(Wherein our hapless protagonist launches into yet another middle-aged screed against the experiences of his Life and Times, and consequently finds himself figuratively weeping for the future and literally reaching for the remote.)
Watching a movie is one of my favorite expenditures of discretionary time. As a male, movie-watching fulfills my genetic requirement to metabolize stress by shifting my brain into park and abandoning it for awhile. Hopefully, the film will coincidentally entertain me.
Almost all of my movie-watching occurs in front of a television. I visit the ER more frequently than I go to a movie theater. The nearest theater is 30 minutes away, but there are more compelling reasons that I have to be dragged there, upon which I will shortly expound.
At home, I can reasonably plan on carving the 10 to midnight timeslot out of the schedule. I can sit in a comfortable chair, watch a large HDTV, select whatever I feel like watching at that moment from a collection saved to the DVR, and eat or drink anything I want. I am free to emit hypersonic jets of methane, the only consequence being the resigned disgust of my wife a few rooms away. Without distraction, I am free to push "play" and enter a total ouroboric state.
The last time I went to a movie theater, my experience consisted primarily of immersion into the inscrutable universe of Generation Y- youth conceived to the warbly cassette strains of Eddie Vedder's yarl.
On the night in question, the theater parking lot was filled with diesel-powered monster trucks (huge red rubber testicles swaying from their hitches) and subcompacts festooned with aftermarket aerodynamic appendages of dubious utility. All had air fresheners hanging from their rear view mirrors. In Olden Times, air fresheners were only found on the Monte Carlos, Buick Regals and Oldsmobile Delta 88s based in the lively areas of town.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mxs6A1byIo
For some reason, these odor ornaments have become ubiquitous, and are just as likely to be encountered in the parking lot at a Pinkberry as at Popeye's. I blame this spread on the cultural reverberations resulting from the musical coup d'etat achieved by That Accursed Noise, which also resulted in the heinous practice of wearing ballcaps backwards.
I see that I have strayed.
As we made our way across the parking lot, through a minefield of discarded little Red Bull cans, I could hear the loud, staccato conversation of a cackle of Gen-Y males. Every fourth word was "f**k", or some permutation thereof. The profligate use of this profanity was meaningless. The word was used mindlessly as a conjunction, like mortar being slapped between bricks. The young men came into view as we approached the lights of the theater entryway. Neo-Goth/Skate-punk/Emo-types, looking like the Children of the Night, only with human-issue canine teeth. They let the door close in my face, unaware of my existence. Inside, the f-bombs could be heard trailing off into the distance as they proceeded on their merry way.
The young lady at the ticket counter summoned the strength to lift her eyes to us. She fell short of having the energy or inclination to return my greeting. I further incovenienced her by paying with a credit card. I thanked her as she slid the tickets toward me. "No problem," she managed to flatly reply. Ah yes, "no problem." The motto of a Generation. A few seconds later a heavy-lidded young man took my tickets and pointed to the third cubicle to our left. I thanked him. "No problem," he muttered, before returning to stasis. The girl at the concession stand actually asked if she could help me, so I felt that the situation was looking up. I thanked her as she returned my change without making eye contact and her reply should by now be easily surmised. The replacement of "you're welcome" with "no problem" within this cohort is sadly significant. I remain baffled at how a 20-year old can possibly seem so world-weary. This lethargy, detachment and indifference must be due to the way actual first-person reality utterly pales next to the myriad virtual worlds from which so many young adults apparently have yet to be truly weaned. Or it might just be the Midwest in February.
On into our cinema cubicle, which undermined a majority of why we were at the theater in the first place. The two reasons to see a movie at a theater are for the large screen size and because the movie is interesting enough to not want to wait for it to come out on DVD. Other potential reasons- such as not having a TV, or not finding it appropriate to take a date back to your house on your premiere evening together- do not pertain to me. I've been to residences with larger screens than this, but I have also been to theaters even more petite, so I tried to count my blessings as we pried open the clamshell seats with our butt cheeks and sat down. The theater smelled like air freshener and stale popcorn (although I knew that due to the brussel sprouts I had with dinner, it would soon smell predominantly of me). My feet stuck to the floor. The air managed to be both warm and cold at the same time. No matter, I was contentedly consuming my combusted maize and caffeinated corn syrup while attempting to answer the Footloose trivia question. I was pleased that we were in our seats and ready for the film ahead of time, which would allow me to fully orient myself to the impending experience. Bring on the twenty minutes of previews of excessively-kinetic action films with CGI so real it looks fake; politically-correct remakes of beloved '60s and '70s TV shows; duckling-becomes-swan chick-flicks where the bad-boy love interest turns out to be a sensitive, affluent architect; and the entire gamut of movies, all of which would once have starred either Peter Cushing or Vincent Price.
And so, in the midst of this procession of banality, three young ladies plopped down in front of us. They whispered and giggled, popped their gum, and displayed the qualities of a brace of perpetual motion machines in need of a lube job. Most annoyingly, they had all apparently fallen heavily off the wagon of Cell Phone Addicts Anonymous. At least two of the three phones in their possession were being poked away at throughout the entire 2.5 hour film. The bouncing bright smiley-faced screens were continuously assaulting my concentration, like German Sappers having a go at Eben-Emael. At about the moment when the 357th text message was dispatched, I surrendered my struggle. The magical movie trance was irretrievably severed. For the remaining 2.49 hours of the film, I was just a detached observer of the sounds and images up on the screen as the ladies in front of me held court. I wistfully yearned for some other comparatively idyllic theater experience, like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm81LSKJC2k
The entire endeavor also relieved me of $35, not counting gas.
I love movies, but not enough to subject myself, my family or my friends to such an ordeal without conducting a very thorough cost-benefit analysis. Indeed, I am now less likely to be spotted at a cineplex than Bill Maher at a Baptist barbecue. So when I discuss films in this space, I will almost certainly be referring to something on cable, on the web, in my DVD collection, or residing somewhere in my weathered old melon.
And as for Generation Y- curse you, Pearl Jam.
