Movie Mayhem

We went to see a late showing of "A Scanner Darkly", and it created some odd experiences. My husband dropped me off to get seats and went to pick up a friend who has no car. I was the first person in the theater, and sat down in the middle. The second person who came in made eye contact with me, and then proceeded to sit on my same row with just two seats between us. This seemed very odd, but I assumed I was overreacting to the situation. Apparently this location was too far away, though, so when his friend came in, Guy #1 moved a seat closer to me.

Some of you may have seen the emails that circulated a few years ago about urinal usage etiquette, and how it's important not to select a urinal too close to one that is already in use. I've never had use for that information, but much the same logic applies in other public settings. After he moved closer to me, I decided I didn't care if I was overreacting or if my actions were rude. I was uncomfortable with the three people in the theater all being within four seats of each other and not being a group. So I moved to another row.

Then, if you've ever been to a movie at an Alamo Drafthouse location, you know they have a whole short film at the beginning about being quiet in the theater, encouraging patrons to flag any loud guests for management to deal with them (they probably don't deal with them in the same way as they do in the short films). I've never had to even think about doing that...until this particular night. About halfway through the movie, a guy on my new row started being exceptionally loud. Laughing in inappropriate places, telling his friend that certain characters were stoned, rehashing certain story points. My guess is he stepped out, got himself stoned, and returned to be a punk in the theater. His friend seemed really embarrassed, and much of the theater was obviously annoyed with this guy's antics. So why didn't anyone call for management to take his ass out?

Besides all the strange activity in the theater, it was a good movie. However, since we saw it relatively late at night, we came home and I went straight to bed. I should probably stayed awake a while to process the movie before going to sleep. But since I didn't, I had my own short film inspired by the movie as a dream. Or nightmare, more like it.

I was going about much my normal business, when people started reacting to me like they couldn't understand me. I knew I was doing drugs, but not enough to impair speech functions. As time progressed, I got to where I couldn't understand myself, and my motions became slower and more sluggish. As I couldn't understand what I was saying, I got scared, wondering what was happening to me. Panic and confusion increased and increased and then ... my screen went white ... and then little letters and numbers appeared on the screen arranged in a bootup sequence.