“I sure hope they haven't installed any surveillance cameras since our last Movie Marathon. It would be SO embarrassing to get kicked out of the multiplex for such a minor infraction.”
Though no doubt a video would provide endless entertainment for all those many theater attendants/janitors all in black robe, to enjoy during their down-time while the movie plays. I really have no desire to become visual humor-fodder for them during their work breaks. If I scrunch down my cranial audio-factors a bit, I can just about hear them, all huddled around the video monitor in the back room, chuckling away...“Hey Sam...get a load of this goofus, what the heck is he doing with the box?” No, I'd really rather not become well-known at the Cineplex.
And though it certainly wasn't the crime of the century, or even that big of a deal, it bears noting. We migratory Midwesterners were taught from an early age to avoid these daily embarrassments to self, or worse, the parental units that constructed us. All that 'am-I-in-trouble' stuff still follows me around today, sort of like Milbert the myopic mouse, constantly following behind the clumsy local seed merchant as he wanders about.
This whole theater thing started much earlier in the day. It was a Monday. I don't remember the month, but do I know for a fact it was a Monday. It's always a Monday, because that is cheap movie day.
And what better way to be spend a thrifty Monday than with an MGM. Movie Grand Marathon. Movie Marathon for short. The acronym designed by my friend Don and I to describe the joyous practice of watching as many movies in one day as is physically possible. At the THEATER. Not at home. Anyone who is anybody can binge watch 117 straight hours of movie at home. This takes real public stamina.
In usual stead, our MGM Monday all started out with a typical phone call…
“Movie Marathon today”?
“Yup”.
Get out the internet and a piece of paper, and plot out the next 18 or so hours of the day. Movie times, movie length, down time between shows, snack-bag re-loading dynamics at the Target Store. All the logistics are set. Hop on the bikes, and we're off to the movies.
Once at the theaters, it's just a matter of getting out the schedule of the day, buying the first tickets, and heading in for a long day and following night of darkened-room paradise. Recently, our record for movies watched together in one “sitting” has gone from 3 to 4. But on this night, I had to forge ahead into number 4 on my own. We had some sort of time-line snafu during the day, which threw the intricately timed everything out of kilter. I can't remember now what it was...after all...I'd already seen 3 movies. I've long-since discovered that each successive show tends to erase some of the "things" that went before.
On this particular night of the box, Don left early after movie number 2, and I proceeded to movie number 3 by myself. Don't remember what movie. Not important. What IS important, was that I was by myself, and not constrained by somewhat normal social convention. Movie 3 got out at about 11:45 PM, and it was time to head home on my bike. I padded down the carpeted theater hallway, dragging my bike gear toward the exit, when I passed the marquee for another movie that had just started 10 minutes earlier. “Ooh, The Phantom. In 3D.”
I don't normally like newer horror movies, they're much too scary. But the older ones are usually a bit of a hoot. The Tarantula, Gila Monster, or Something Big That Came From Under A Rock. High brow horror. And this one sounded promising. The Phantom. "Must be an old classic. Some guy in purple spandex with a black mask, fighting evil and such." It WAS past midnight. That's when they usually show this kind of stuff on my TV. Why not here?
But what to do. The box office was tightly closed by now, as was similar access to the all-important 3D glasses. You think several movies in a row wonk out the visual cortex, watch a 2+ hour movie in 3D without those glasses. THAT would be an interesting bike ride home! No...the glasses were a necessity.
Not only was it too late to get my glasses, it was too late to pay as well. I would have to resort to the old-world days of the “double feature.” Shades of High School...sneaking about in the dark...taking in as many free movies as was clandestinely possible. Somehow, it's a bit different now. I still haven't grown up, but I am a bit older than 15. “Excuse me, SIR, are you going to pay for that movie?” Just doesn't have the same ring when you are now called a SIR, and still looking very cheap. I was stymied. “Think man, think!”
Ooh, providence. I noted the large cardboard box, with “Please Recycle Your Used Glasses Here” stenciled on the side, further down the carpeted hallway outside Theater 14. I wandered that way, occasionally looking up to the corners and edges of the ceiling for any newly installed surveillance cameras. My Midwestern relatives kept jogging circuitously through my mind, all sporting vapid looks of mortification, following my arrest for sneaking about in darkened theaters to save a few bucks.
But this was different. It was late. No way to pay. It was The Phantom. And there were no 3D glasses to be legally had anywhere. There was only one thing to do. I gave the entire hallway one more quick perusal, grabbed the big recycle box around the middle like a stick-man Sumo wrestler, flipped it upside down, and shook the stuffin's out of it.
Soon, a bunch of those 3D specs came tumbling to the floor through the little slot in the (now bottom) top. Some were pretty thrashed, but peering up through the lenses, I found a good, usable pair.
Rounding up the rest of the specs and dumping them back into the slot proved to be a bit more daunting of a task than the other direction...but soon the top of the box fell off anyway...which made it all that much easier. I scooped and shoved them all into the gaping-ly large opening, re-lidded it, shoved the box back to the wall, and hurried on my way to Theater 18 and The waiting Phantom. There were only about 6 other nutty people in the theater at this time of night, thus making it much harder to "blend into the crowd".
I scurried up to my favorite middle seat, very back row of the theater, and settled into the movie. Each time anyone entered, I scrunched down a bit further, just in case it was that video-monitor-guy, searching out the late-night scofflaw that was bilking them out of good money on cheapo Monday night. In retrospect, I would have been in even MORE trouble, if discovered. It was after midnight...I actually owed them the Tuesday rate.
This story would be much more dramatic if life followed my overactive imagination, and a theater manager in black ninja outfit showed up and hauled me off to the waiting police car out in front of the theater. But life so seldom mimics these daily scripts, or the movies, and nothing out of the ordinary transpired. I got a free partial movie, in 3D no less, so it was actually a pretty good deal. It wasn't an old classic though, but a re-showing of “The Phantom Menace”. Evidently the marquee was too short to spell out the whole title, so they just put “The Phantom” on the sign. Not a huge disappointment, but I had thoroughly psyched myself up for a cheesy old movie in 3D as this evening had progressed.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened on the pedal home either...but I did smarten up after all of this. I now carry my own pair of 3D glasses to the movies, in their very own special case, for those MGM moments after midnight, when you might really need them.
Now I can only hope they put The Tarantula or Gila Monster out in 3D one of these days, or nights. After all, I'm ready...I now have my very own personal glasses for viewing the classics.
Finto
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