Let's All Go To The Movies....

Do you recall that wonderful scene in Annie where she goes to the movies and gets to see the Rockettes and a movie for about a quarter? Boy, those were the days, weren't they?

Now I get that movies have more effects, cost more to make, are more realistic and that costs more money. I do not begrudge the cost of a ticket these days. I understand that between $6-8 for a ticket is probably not all that much to ask when I am willing to pay $4 to rent it. Or $5 to download it.

However, there is a small nit I would like to pick. When I rent, when I download I have control over how many previews or commercials I have to be subjected to. Now, I like previews, mostly because I like knowing what movies are coming out so that I can look forward to seeing something different.

Then, there is the movie theater. I just came back from seeing Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince. These are movies that I pretty much go and see the day they are released. So typically, I need to be there early enough to get seats. Which means I am sitting for around 30 minutes before the movie.

Nowadays they actually run little conversation starter, little trivia tidbits.....and I find that interesting. I like this stuff, it beats the hell out of the dead screen we had to watch for years when I was growing up. But then it starts, first it is a commercial for Coke, then there is commercial for cars, Disney and several other commercials.

Commercials.

I figure for the $8 I am paying to sit in a cramped theater next to a chatty teenager and two more snogging in front of me I should, at the very least, be afforded the right to be commercial free for the duration.

This does not include the commercials for the upcoming movies. Now these different from the previews shown before the movie. They actually show commercials for movies that they show previews for before the movie.

Because, maybe the 15 second commercial isn't enough, and now you need the 1 minute preview to really entice you into going to see the movie.

If you cannot convince me to go in 15 seconds, newsflash...chances are, you aint gonna grab me in 1 minute....in fact, you may just convince me to NEVER watch your movie. So seeing your commercial 3 times and then your preview is a very good way to ensure you will never see my money.

I hasten to be one of those people who bemoans the good ol' days....however, I recall going to the movies and watching four, maybe five previews and then watching the movie. I was really happy with that. I looked forward to previews. I looked forward to movies...now, unless it is something I am dying to see, I dread the theater.

Not far from here there is a drive in theater. The kids and I have started going to drive ins about ten years ago. I had recalled with nostalgia the fun of packing up the car and watching the movie from your car...and falling asleep during the double feature. So every once in a while when the drive in is showing a movie that we all want to see, we pop the popcorn, grab the cold sodas, load up on some candy, chips and other things. Throw sleeping bags in the back of the van and a couple of lawn chairs and off we go to sit in the muggy summer air, sipping on ice cold pop, slapping at skeeters and watching a movie.


Sans commercials, of course.

Why I don’t listen to Country Western Music.

I know it is the most popular type of music in the country. I know that a good number of the songs are pretty cool, have a nice beat and are not that same hokey-ness that existed back in the 40s and 50s that barely crossed out of gospel to exist in country western. I know that they have finally moved beyond the whole my-dog-done-up-and-left-me-my-wife-slept-with-my-best-friend-and-my-guitar-and-I-are-walking-along-the-train-tracks-of-life kind of music.

It is better now and you can find more updated, happier themes. It is one of the few genres that is making money right now and many artists have crossed over. I was stunned the other day to see Darrius Rucker, from Hootie and The Blowfish fame, with his second chart topping hit. But while all of this is true, there is still that undercurrent of the good ol’ boy country twang, faithful to God and Country, just give me a beer and the simple life and everything will be alright, running through the music.

Now, I am not against any of that. Really, I am not. I am a southern girl. I can bake a biscuit so good it will make you wanna slap yo’ mama. I know the difference between y’all and all y’all, and use them in speech most of the time….just ask my kids.

But, there is a fine line between being a nice southern girl and getting the moniker of a redneck. One has to tread cautiously to make sure they do not cross that line. Unless of course you desire that casting, then by all means, you may throw yourself into the role with aplomb.

I, on the other hand, would like to keep that name from being associated with mine. So I tread carefully. Up until last year I lived in Tennessee. I am married to a military man. We have four kids. My husband drives a pick up truck…which he has installed a gun rack in. He shaves his head. He wears camo. He drinks beer. He chews Copenhagen. He listens to Country Western music. Do you see where I am going with this?

It is for reasons like this that I have refused to ever set foot in Dollywood. There are some actions that will just mark you for the rest of your life, no matter how hard you try to shake it off, as a redneck.

And from there, you are only a doublewide trailer, a car up on blocks and oil drum burning garbage away from being white trash.

Confessions of a Tea Drinker.

I drink tea. If asked, I actually prefer it over coffee. There, I’ve said it. However, I love everything about coffee. I like the cups. I love the klatch. I adore the smell. I just don’t really like the taste. It is freakishly odd, I know.

My coffee has to be doctored enough that it doesn’t taste like coffee any longer. I am the person in that line at Starbucks who can make a paragraph out of ordering a cup of coffee.

“I’ll take a café latte, mocha, skim, heavy froth, heavy sugar, cinnamon, whipped cream, chocolate curls. Extra shot of chocolate syrup, sugar free please. Grande, with a sleeve. ….” And on it goes.

Three hours later, I somehow magically, get a coffee…which really isn’t a coffee at all. It is more an amalgamation, a concoction of ingredients, of which coffee makes up a very small part. But in the mean time I can stand there and smell the coffee. I can fondle the coffee equipment that looks so cool. I mean, c’mon…who hasn’t looked at a coffee press and thought that they wanted to be cool enough to get up and grind their own beans, and stand there with the distilled water and the press making “real” coffee. I could almost force down a cup, just for the coolness factor.

The coolness factor of coffee is undeniable. Really, who makes songs about tea? What? “I’m a little teapot” But then, there is coffee, and we get cool…not just cool, but Carley Simon cool…”Clouds in my coffee…” And then there is “The Coffee Song” by Sinatra. God, I mean really, is there any comparison?

But, there is me….I am a hanger on, a poser. I just try to hang out with the cool coffee drinking crowd and try to look convincing. I throw away my tea bag and doctor my tea and then I keep the lid on so no one can tell what I am really drinking. I stand around and comment on what great coffee this is. How the flavors meld, the overtones, the undertones…etc. I can talk the talk of a coffee drinker. And I am like that guy on the back cover of the comic books…the one who always got sand kicked in his face and lost his girl? Yeah..I just wish I had the guts to go up to a Starbucks counter and order a “Columbian, Grande, black.” Now that will put hair on your chest.

Get off the map.

Recently I actually joined Facebook. I know, I know. I am one of the last people. I usually am. I was one of the last people to see Forest Gump too. People were walking around saying, “Life is like a box of chocolates” and I thought they had all been reprogrammed by Hershey.

So, I have found that Facebook is like an interactive White Pages of anyone you have ever met in life. It is like a high school reunion on crack. And during all this I have found people that I thought I would never see or hear from again in this lifetime. Some from almost 30 years ago, some from my childhood.

I remember my grandmother talking about people that she knew as a child, or as a teenager. She would talk about them as if they were dead, knowing she would never see them again in this lifetime. As we would talk about them she would say, “I will find out what happened with them in my next life.” and there was a certain acceptance with that. Contact was lost in a world with so many people. And finding each other again, was truly a miracle.

Today *yawn* it happens all the time. The miracle is gone. Our children hear the stories of people in WWII finding each other some 25 years later and wonder what took them so long. Today, no one is lost….and, in fact, with the advent of Google Maps and GPS systems we can pinpoint the location of someone within feet of where they are at that moment.




I have to wonder at the knowledge of my day to day activities. Are they so very important? When did my actions begin to carry importance other than to those around me they affect? When did my thoughts begin to carry such weight that I needed to share them, immortalize them on the internet forever?

Look at Twitter for a moment with a skeptic’s eye. Do we really need to know when someone goes to the grocery store to get bread and milk? Or when you’re at a ball park and think the guy at third base is out? Or when you finally viewed the YouTube.com video of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent and got goose bumps? These are the thoughts of the common man. Not profound, earth shattering, life changing thoughts. It is cyber-clutter. Words, words, words….they are the words of self-importance. We feel that because we are special, because we are important, because we are different, somehow our trip to go and get bread and milk is different than every other person on the planet. We are common, and there is nothing wrong with that. There is a pleasantness to turning to the person next to you and saying, “That guy was out at third.” and they are the only one who knows what you are thinking. That is special. That is unique.


My words are not all that profound…so I will spare you the “You should listen to me, you are not special.” Because all that seeks to do, is say I am special…and you are not.

Don’t listen to me. Go outside. Get off the map.

Yakkity Yak

It is the age of the internet. We are connected. So connected that there is never, it seems anytime, anyplace, anywhere where one cannot be found. We can know someone’s most profound thoughts and we can know someone’s grocery lists. Information. It is all about information. In a world that seems to despise the idea of Big Brother we document if we have gas pains. As the internet first became available for us, it was a large, extended encyclopedia….a way to connect to universities, work, and to world news.

Today we can communicate through email, posts, blogs, facebook, twitter, e-zines, skype, instant messengers, technorati, Flickr, YouTube…and the list expands every week or so to include some new emerging communication form. And our cell phones….sigh…our cell phones.



I remember when I could not get a hold of a person. Now, unless they are climbing in the Andes mountains it is almost physically impossible NOT to get a hold of somebody. And from what I hear they will be installing a wireless hotspot on a few of the more populated faces of the Andes. So watch out kiddies..bring those cell phones on your next excursion…chances are you they will be able to hear you now.

You know…geek that I am, I think back to the old Star Trek episodes when they had those races on the show that could read each other’s thoughts. And I think to myself, “Good god, being this connected right now drives me around a flipping bend, what would I do if I could literally hear every person’s thoughts? What would I do if there was no person on the planet that I could not ‘reach out and touch’ any time I wanted to?” No question, the suicide rate would increase one thousand fold.

Now I am not a privacy freak, don’t get me wrong. I am pretty much a cards-on-the-table kind of girl. What you see is what you get. But…I mean seriously people, don’t you ever just want to not be a blip on someone’s screen? Me? I would prefer the anonymity over every single person knowing by just a glance at some profile written somewhere that I prefer tea over coffee, like dark chocolate over milk, would quite possibly consider throwing myself at the feet of Johnny Depp, is Eastern Orthodox, 45 years old, 5’7”, have blues eyes, brown hair with some gray and red unless I color it, and weighs….

No. just no.

There is a point where I have to draw the line.