After work I went to see Jurassic Park III. Pointl…
After work I went to see Jurassic Park III. Pointless but interesting. It seems that, the more into the sequels one gets, the less evident any love for the craft the people making the film display. The movie simply becomes a parody of itself.
On the other hand, I managed to make a parody of myself just trying to buy tickets.
I arrived at the Warner Village Cinemas about 5 minutes before the movie was scheduled to start, and there was a long line at the ticket counter. Anticipating that I might not make it in time, I called up the automated ticket vendor on my cell phone as I stood in line, figuring it might be faster. In preparation I took out my wallet to get my credit card, as I do not belong to the 0.02% of the population that has memorized their credit card numbers. However, my wallet, being new and as yet untamed, was being stubborn and refused to yield my credit card. The nice artificial Australian man on the other end asked me to key in my credit card number as I dug furiously into my wallet, trying to pull out my credit card with one hand while holding the phone to my ear with the other.
You can guess what happened next. Everything else in my wallet except for my credit card came flying out in a rather explosive fashion and proceeded to distribute itself evenly across a large portion of the floor. People stared. I got down and tried to gather everything up with one hand while listening to the nice artificial Australian man warn me that I still hadn’t entered my credit card number.
Suddenly I noticed that the line had moved considerably since the ‘explosion’, so I got up and used one foot to scrape the detrius from my wallet, including bills, drivers licenses, coupons, receipts and namecards (just in case there was any doubt as to the identity of this particular lunatic) along as I hobbled over to keep up with the line. Finally I tossed my phone on the ground with a clatter and used both hands to pick up the pile of things and put them back in my wallet. People gawked. By the time I picked up my phone again I heard the nice artificial Australian man complaining about idiots who don’t know how to use a very simple automated ticket-purchasing system, just before he hung up.
“You fuck!” I shouted at the phone. People stared at me warily and began to edge towards the exit. I was just starting to dial the number again to start the whole process from the beginning when I realized that I was already at the head of the line.
I made it into the theater just in time to catch almost half an hour of stupid commercials featuring such interesting plots as giggling girls squeezing their zits and a robot which causes a family to photograph all of their furnishings into oblivion, which is apparently ok with them because they still have a printer. Of course by this time I had a raging headache that almost, but not quite, made me forget that I also had a full bladder. I understand that at some point there was a movie shown as well.
