Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Ya Gonna Call Security?

Tuesday nights are Free Movie Nights at Clearview Cinemas for all of those who are members of the Optimum Rewards program. For those of you who have no idea what that means, it's a program that my cable provider offers to members who use them for cable, internet, and phone services.

When I told my father about this program, he asked me to sign him up for it, and I promptly did this as soon as I went home. I told him to look out for a card in the mail a month from that day. Fast forward about two months later, my mom asked me whatever happened with that card thing. I had a suspicion that my dad misplaced it/threw it away. But when I asked him about it, he told me that it never came in the mail. When I pressed him on this, he got mad.

So I backpedaled and told him that it was okay if he threw it away, I just had to know this bit of information so that I could let Optimum Rewards know that they had to send him another card. I took my own card from my wallet and asked him if he had seen something like it come in the mail.

He sheepishly told me that he sorta kinda recognized the card and that he MIGHT have....thrown it away. Because it looked LIKE JUNK. And how was HE supposed to know what that was? There was nothing on it saying FREE MOVIE CARD.

You see this right here, people? This was my entire childhood with my father in one frustrating pull-your-hair-out nutshell.

Fast forward a year later when I signed Peter's mother up for the card and she did THE SAME THING.

What part of WATCH OUT FOR THIS IN THE MAIL do people not understand?

ANYWAY, I don't know if they've done studies on this, but Tuesdays are the MOST DIFFICULT day for us to get our acts together and go out on a date night. After weeks and weeks of Peter being way too busy to go out on a Tuesday night, he had a free Tuesday last night!!

YAY!

We went to see Up in the Air.

The thing with Free Movie night is that sometimes there will be people in the audience who are just there because the movie is free since it is the type of movie they would NEVER pay good hard-earned money to watch. When Peter and I walked into the theater, we noticed that 3/4 of the audience were made up of people who, shall I say, look more like the sort who would prefer Transformers or the latest Vin Diesel vehicle.

Throughout the movie, there was a group of ladies in the far right of the theater who were acting like the movie theater was their house. And by their house, I mean a place where they can get all relaxed and shout for their kids to come down the stairs because actually walking up those stairs to talk to them like people who deserve that type of dignity would be WAY TOO MUCH WORK.

So finally, after about the fifth outburst from those ladies, I hear a scurfuffle with people SHUSHing them and there were unkind words exchanged. Then one of the ladies yell out, "Whatcha gonna do? Ya gonna call SECURITY....AGEEEEN?!"

It was the "Ageeen" that made me laugh out loud. There was such a derisiveness in the way she said it, like she was flush with the power of being such an asshole.

I mean, the poor guy sitting in the middle of the aisle just cannot enjoy his free movie. And when he finally cannot bear it any longer, he calls Security, who is supposed to handle this type of behavior. Unfortunately, we can't expect Security to do anything because doing something would require some sort of effort. And people just don't make an effort at work anymore. So the loud ladies totally get away with being loud without any consequence.

After all, how can you expect people to show pride in the jobs they are doing when there is no more job security in this country? We're all just waiting around for robots to take over our jobs anyway. At least, that's the lesson I took away from the movie.

Pretty soon, the loud ladies at the movie theater are going to ruin our lives.

1 comment:

angela said...

movie theaters in new york are SO ghetto. once a girl's phone rang, and she ANSWERED it. we glanced at her, and she said, "what are you gonna do about it?" i guess calling security wouldn't have been option.

another time we witnessed a brawl. i think that was kip's bay.

here in SF, so far i've noticed that people generally don't talk during the movies. it's such a nice change of pace.