Breakfast: vegetarian mini-pizza

After receiving two particularly disconcerting phone calls, I decided to hide out at the movies. I’ve now seen three movies since Saturday: The Station Agent, Mystic River and Under the Tuscan Sun. I’ve learned, yet again, how much I hate seeing movies with the general public. Unfortunately or fortunately, I don’t do any film criticism at the moment or any “product placement” for movies in my first person writing. Sometimes nice friends let me tag along with them to screenings.

If any publicists want to save me and let me into press screenings, feel free to write me. I’ll do my generally lazy blog reviews and we can be friends-- if you are cool. Unlike a lot of writers, I don’t hate publicists.

I do hate people who treat movie theatres like their living rooms and bedrooms. I know this is nothing novel, I’m not having an epiphany or anything. However, having annoying people at three movies in three days is a new record for me. All the screening rooms were very small.

Saturday @ The Station Agent:

While I was finding a seat with my friend, I was forced to look at woman’s bare foot with orange peeling nail polish. She conveniently had it resting on the seat in front of her own aisle seat, but it was partially hanging out in the regular aisle. I admit, I looked at it longer than I should have, because I wanted to confirm how ugly it was. The nails were different lengths and raggedy. The skin was nowhere near milky-white. Good thing I rarely eat food at movies. I had to cleanse my palate with my Arrowhead water.

Tuesday @ Mystic River:

I was so excited to finally see this film. Everyone I know has raved about it.

I found a good seat away from people. I even had my own row. Perfect, I thought.

We were still in previews when I heard a weird sound—almost like a sneeze, but a startled one. I blew it off. It was probably some old person. Then I felt someone kick the back of my chair, but when I turned around no one was there. There was an older man, his wife and I assume grandson behind me—but they were sitting four seats over on the left. I was puzzled. I shrugged it off. (See, I don’t need to meditate.)

I was finally getting into the movie (it’s intense from the beginning) when I started hearing the people behind me talking. I cleared my throat, but refrained from starring at them. Well, that’s when the craziness started: the grandma was snoring louder than I thought was possible, grandpa started talking to the grandson, and my chair kept on getting hit.

Halfway through the film, I realized it was grandpa and finally turned around, “Could you please stop kicking my chair?”

He apologized. Earlier, when people had started passive aggressively complaining about grandma’s snoring, grandpa remarked, “Haven’t you heard someone snore before?”

Yeah, in their own houses. Let grandma sleep in the car next time, or better yet, leave her at home.

Under the Tuscan Sun:

I had to come down from Mystic River. Now it was the middle of the day. I easily found an aisle seat and had the whole row to myself. Everything was copasetic. I had a 10 minute cry before the previews started. I was down the home stretch when a woman appeared and wanted to sit in my aisle. My guardian angels were apparently out to lunch.

There were other aisles with no people in them. Why me? This lady looked like she was well-off. I sighed, and started wiping off the tears from my cheeks. Mid-wipe, I noticed the lady had put her feet up on the chair above her. The chair was high up too, so her feet were practically vertical. I wanted to slug her. Thankfully she left about a quarter of the way through the film. At last I had peace.