Knock Knock, Motherfucker

In our town, we have a really old, really run down movie theater with 2 screens. One is an enormous room that seats everyone in town. (I have mentioned we live in a small town before, haven't I?). The other one seats like a family of 6. It's an even group.

The only Part of the appeal is that it's cheap. Spouse and I can go to a matinee, grab 2 tickets, 2 drinks, and 2 snacks for $12.50. For real. It's $3.00 each for matinee. Night movies are just $4.00. Snacks start out at $1.00, and go all the way up to $3.00. Actually, come to think of it, you can snag a small bag of fruit snacks, or a ring pop, or a single Air Head for $.25. So, dirt cheap.

Of course, dirt cheap comes at a price, and that price is comfort. The seats were original to the building, and are lumpy, hard, and wide enough for a size 3 petite woman. The rows are so close together that a 5'5" tall woman (re: Me) hits her legs against the seat in front of her. I actually bring a pillow with me now, because it means I can sit through the entire movie without resorting to taking my back pain medications when I get home. I hate leaving a movie theater with back pain, and massive headaches, resulting from said back pain. It just royally sucks donkey balls.

The bathrooms are something special, too. If you plan to use one, I suggest waiting.

But, on the chance that you have to, the women's bathroom is not handicap accessible. It's barely adult size person accessibly. You walk in to a closet sized room with a sink in it, that easily takes up 3/4ths of the bathroom. The outside door, and the door leading into the actual toilet area takes up the rest of the room.

In a room about as wide as a normal household hallway, there are 3 toilets, separated by plywood, with shower curtain doors. In order to use them, you kind of have to straddle the toilet while pulling down your panties, and when you sit down, your feet are in the hallway, under the shower curtain.

As I am not a man, I've never seen the men's room, but Spouse assures me it's about as big as the ladies room. Smaller, probably. Minion 2 says "there's a stall with no light, so it's really dark, and a urinal, and a really gross, dirty sink". Since he lives here, in my house, I would take his word at the sink being gross, because ours is not lickable clean. You can not eat off our sink. Well, maybe you could, but I advise against it.

This past winter, the theater changed hands, and they have made a few adjustments since then. New carpet (they actually advertised that on the sign out front for like 3 weeks), a new ceiling (though they did not fix the leak completely, so there are some tiles that are already nasty gross), and they repainted the floor and stage where the main screen is.

I shit you not, when I took Minion 1 to go see the first showing of Harry Potter last week, the new owner was behind the candy counter chatting up women about his new carpet. And before the movie started, he came in and thanked us all for making the theater what it was, and how proud he is of the changes- and the changes have been nice, but they were no where near the changes the rest of us wanted to see. When he mentioned that they were planning to change the seating in the future, a cheer went up in the theater.

They also added lights to the room. In the past, if you went there, you went into a dark room- much like theaters look when the movie has already started, only- no movie. Pain in the ass to navigate around in. They did add lights, but apparently, they don't have any budget left at the end of the month to pay the increased electric bill, because they rarely use the lights.

The screens are shoddy- they need to be replaced, you can see streaks of dirt and dust all over them. Now, Spouse used to work for a collage in the aspect of taking care of, fixing, and updating all technology in class rooms and auditoriums, including screens. He says they're a bitch to clean, so it's easier to replace them when they start looking all nasty. But think of it this way- when they show a scene that's all white, all you see is brown streaks. Yuck.

So yeah, the main appeal is the price. And really, for the price, you DO get 1st run movies. They aren't movies that have been out for 6 weeks already. Sometimes the movies are on their 2nd or 3rd week, but are still "in theaters". Lately, they've been getting opening weekend block busters. Harry Potter, Transformers, Captain America, etc.

It's a nice theater for the town. I just wish they would A) fix the seats- eliminate 5 rows, get new seats, and spread the rows out a bit so there is space. B) Replace the screens with clean ones. And C) Figure out how to make bathrooms I don't have to straddle. It's not pretty when an uncoordinated woman is trying to straddle a toilet, balance on one leg, and pull down pants and panties. It just does not work. I only attempt it when there is NO other option. I'm not Fergie, ya'll. I'm not about to piss myself for my own comfort.

Well, that's the theater. And totally not the original point of this now rather lengthy post.

In the first few minutes of Captain America, there was a scene that just gave me mad laffs. If you aren't into spoilers- tough fucking luck. But really, it's right in the beginning, and gives away ZERO spoilers, so I guess you're safe.

The Nazi's roll on up to some sort of a religious type building. The dudes in charge of the building went all about security details, and barred the door. The nazi's were not to be dissuaded by the obviously high tech security system in place.

They used the bucket of a crane, or something similar, to push the door in.

And all that kept going through my mind was, "Knock Knock, Motherfucker."

I am 5. You can not take me out in public.