Brushes With Idiocy, #1 (of many)

Saturday nights are slow where we live in Smalltown (come to think of it, so are Sunday through Friday nights) so we decided to go to Hometown where I grew up (and still work) for dinner and a movie. Showtime was 7:05 and we hit town about 5:45. Our first few choices of where to eat were packed. So were the next couple. I thought we were in a recession sliding into a depression... these people should have been home sitting in dark rooms shivering under comforters with the thermostat set to 55 degrees, with minds full of dread and fear, not paying somebody to cook dinner for them. Hmmph. So we went to a place that wasn't even on the list of possibilities, but had open tables. The first brush with idiocy was our very young waitress, who seemed to be mentally communicating with some alien civilization and was taken aback everytime we'd say something to her. The place was half-empty by maybe ten minutes after we sat down but nothing was forthcoming from the kitchen for us. Finally at five till 7:00 food appeared. It had interesting colors, let's let it go at that. So we wolfed it and got out of there at 7:05 but were only a few minutes from the theatre. We arrive and the acres of parking lot were so full that some people were parking at closed adjacent businesses. And there was a line I haven't seen since opening nights of the original Star Wars movies. We got into line and checked our watches much too often. Well, there'll be a bunch of ads and previews, it'll be okay. We finally reach the ticket window at 7:30 knowing we've missed the first ten minutes. Two for "Grand Torino" I said, with a foreshadowing of disaster. "Well, actually, that's sold out" said the kid at the window. I pointed out that it would be nice to tell people before they stood in line half an hour. "We're trying to make a sign" he said. Maybe I'm overconfident, but I'm pretty sure I could have fashioned a sign in two or three minutes, since all you need are a) something to write with, and b) something to write on. It might even be possible to send one of the pimply kid employees walking up the line announcing the sell-out every 5-10 minutes, and for a really high-tech approach, a new invention called a PA (public address) speaker could be mounted on the outside wall to make said announcement!

Thinking about this, I prefer when the theatres were spread throughout town - most of the time I'm going to a show that's maybe gonna have 50 viewers and I don't need to wade through crowds of people that are going to see Saw 36 on its opening weekend. Hurry to DVD, Clint, 'cause I'm not going back to that multiplex any time soon.