Dude, I am so happy to get back to a normal routine. Yes, I am well aware I wrote a post last month about shaking things up and getting out of my comfort zone. But you know something? The snow globe of my life has been shaken quite enough, thank you very much. It’s time for everything to settle so I can get some work done. And by work, I mean writing.
No, really.
I will say one thing about the rollercoaster of the past few weeks – all my focus was centered on fixing stuff and the holidays, with no time left to think about much else. While it was a lot of work, it was also, in a strange way, a big vacation for other parts of my mind. Or, maybe that’s a totally incorrect interpretation, maybe the creative side of my brain secretly worked in overtime trying to remove the blockage that built up the last few months of the year. Whatever the case, I’m rarin’ to go. At least I think I am, today is really the first opportunity I’ve had to sit down and write. But I definitely have ideas buzzing, oodles of them, just waiting to spill onto the page. And I will get to all of those thoughts in the coming weeks, just not today.
Today let’s ponder what in the Sam hell goes through people’s minds.
So yesterday we went to the movies, something I usually view as an unpleasant task. Don’t get me wrong, I love movies, I just hate going to the movie theater. Give me the comfort of my own home, where I don’t have to worry about inhaling other people’s germs every time someone coughs or sneezes, where I don’t have to have some dude sit next to me with a gargantuan tub of gross, cholesterol-laden, shiny buttered popcorn, which he obnoxiously gobbles for the first hour of the film, interspersed with the nails-on-a-chalkboard sound of a straw squeaking against a plastic lid of a jumbo soda, and where I don’t have to hear an asinine conversation between a couple in which the woman asks the man every minute or two what’s happening in the movie (although admittedly I do that to my husband too, but I do it AT HOME).
Wow, that was an incredibly long sentence that makes me sound like a big ole misanthrope.
Anyway, luck was on our side, and we arrived to only a short line. Within half a minute, 20 people or so lined up behind us, with more showing up in droves, a large percentage of which had no idea what they were there to see. Personally, I already know what I’m going to watch before arriving at the theater. But hey, not everyone works that way, no biggie. What I could not understand was the group of women right behind us that had no idea what movie they wanted to watch, or an idea as to what ANY of the movies were about.
Woman 1: What’s On the Road?
(Chorus of I don’t knows)
Woman 2: What’s Life of Pi?
(Repeat chorus)
They walked up to the ticket counter next to us, still without a clue about what they wanted to see, and asked the glassy-eyed attendant, “What’s Hyde Park about?”
He responded by handing them a sheet of paper with plot descriptions. They were still reading them when we walked away, and I’m sure the people waiting in line were just thrilled.
The thing that baffled me about the whole scene was that two of them were holding iphones. Come on, now. You have an iphone, you have a data package. That means you could have looked up a plot description, or the freaking movie trailer, at any point before walking up to the ticket counter. And if you are wondering if perhaps the women in question were extremely elderly and therefore not adept at using the tiny computer at their fingertips, you would be wrong.
Whatever.
At that point, my husband and I parted ways, he watched Rust and Bone, and I saw Anna Karenina. Halfway through the movie, I hear this noise behind me – sctchscrthscrthscrthscrth. On and on this went, until I finally turned my head to see what caused the ruckus. It was a woman filing her nails. At the movie theater. Unfortunately they were long, so the filing continued for a long time. Not only was it annoying, but I had a hard time concentrating after that because I couldn’t stop thinking about how much of her dead cell dust I was inhaling. Gross. I suspect it will be a while before I make it to another new release.
Humans, we’re an interesting bunch. Happy Monday y’all!
AGH. Every bit of that just made rage FOR you. We seem to have lost some sort of filter that says “This right here, this particular personal hygiene habit, this belongs AT HOME or at the very least, in a place of business designed for the purpose of providing manicures etc.” It is gross. WHO SHOWS UP AT A MOVIE NOT KNOWING WHAT THEY WILL SEE?????? What rock do you live under that you don’t at least check out what is showing in advance?
Maybe we live in a world where we are SO inundated by information that we tune too much out now, and thus arrive at places, clueless as to what our options are, what we are doing, what our names are etc. We just expect the information to BE THERE.
I feel about concerts the way you do about movies. I like music, I just don’t like being in the concert experience. My husband does not get this. At all. I believe he sees this as a personal failing of mine. Whatever.
I don’t mind concerts in small venues, but I’m not a big fan of stadium shows. It just isn’t quite the same experience.
I seem to generally avoid terrible cinema experiences, even with as much as I go. Generally I’m not going at weekend evening prime time though, so my theatres are pretty empty and I am generally not so near anyone else. For me the theatre has the advantage of taking away self-generated distractions. My phone is off in my pocket (because I’m a civilized person who doesn’t want to bother others), and my computer is back home and I can’t pause to do anything. It has a way of focusing me that probably benefits my enjoyment of a film.
If I have to go to the movies, I’d prefer a weekday early show. I should have known a rainy Sunday afternoon would be a bad idea, the place was packed.
I used to go to the movies 1x a week, now I go once every two months. I really have no idea why I stopped. People didn’t get more annoying., the movies haven’t gotten worse but I just can’t find the drive to go. I mostly blame Netflix, being busy, and getting older laziness.
Really? I think they have gotten worse. On the other hand, the technology for special effects is pretty freaking amazing now, so there’s that.
I hit a wall a bunch of years back when seeing Me, Myself, & Irene in the theater. The woman behind me kept repeating “Oh, no he didn’t!” over, and over, and over again. I didn’t go to the theater again for over five years.
If they offered sound-proof booths that had a couch inside so you and family/friends could kick back and enjoy the movie hassle-free, I’d pay twice the admission price. Gladly.
Me too. Perhaps that’s your million dollar idea?
That all is obnoxious, but my question is this . . . you and your hubs went to the movies together, but went and watched seperate movies? I mean, I know you don’t actually talk the person or spend any real quality time with the other person while the movie is going on, but couldn’t you find a movie you both wanted to see? Or at least wait for those to come out on video to watch them seperately? Or is that just how you guys roll when you go to the movies?
Most of the time we go together (to the same movie). But neither of us was interested in what the other wanted to see, so this way we both get what we want. It worked out well, actually, aside from the nail filing.
I love going to the cinema to watch a movie, but I wait till I am sure most people have seen the movie before I go and its generally on a saturday morning when there are less people about . And I prefer watching movies alone so that I can eat all the popcorn I want without sharing (in Singapore we dont have buttered popcorn, so its a little healthier!)
I am comforted to know that the problem of clueless movie goers and bad personal habits are universal!
Sadly, it does seem to be universal.
Good point, but actually I’d rather listen to the woman behind me filing her nails than sit through a half hour of violent gun-waving movie “trailers.”
After Newtown, it’s just too much.
I think I’ve decided to only go to theaters that have alcohol … makes it so much better.
I worked at a movie theater for years before the internet made everything super-duper convenient and I STILL didn’t understand the people who meandered up without a plan or idea of what to see. And I really didn’t understand people who would just buy a ticket for a movie that had already been on for 20 minutes or more – you don’t pay that much for a ticket to miss 1/3 of the movie and have no idea what you’re going to see. Or I don’t, anyway.
What? That makes me think they’re going to do something other than watch a movie.