  The upshot of him knowing about the Mann concert was that it led to him spotting the listing for the great Michael Penn concert that we went to last week.
   
• On Thursday, I saw a random entertainment listing that Rushmore, one of Rob’s favorite movies, was playing as a midnight movie at E Street this weekend. We’d been talking about going to a movie anyway — maybe Kung Fu Hustle or Hitchhiker’s Guide — and I told him on Friday that I’d handle the details. I made the mistake of saying that I wanted the movie we were seeing to be a surprise for him. His response (paraphrased), “Oh, I know what we’re seeing! [A coworker] told me earlier that it was playing.”
  
  Spoiled surprise aside, it was still good to see the film for the first time in a theatre. I’d seen Rushmore a few times before, but I picked up all kinds of details this time around that I’d never noticed before. And I think that the final scene, with The Faces’ “Ooh La La” (iTMS) and the slow-motion dancing, is even more affecting on the big screen. I caught myself breaking into a silly grin as the music started, and it happily stayed there until the curtains closed.

I did manage to get one surprise in this week, though, but only because I (mostly) kept it offline: I conspired over IM with his roommate to let me into their apartment after work on Tuesday so I could surprise Rob with dinner. (It was supposed to be his last day of class, and he’d just won an award at work.) That surprise worked out perfectly … Well, aside from the fact that I didn’t realize the salmon hadn’t been de-boned until it had already been cooked, but other than that… Nummy food, good company and a surprise kept intact. Who could ask for more?