Suburban Movie Theatre

Regular Saturday thing, Justine and I at leisure, shooting the shit and talking movies. Not just any movies, but good flicks. The ones that have us talking and thinking for weeks afterwards. There don’t seem to be too many of those these days. We talk about violence in film and argue over Scorsese’s hammer-style film making. No Scorsese tonight. I just want a bag of popcorn. Seein’ as how city theatres have become damn near intolerable on the weekend, we head out to The Park for a slightly gentler movie-going experience. We pick the late show. Before we grab our seats, we hit the arcade and watch a group of younguns play Dance Dance Revolution. It’s an asinine game, but watching the kids hop around on it brings a weird sense of good to us. They could be out sucking on a pipe or causing shit, but they’re here. Dancing in front of a video screen. Money down, popcorn in hand, in the theatre. The guys behind us are trouble. Won’t shut the hell up through the trailers. They yak throughout the flick. As do the pre-pubescent shitheads in front of us. Just once this decade, I’d like to go to a film and not have someone talk through the whole thing. The film is mediocre. To me, mediocre is worse than terrible. Terrible can be memorable. A so-so flick just feels like a waste of time; like I should have had a game of checkers instead. I hate that shit. Life is too short to see so-so flicks. When we come out, the kids are still at it. Again we watch them, jumping around on command on a silly platform. Some kind of lesson there.