Ah, hello 2025.
Sheesh, it's been quiet here. After much languishing in WordPress purgatory, this blog is back (and recently moved to a semi-elaborate Eleventy-GitHub-CloudfFlare setup because I do what I want).
Let's see...what's happened since my last post? Lots of real life: family time, camping in SoCal, catching up with old friends, a disappointing fall baseball season (FTD), a couple minor health scares, gardening, woodworking, layoffs, job searching, soul searching.
But I don't really want to talk about all that. I DO want to talk about THE APARTMENT, which Alex and I saw for the first time yesterday. There was a New Year's Eve matinee showing at the Alamo, and all I really knew going in was that it was a Billy Wilder film (👍) and a breakout role for Shirley MacLaine.
This movie had me at the opening monologue and then kept me in its quip-tastic grip for 2 straight hours. The writing! The pacing! The midcentury NYC office cinematography!!
Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon are immaculate. If you don't ship these two immediately, you are in the wrong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL0pISorUNw
The whole thing centers around corporate executives having trysts with young office women (mostly secretaries, switchboard/elevator operators, and other outdated professions), using the apartment of a lowly accountant (C.C. Baxter, what a name) as a secret meeting place. Tangled up with all this is everyone's underlying attempts to work their way up the ladder, using whatever means necessary.
At a time in my life when I'm trying to decide whether to continue the grind or do something more personal and creative, it was an icky reminder of previously-experienced office politics. (Obviously, the workplace will never be as lecherous as this again, and that's a good thing, but there's still plenty of sketchy goings-on in most places.) Despite all that, though, I still have this strange nostalgia for 1960s office culture. It's like watching Mad Men (which was, I learned, heavily influenced by The Apartment). Some combination of the mod interior design of these spaces and the notion of seeing the same people so often you create your own mini soap operas with them kinda makes me wish I could've experienced it??
I would say the office in the film is the more memorable setting than the titular apartment, although the apartment is where the real drama plays out. (Gosh, another side note: I miss apartment living! Maybe I just want more shared spaces in my life...?)
And while most of the film takes place around the holidays, it aptly ends on New Year's Eve, which has cemented it, in my mind, as a new favorite NYE film (along with When Harry Met Sally..., obvi). I daresay I've added it to the growing collection of Movies I Will Watch Every Year During the Holidays, which now also includes The Holdovers and You've Got Mail.
ANOTHER side note: If you want to read a long virtual love letter to You've Got Mail, I've got just the thing.
I may come back to this with more ~~thoughts~~ after undoubtedly watching more YouTube clips from The Apartment, but for now it's time to go pretty this blog up some more, fix broken images, and greet the new year, I suppose.
Here's to employment, without the drama, in 2025!