Theater Etiquette

To honor the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (or, as my 6 year old calls him, "Dr. King Luther ... uh ... Martin ... Jr?" with a look of utter confusion as to why someone would have quite so many names), my family went to the movies on Monday. Our small town theater is rarely crowded, but since it was a holiday and a kid movie, we weren't surprised to find that in order to get four seats together, some folks who were already there were going to have to squish a little. Fortunately, a man almost all the way in the back saw me doing a seating scan and beckoned us up, doing that total-strangers-sign-language thing that we all recognize to let us know that his family would move down one and we were welcome to come sit by them.

I mention him because I really appreciated that little courtesy, as it seems that people are really concerned about their movie buffer zone. I don't mind buffer zones when the theater is relatively empty, but I think if you go to a showing that you know is going to be crowded, you should gracefully accept the situation and be prepared to share an arm rest. Buying a ticket to the theater does not entitle you to an extra seat that you need in order to pile all of your coats or to just not have to touch another icky human. If it works out that way, great, but if you can't handle it, get a Netflix subscription or pick your showtimes wisely.

I also mention him because his courtesy was in stark contrast to several people who were sitting right behind us. Keep in mind that we're at Hoodwinked and being a parent, I expect a little amount of random noise from children. I'm definitely not of the expectation that children should be completely silent during movies - indeed, the sound of a kid laughing is one of my favorite noises, but throughout the movie, the people behind us - the ADULTS - spoke at normal conversational volumes. Discussions about the movie, the animation, the story line, the plot holes (it's HOODWINKED, for crying out loud), the music - it was like watching a DVD with director's commentary. There was also the seat kicking, my own personal super ultra extreme pet peeve. That came mostly from a couple of kids that looked to be perhaps 11 or 12, so way too old to not know better, but at least it wasn't the adults.

So, in light of the apparent fact that there are people out there who don't get how rude, crude and socially unacceptable our current slate of "acceptable" theater behaviors are, let me lay it out - and if you recognize yourself in any of these statements, then all I have to say is "you're welcome" because I'm sure you'll make an effort to do better in the future.

1. You're not in your living room, so be quiet. This seems so obvious, but perhaps as we progress through generations of on-demand and DVR viewing options it's gotten more conf. If you're confused on this point, I would offer this little test - if you had to pay money to go into a big dark room full of chairs, you don't have a remote control in your hand, and you didn't get your popcorn for free, it's not your house. You are in a movie theater, and you are in there with a lot of other people who did not pay to hear your comments. A few years ago my theater viewing of Fellowship of the Ring was practically ruined by a guy one row back who felt a need to explain every difference between book and film to his daughter. Just shut up. Talk later, after you've left the movie. If you can't remember what you wanted to say, that's just extra proof that your ramblings were unnecessary.

2. The seat in front of you is not an ottoman. This is an ottoman. If that's not a pretty reasonable facsimile of the fabric covered piece of furniture in front of you, don't put your feet on it. It's also not a wall, so when you need to adjust yourself, don't push against it with your feet. It should go without saying that you shouldn't be kicking it, but damn - DON'T KICK IT.

3. Movie theaters are not big trash cans. If you brought a big-o-tub of popcorn into the theater, surely you can haul the empty back out, and ditto with your soda kegs. Maybe you get a thrill out of making people clean up after you - or maybe you're just a big rude slob. Those are really the only two possibilities, so you decide.

4. If you know you have a bladder the size of a Tic Tac and have some control over your seat choice (I do realize this is sometimes difficult), please sit near an aisle. I promise the picture is not THAT much better if you sit in the middle of the theater and besides, the movie probably isn't that great anyway. Your enjoyment is not going to be ruined by sitting off to one side and the people you would otherwise have to crawl over will mentally thank you as they watch you head off for your fifth bathroom break.

Only four major rules. It's really not that difficult, right?

By the way - about Hoodwinked. Unless you have a Red Riding Hood fanatic in your house, my suggestion is to wait for the DVD. I've seen Shrek, I know Shrek by heart - this is no Shrek. It's not even a Shrek 2. The animation is amateurish, the humor is spotty, and it just doesn't have the wit of other recent animated offerings. It also has way too many musical numbers for my tastes. I'm sure my kids enjoyed it, but they didn't shell out the almost $50 for tickets and treats, know what I mean?

Sundaes and Science

"Sundaes and Science" - that was the name of the school function I went to tonight with my fourth and first graders, two little boys. Oh my, oh my.

I'm not a huge kid person. I love my kids more than life itself but there are only a few "other people's kids" that I care to be around much. When people bring in their babies to the office, I'm never among the cooing, touching, "let me hold the baaaaaaaaaybee" crowd. Our house is not the one where the whole neighborhood kid population congregates - we don't have a Playstation anymore, don't have the latest crazy toys, and our back yard sucks for kids because it's steep and xeriscaped, although not nearly as beautifully as the picture in that link. Bottom line, I can handle one or two extra kids sometimes but am never going to go out of my way to invite the marauding hordes that some other parents seem to enjoy.

So, it is with some amount of dread that I go to these school functions. The idea of a hundred elemtary school kids running around a gym (do the people who design school gymnasiums deliberately make them as loud as possible?) makes me want to crawl in a hole. But - I go, I have to, they want to go and that's what's important.

Tonight was a twofold event - first, give the kids a bunch of sugar in the form of ice cream sundaes, and then tell them to sit down, be quiet and watch a presentation. People who go to school to educate and manage children's activities thought this was a good idea, right? OK.

So, ice cream first. My 6 year old was literally shaking as he ate his ice cream. He was THAT wired - but I'll admit that a lot of it was excitement about the program coming later.

The Science portion of the evening was an hour long commercial for an after school program the school is selling. Six weeks, an hour each session, for kids to learn science stuff - it looks like a bunch of fun but it's $75 per kid so we won't be doing it but the presentation was fun nonetheless. The "Mad Scientist" was a goofy woman, her props were good, and she managed to get a couple of Newton's Laws into the program in a fun manner. All of which is well and good except that the 100 or so sugar buzzing kids sitting on the floor (mine included!) were just nuts. I never did figure out who it was, but there was one little guy who kept doing an almost ululating "om" chant the entire time, there were pockets of kids who never stopped roiling (my take on what I would call a mosh pit for 7 year olds who are technically sitting but never stop moving), and every so often the whole group would start yelling and SQUEALING at the top of their lungs.

It was all kind of interesting to watch at times - the times that I was able to disconnect enough from my own urges to squeal and run - because I'm sure there are some neat child mob psychology analyses that could be made if I had more time and less of a headache. As it is, the boys are in bed and I think a very stiff drink is in order. Can't wait for the spring dance in a couple of weeks...

Flashlight Scare

In case you missed it, a Starbucks in San Francisco had a bit of a scare on Monday. It seems that a homemade bomb was found by an employee in a bathroom. The store and immediate area were evacuated, police came in, the bomb was removed from the bathroom (a unisex bathroom, one story pointed out for no apparent reason), detonated, and the search was on for the nefarious schemer with a grudge against, I guess, overpriced and ridiculously complicated "coffee."

One accounting of the event had this to say about the bomb:

Gittens would not describe the device or its size other than to say it "would have caused damage if it exploded.''

Don Henschke, sales manager at Ellis Brooks Auto Center across the street from the coffee house, said a police officer had described the bomb to him as "a portion of a flashlight and a fuse."

Sounds pretty cut and dry, doesn't it? No speculation there, this was definitely a bomb, a person of interest was found, and for most of us the whole incident blipped right out of conscious memory and we went on about our day.

As it turns out, though, it wasn't a bomb. It was just an old battery that a homeless man had accidentally dropped in the bathroom. A homeless guy who says he loves that Starbucks, no less, because they give him coffee for $.50. No grudges, no evil intent, and no bomb.

My first response when reading about the error this morning was, of course, relief. The world would not suffer - and especially not San Francisco - with one less Starbucks but bombs are bad and all.

That reaction was almost immediately replaced with a fair amount of irritation, though. Why were the police making such concrete statements about the nature of this device before they had time to actually examine and analyze it? Why did they state, before an investigation, that this device could have injured or killed someone if it had exploded? On what basis was this conclusion made? How could they be so irresponsible?

Easy. We live in a highly developed culture of fear. We need to feel like we're under attack or so many things that are going on today in our country make very little sense. We have to believe that terrorists are out to get us because without that, it harder to accept the sacrifices our Dear Leader has asked of us in the last several years. It's much easier and more comforting to think that some bad, foreign boogie men are out to get us than to consider the thought that maybe we voted some pretty shady characters into office and now we're stuck with the consequences.

The media doesn't help, of course. I'm sure they were all over that corner of San Francisco like froth on a latte. The competition for news in our internet soaked world is fierce and we shouldn't trust them very much anymore. Whether we watch CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, or whatever other outlets are currently available, we're not being given news - we're being given commentary. The talking heads are here to entertain us, not to inform us. We want to hear spins that conform to our beliefs and the news outlets know it. I wouldn't be surprised if the questions posed to the police were intense, aggressive, and probably leading. That doesn't excuse loose lips from the police department, but I can't entirely blame them.

I don't know that I ultimately have a point here, this feels more like a rant. Take it for what you will.

Overheard in the Grocery Store

Teen Bagger to Teen CheckOut Guy about "Come Sail Away" playing on the in-store tape: "Have you ever heard this song before? I really like it. I don't know who sings it though."

CheckOut Guy: "Yeah, I've heard it before too, I think it's really old. Not bad, I guess."

Wimper.

More and more often, I am feeling not young. I don't feel "old" yet, but definitely not young. For the most part, it's confined to comparisons between myself and celebrities - media, sports, music, etc. I've gotten over the inner groans when I see 20 year olds making millions and have come to appreciate the graceful aging of older celebrities, which just means that I have convinced myself that older stars are better looking than younger stars. I find myself laughing at shows like The Real World, which is currently in its eleventy-millionth season, and thinking that the cast members these last few years are getting more and more immature. Oh, and Britney is a tramp but Madonna wasn't.

In the last year or so, though, it's gone way past that. In every day life I am beginning to see the huge gap between me and "those damned kids." Now when I notice girls I'm not thinking, "I wonder where she got that top," it's more like, "Why the hell did her parents let her out of the house wearing that?" and teenage boys look like hoodlums (HOODLUMS, I tell you) with their jeans hitched up all the way to their ... knees.

All that aside, this grocery store incident was particularly painful. Why? Because only two nights before, I was listening to Napster radio and had a nostalgic moment over "Come Sail Away." It was nice. Sweet. Warm and tingly. And now - all dashed to geezer hell.

Smells like ...

I'll just say right up front that I don't like Hummers and probably don't like the people who drive them. I'm also fairly comfortable saying that I won't like someone who drives a Hummer with a "Support Our Troops" sticker on it, and I'll even go on record as guaranteeing that if the guy driving it is a large man with a shaved head and a goatee (translation, "I'm fat but if I look mean then fat just equals big strong tough guy), we are not going to be friends.

It's not just that these things are gas whores, although that definitely comes into play with the "Support Our Troops" stickers. It's not that they're ugly - there are plenty of ugly cars on the road. It's not even that they're big, because they aren't anymore. It's that Hummers are everything bad about SUV's, all wrapped up in one convenient package. They're aggressive tough guy trucks that probably don't ever leave a paved city street 99% of the time, they're overhyped and overpriced (which is a bit of genius, especially for the first ones - I'll give them that), and they're the ultimate example of a perceived need because really, nobody "needs" one of these but I'll bet that almost everyone who has one can give you a 25 words or less speech as to why they are the exception to the rule.

BUT ... in case you don't have the cash to go buy one of these monstrosities or feel like maybe 10 mpg isn't a wise choice for fuel economy, you can still be part of the Hummer Hype ... or at least smell like it. Go get your fragrance on ...

Sanitizomania

Yesterday we ran a few errands, including a stop at one of our local grocery stores for a few sale items. As we entered, I noticed a short, trim, generally well kept older lady walking in next to us. We both did that quick mental dance you do in society when you're both going for the same general destination, in this case the shopping cart bay. I slowed down a bit to let her go first and then watched with a little interest to see where she'd go because of the four carts that headed their little cart lines, only one didn't have trash in it. As a quick aside, this is another one of those "were you born in a barn?" pet peeves - random grocery store remains in the shopping carts. Almost always, it's some bakery related item, such as the little pieces of tissue you're supposed to use to get a cookie or something like that. To me, that usually says that there was a child involved and there was some appeasement going on. Besides the problems that I think come when you try to shut a kid up by giving him sugar and telling him to sit still in a cart, there's also the little lesson being taught to the kiddos that shopping carts are trash cans. But anyway ...

As expected, she did take the cart that didn't have any trash and then headed over to the newest created need in grocery stores. It's a little stand with antibacterial wipes right near the carts so that you can disinfect the cart handle before you do your shopping. Sure enough, she stopped, grabbed a wipe and gave a quick once over to her cart and to her credit, she did throw the wipe in the trash and not into the cart. That was the last I saw of her except for one moment over in the bread section where she snapped rather viciously at her husband and then caught me looking at her (really, I wasn't giving her a nasty look - I just turned to see who was having such a bad day), but I kept thinking about those little wipes.

I have no doubt that the installment of these sanitizing stations was done at the behest of the wipe manufacturers, not because of a demand from customers. I'm sure that those who are prone to germophobia are already bringing their Purel to the grocery store, know what I mean? But I also have no doubt that now that they are there, more people are thinking about germs and actually using these things, and then going over the to chemical aisle and buying some for their homes and cars.

I think there are several social points of interest in this. There are people who really don't care about germs, aren't particularly worried about them, but will use the wipes because they think that others will think they are somehow dirty if they don't. There are other people who already have a known compromised immune system and have to be very careful - maybe there ARE germs on these carts, but I suspect they'd have to be pretty hardy to survive a stint on a cold, dry piece of plastic. Who knows. But then there are people, and here I think we'd find big percentages, who use these wipes because they're concerned about their health, but then proceed down the aisles and buy the most unhealthy crap that the corporate food conglomerates have to offer. Filling up the cart with Lunchables, Hamburger Helper, Oreos and soda probably isn't going to get you a special mention on Willard Scott's birthday segment but hey, at least your grocery cart handle is sterile for a few minutes.

My personal belief on health when it comes to things like colds and flu is that you don't get sick because of germs, you get sick because your immune system is not up to the challenge. You can use your Purel, your Oust (my personal favorite in the "most ridiculous product" list - how do you sanitize AIR, outside of an industrial or medical clean room?), your anti-bacterial soap, your disinfectant household cleaners, etc. all you want, but if your immune system is shot, you're still going to get sick. I think this happens to people all of the time and their response is to become even more paranoid about germs, which is just nuts. I knew a girl at my previous job who kept a tissue over the mouse at her desk because she was afraid of germs. On her own mouse, at her own desk. I don't know what she thought was happening at her desk when she wasn't around, but I think therapy is in order.

Anyway, I know this is a pointless rant. People don't want to actually take care of themselves, they just want the illusion of taking care of themselves. Corporations are happy to fill that need, and there's probably not anything I can do about it because I'm sure I'm in the minority on this one. It just stayed on my mind all through yesterday and even overnight, so I figured I should get it out of my system.

MPAA

What do these movies have in common?

Spider-Man
X-Men
Pirates of the Caribbean
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
School of Rock
Meet the Parents
Bend It Like Beckham
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The Triplets of Belleville
Best in Show
and
The Ring Two

Nothing jumping out at you? Well, I've seen them all, for one thing, but that's no big deal. With the exception of Meet the Parents and The Ring Two, they're also all movies that my 10 year old and 6 year old have seen. The main reason they're all listed here, though, is that they're all rated PG-13.

Now, I know that PG-13 means "some material may be inappropriate for children under 13," but I don't think there is a rational basis for some of this. For example, we recently saw Goblet of Fire and unfortunately I had forgotten exactly what that year at Hogwarts was about until we were already in the theater. Had I been more prepared, I would have warned my 6 year old that Cedric was going to die. As it was, he got a little teary eyed and for a few days said he didn't want to see that one again. He's over it now and wants to buy the movie, but still - definitely a darker toned movie than the previous ones and I should have paid more attention.

Then there's Spider-Man, which is PG-13 for "stylized violence and action." Um, OK. Spider-Man is pretty darned clean - I'd let the 6 year old watch that before I'd let him watch CSI, Numb3rs, Law & Order, or any of the other cruelty and death series on prime time television.

But - The Ring Two?? Who the hell came up with the bribe money for this one? It never would have occurred to me to allow either child to watch this movie, and to be honest, I didn't want to watch this movie. I don't like being startled and in general don't like horror movies. Every so often I have to watch one, though, because my husband likes them but he won't get them if I won't watch them with him - it's not rudeness on his part, it's that he won't want to get something if we can't cuddle while watching so I deal with it so he can watch something he really wants to see. One of those little things you do in a relationship.

Anyway, we watched The Saw several months ago (hated it), Devil's Rejects a few weeks ago - more of a straight up psycho slasher flick than horror and oddly interesting - and then last week The Ring Two. It's rated PG-13 for "violence/terror, disturbing images, thematic elements, and some language." There is no way - no freaking way - that this movie could possibly be in the same rating world as any of the other movies above. Sure, it doesn't show anyone being explicity carved into pieces in a torture chamber like Hostel (rated R for "brutal scenes of torture and violence, strong sexual content, language and drug use"), but this is the stuff that months of nightmares and family bed arrangements are made of and it really pisses me off that it's only rated PG-13.

That's all I have to say about that.