decidedlyodd

The past couple of days back at home have been nice. In general, I haven’t been up to too much. Yesterday, I went down to the Fisherman’s with my parents for drinks and dinner. We then visited my uncle up in Anaheim for a little bit. Today was fairly laid back as well.

However, this afternoon I started getting antsy and decided to go see Brokeback Mountain by myself. I would have liked to have gone with somebody, but there’s nobody around here to go with, so I just went by myself. I’ve only seen two other movies in a theater by myself before: High Fidelity and Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers.

Don’t worry, there are no spoliers within.

Apparently in the past couple weeks, it’s expanded to a slightly less limited release. It was showing at the Rancho Niguel 8 in Laguna Niguel as well as some other theaters slighly farther away. Even Rancho Niguel is not that far away though. It’s probably the third closest movie theater to here. This is a solidly Republican area and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it wasn’t showing here at all. Still, this theater was probably the closest one to Laguna Beach (one of southern California’s gay meccas) that was showing the movie. For my North Carolina readers, Laguna Niguel itself feels a lot like Cary. Lots of subdivisions with identical tract homes surrounded by the occasional strip mall, school or park.

Still, this peaked my curiosity and I headed over to epodunk.com for some same-sex household statistics. It turns out Laguna Niguel gets a 142 (42% more same-sex households than the US average) and Aliso Viejo (next city over, where the movie was also showing) gets 180 (80% more same-sex households than average). Still, my parents’ city (San Clemente) gets a measly 83 (20% less than average), so it’s not universal for the area. Laguna Beach is a whopping 478 (nearly 5 times the national average), which is actually about the same as San Francisco (479). These are still the suburbs and settled down people though, so it says little about the number of single gay men (for example) that inhabit these places. If I had to guess, I think the high numbers in Aliso Viejo and Laguna Niguel maybe reflect spill over from neighboring Laguna Beach where housing prices are even more astronomical. Get partnered, buy a house in the cheaper burbs over the hills, etc. For my North Carolina readers here are the names and scores of various Triangle cities: Durham (152), Raleigh (106), Chapel Hill (97), Carrboro (117). Seattle garners a respectable 341. I’m a bit surprised that there are so many same sex households in this area. It makes me wonder if this place is a hot bed for Log Cabin Republicans (a gay Republican group for those not in the know). I’ve done searches on dating sites before too and there are WAY more available gay men here than in the Triangle, which I admit still surprises me somewhat. I mean when I was in high school, there was nobody who was out (at least that I knew of) and people were socially quite conservative.

Anyhow, I caught the 3:30 bargain matinee ($7 is such a bargain, NOT), arriving just moments before it was supposed to start. The crowd was interesting. At first glance, it seemed overwhelmingly filled with female senior citizens. There was a youngish straight couple sitting next to me, but overall the crowd seemed older and sophisticated in the “oh, I’ve heard this movie has been nominated for a bunch of awards and is groundbreaking so I must see it darling” sort of sense. That said, I liked the movie. Some people have complained that the actors lack passion, but I think that’s just supposed to be how people in Wyoming are. The love story is fairly organic in that it doesn’t seem forced to be a “gay movie”. Still, the man in love with a man theme is obviously central to the film. The scenery is spectacular, although apparently the movie was never shot in Wyoming at all but rather Alberta and New Mexico.