i love the movies so much that i steal from them...

this weekend was my second in a row in which i saw four movies.

four.

that's two weekends. and eight movies.

it's like my home away from home, the movie theater. i love it more than i love some people. love it more than i love puppies. love it more than i love baseball, and i love it way more than i love money.

but, as it happens, i've learned that you do need a little bit of money to go to the movie theater as often as i tend to do.

but just a little bit.

that is to say... i sneak into the movies. all the time.

i discovered that i could do this way back in the summer of 2001, when i bought tickets for what has to be THE worst, and most awkward double feature ever: the billy crystal/julia roberts romantic comedy, "america's sweethearts" and (wait for it...) "jurassic park 3."

i... i don't know what i was thinking. maybe if they'd combined the two? julia roberts as a dinosaur chasing billy crystal through an ill-advised theme park...?

sorry, no, anyway, i saw one of them, went into the bathroom, came back out, and waited for a lot longer than i probably should have for someone to rip my other ticket, but no one was there. so i just walked right in with an un-ripped stub. and, a few days later (and it did take me a few days, because my skull doesn't exactly house a criminal mastermind, apparently), i thought... "heyyyyyy! i could get away with this again!!!"

and i have. many times. many, many times. and... honestly? yes. there is a part of me that feels guilty about it. but, i have to tell you, it's not just about my financial struggles over the past eight years. it's... it's hard to describe, but... there's just something that's absolutely thrilling about outsmarting an entire theater full of trained employees who work on something less than minimum wage, and don't really care if you're sneaking into a movie or not.

it's a lot like james bond, except... really, very different.

anyhow, there are several tricks of the trade i've picked up over the years, and i'm sure i'll get back to them some other time. but i do believe one of the main keys to sneaking in is, in fact, paying for the first film and scouting out a specific hiding area before the second show. it could be underneath a seat inside the theater. or behind a cardboard cutout of johnny depp. for me, i usually find the bathroom to be something of an ideal setting. well, for now.

y'see, last weekend, there were about thirty-five minutes to kill in between shows, and-- while sitting on a toilet for 35 minutes is quite common for some members of my family (not mentioning my aunt cathy by name)-- i really thought it was quite uncomfortable after awhile. my hind parts did not thank me for it, i'll tell you that much for free.

and the automatic-flusher was a touch annoying, too. after a certain point, it just kept going off every minute and a half or so. thinking to itself, "oh, well, he MUST be done by NOW, isn't he??? i mean... sheesh, what the--??"

and i'm confident that the future of the automatic-flushing industry will feature some sort of an alarm going off in one of the employee back rooms, alerting a manager that there's a customer who has been on the throne for an unusual amount of time. at which point said manager will walk into the bathroom and knock on the stall door and say in his best dad-of-the-year voice, "sir...? ...is everything okay in there?"

"uhm, yes, i, uh, i'm fine. everything's fine."

"sir, our toilet has notified us that you've been sitting there for an extremely long period of time. is there anything we can do for you?"

"no, no, really, i, uh, just... uh, i just had a couple of tacos for, uhm, breakfast, and, i, uhh... uh..."

"sir? ...sir, are you planning on sneaking in to the 5:45 screening of 'america's sweethearts 2' "?

"....(sigh) yes."

like i said. not exactly a criminal mastermind.


the five things i fell in love with today...

1) jimmy stewart
2) jack lemmon
3) phillip seymor hoffman
4) john c. reilly
5) paul newman

song of the day...
"our life is not a movie or maybe" by okkervil river

movie of the day...
"public enemies"