At the Movies

People who bring infants to the movie theater suck. Toddlers too, as well as any kid who is incapable of sitting quietly for the entire film. Do you have a baby? There's a whole list of activities you don't get to participate in for a few years if you can't find a sitter. You don't get to go to karaoke night at your favorite country bar. You don't get to go to the Gold Room at Westward Look. And you don't get to go the movies. Want to see Shrek the Third? Get a sitter or wait for it to come out on DVD.

I didn't want to go late this afternoon, mainly because both breakfast and lunch included floor shows courtesy of dumbfuck families who apparently have no concept of how to handle their children, or, more specifically, how to teach their children to behave properly in a public setting. Given that track record and the undeniable kid appeal of the movie we wanted to see, I knew it was doomed from the start. Sure enough, withing two minutes of sitting down in beautiful Century El Con theater #10, in walked dumbfuck family number one, complete with a toddler and an infant in a car seat. Dumbfuck family two, with an almost-toddler and barely-post-toddling kid, followed shortly. The infant lasted ten minutes into the movie before it started squawking; the toddlers chattered intermittently through the whole thing.

You know, I really don't pay nine fucking bucks to walk into a theater, shoes sticking to the floor all the way, kicking aside a complete movie's worth of trash the cleaning crew apparently watched spawn mold instead of picking up after the previous showing, only to have your baby wail into my ear and your toddler crinkle an empty water bottle for most of the movie. When did people start thinking this was a great idea? It's a mystery to me.

In any event, I'm done with theaters. It's fun to watch films on a full-sized screen and have actual popcorn, but when I spend the entire time fantasizing about strangling people, it can't be all that healthy. For the record, El Con is a certifiable dump now. I remember when it opened, all those years ago, to great fanfare for the soaring ceilings and cafe tables in the lobby, the great variety of food options, the stadium seating with alternating rows of loveseats and rocking chairs. Now the tables are gone and the lobby is dingy from a constant haze of smoke from the popcorn machines. Trash pickup is sketchy, the floors are sticky, the bathrooms hit or miss.

And people are dipshits. CasaVideo, here I come.