Turn that blasted thing off!

Ahhh, a story near and dear to my heart.

(I think I'm going to try the "in on the conversation" gambit.)

On a similar note, we had a "public manners" adventure when we saw United 93. The opening of the film (as noted before) is the terrorists saying morning prayer in Arabic. (Did I get that right?) While I considered this to be a chilling very weighty beginning to what I knew was going to be a weighty film, some of the audience around us thought otherwise. (None of the involved seemed to be younger than 40, by the way. I mean, other than us.) They weren't really words, you see, so the movie hadn't started. I said "Shh." Still talking. I turned around, looked, glared, said "SHHHHHH!" Startled looks, but they shut up. (Also of note, we got to the movie a good 20-30 minutes early. If she who is my wife does not have front-of-the-stadium-seats, she's cranky. Heh. Life is good. The point is we had prime theater real estate.)

Not too long into the film, as all hell breaks loose (in a slow and suspensefully torturous way) the dialogue gets pretty dense. It's all "center this hand off frequency that say again flight level 220". Kind of musical to my mind and ears. But no explanations are given. Unless you're the wife of the man sitting next to us who gave a constant "you are there" description of what is happening both on and off screen. Jeanine glares, but she's not so good with the shush. (She tried, but she's not as patient as I am. Chew that one over.) So she gets up and moves to the other side of me. The couple looked affronted in a "what's wrong with us?" kind of way. Pheh.

This put her directly to the left (and how often are we to the left, huh?) of the woman with her FEET UP! I'm 6"6'. See the title of the blog? Not many things in our public spaces are made for me. If I can keep my feet off the seats, especially the ones with people in them, then so can you, stumpy!

I love movie theaters. I'm of the opinion that there are no "I'll wait for video" movies. Everything is better on the big screen. Everything is better with an audience. Scary? Better with lots of people to be scared with. Funny? Better with lots of people to laugh with. I want to be with lots of people figuring out the end of the Sixth Sense all within a few seconds of each other. I want to hear people cheer when "20th Century Fox" and "Lucasfilm LTD." come up on the screen. (Then silence for "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away....") (Like that's ever going to happen again. Whoops! Back on topic.)

"I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I---------------------->*"

Audience GOLD.





But people don't know how to act in public, and nobody seems interested in remembering.

When we saw Star Trek: Nemesis in the scene following Data getting killed (um, sorry, *SPOILER*) there is the big "THEY KILLED DATA" scene on the bridge. Everyone is in shock. The audience is supposed to be in shock. It's a relatively quiet scene. No boom boom, Jerry G. is keeping the music down (or at least the percussion synths off). Some damn fool in the front front row (i.e. too far for me to club him with his own severed leg) answers his phone and holds a conversation! Really! I've got nothing to do! I have no brick handy. Can I throw popcorn at him? I'm not athletic, my aim is not good, but really, I don't have anything heavy enough to cover the distance. And my yelling would be more of a distraction than he is! So when the big shock scene is over I yell "TURN OFF YOUR DAMN PHONE!" The whole audience cheers, including the people in the seats close to him. Where the frack were you people when it mattered? How come I gotta be the hero? Grrr.

I can go on and on (and more so) (good grief, my "Movies with Bob" section could get its own page!) but I will close with this:

This Sunday our Psalm response was to the tune of "Ode to Joy". Our Alleluia is currently Handel's Messiah. Heh. Right at the end of the Alleluia, somebody (in the front few rows no less) has their cell phone go off, loudly, with Beethoven's Fur Elise (lovely, lovely, Ludwig van).

Our crazy old Irish priest gets up for the homily, first thing he says is "These cellular phones are really quite amazing. They now go off at exactly the right dramatic moment." Go Fr. Oliver.