December 22, 2003
Chaos at The Grove
Ten minutes twenty-five seconds into Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, a loud beep noise goes off. The screen goes black, a flash is snapped, and the audience starts to boo, they think something’s wrong with the projection and this kind of stint is not supposed to happen when you’re paying 10.50 plus dollars for 'the' movie experience. Well, they were wrong, it wasn’t the fault of the projectionist. A voice through loud speakers asked everyone to please stand up and walk to the nearest exit, the fire alarm had just been triggered.
Surprisingly, the crowds calmly headed to the back door exit, got some fresh air and walked around to the main entrance, where we joined hundreds of movie theater goers who were waiting, not sure for what, as we did not know if there was a fire being extinguished. Meanwhile Gretel, Nicole and Caprice started to chant “free popcorn, free popcorn, free popcorn,” and it picked up like the wave at the World Cup, culminating in applause, but management ignored the plea, and instead a concierge went up the stairs to announce that everyone would be receiving readmission tickets.
Great, but here comes the fun part. I go back into the theater and there’s someone sitting in my seat. Oh gawd, a tingling sensation of panic striked me as I walked over to her and him.
V (in a calm and amiable voice): “Hi, I apologize, but I was sitting here."
Her: “So?”
V: “I stood in line for two hours to get the seat, it’s not very nice to use a fire alarm to better your seat.”
Her (in a British accent): “Well darlin’, I’m sitting here now, you’re going to have to find another seat. *wicked grin*”
V: “Enjoy it.”
But I didn’t mean it. Secretly I wanted to kick her ass, like Uma Thurman did on Kill Bill, after all I do have a black belt in Tang Soo Do, and though I haven’t practiced recently, I was confident my instinct would reward me. I fantasized for a split second and found another seat. Then the guy next to me showed up, headed to his seat, and went through the same ordeal. Those two didn’t budge, they were insensitive rocks, we tried to make them feel inadequate, but it didn’t work. This reminded me of life lesson #109: it’s not fair. I’ve been doing a lot of growing up lately; as the number of life lessons learned is outrageously high for the number of days I’m actually living/existing in this planet. Someone, it seems, is trying to tell me something.
Les photos sont de moi. My camera goes with me everywhere. Blame the photojournalist in me.
This was going well, I enjoy comming here and reading, but are you still alive?
cheers,
aaron
Posted by: Aaron at January 21, 2004 05:23 PMAaron,
[This was going well, I enjoy comming here and reading...]
Thanks for the comment, I was under the impression that none read my rants, you might just comprise my whole readership. ;-)
[...but are you still alive?]
Yes, and waiting for Movable Type 3.0 to come out so I can set up a new blog, which will be updated more often than 'never'. I'll send a mail when it's up and running.
Oh hey, come and check out the opening of "Communities Under Construction." It's April 15th, we're still working on the locaiton, since A+D is not at the Bradbury Building anymore, it's relocated temporarily to Sunset Strip for "The Ray Kappe Retrospective" and will probably relocate again for the exhibition (we're hoping otherwise, as Sunset Strip is a very cool location).
- viridiana.
Posted by: viridiana at January 23, 2004 10:18 AM