October 21, 2009

For our trip to the movies last night, Lucas and I arrived early, as we usually do, to try and get our favourite seats…in the very back row of the theatre, right in the middle. When we got there last night about 30 minutes before the movie started, we saw that there were only 4 people in the theatre, and we got our seats in the back row without a problem. Now, as people filed in to the theatre leading up to the show time, it ended up being about 60% full. There were a lot of available seats in the room, but these two young girls about 16 or 17 years old came and sat to our right, with just one seat between us. Not a big deal, even with about 10 seats empty to their right. Obviously everyone wants to sit as close as possible to the center for the best view. Then on the left side of us, which is the side that Lucas was sitting on, another group of people arrived, and sat down right beside him, without even the one-seat buffer zone.

That didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It’s like basic bathroom protocol (for men)…if there’s a man at a urinal and you have the option to stand at the urinal beside him or any other urinal, you ALWAYS PICK THE OTHER URINAL. That doesn’t even need any explanation. Again, this isn’t exactly the same, but I didn’t understand why you would sidle up to an eight-year-old boy in the theatre when it wasn’t packed and there were loads of empty seats.

Like I said, this wasn’t a big deal…at first. But then, during the movie, both the guy beside Lucas and the girl beside me kept taking out their cellphones and texting during the film. It was very distracting obviously having this light pop up repeatedly right beside you throughout the movie. And then the girls kept talking loudly the entire time, too. I couldn’t believe it. It’s one thing to talk and text during a movie, but if you're going to, why on earth would you sit as close as possible to other people when you didn’t have to?
On top of that, these two girls kept making comments during the movie that were just ridiculous. At one point, they said that something Max did was just “not very believable.” Oh, I see. Because clearly the actors in GIANT FURRY SUITS that talk are so believable! I made a comment in another post once (I don’t remember which one) about an ex-girlfriend of mine and how she felt the major flaw with Spider-Man was that she didn’t believe that Mary-Jane couldn’t tell it was Peter during the upside-down kiss scene. She had no problem with the guy with superpowers swinging between buildings on webs that came out of his wrists, or the evil flying Green Goblin…but that kissing scene was just not believable.

It’s amazing what people will do or say just to able to complain or try to poke holes in something. I was reading a review of Where The Wild Things Are on the CBC website today, and in the Comments section, one reader had said the following: “I loved this story as a child and really enjoyed Spike Jonze's film Adaptation. I'll be lining up to see this one.” He was obviously talking about the film titled Adaptation, starring Nicolas Cage, which Spike Jonze directed. It was evident by his capitalization of the word Adaptation. But, sure enough, on the next page of Comments, some rocket scientist had written this response: “This doesn't make sense! You liked Spike Jonze's movie, but you'll be lining up to see this one? They are the same thing! You've either seen it or not!”

Now, first of all, I’m not sure that this was a topic that was worthy of a three-exclamation-mark tirade. And second of all, if this moron had actually read the comment properly and not had the instinctual response to say “A-ha! Something I can contradict! Yes!”, then he wouldn’t have ended up being the one looking like an idiot.

Sorry, but the English Major in me has to laugh at things like that. And it’s not my same old ‘your’ vs ‘you’re’ or ‘would have’ vs ‘would of’ argument. It’s as simple as one letter difference…it was just a capital A. Capitalization and punctuation can change the entire meaning of a sentence, as shown by the comment above. Or by the example of a sign we have in the back warehouse at work. In our receiving area, there was a sign up that instructed receivers not to break down an entire skid of boxes when it arrived. The sign said, “Do Not Break Down Skid” Pretty straightforward, huh? But someone with a sense of humour (not me) added just one comma to change the entire meaning, and the sign was modified to say “Do Not Break Down, Skid”
Sorry, what was I talking about? I guess I just felt like ranting…