I'm a guy that watches a lot of the late George Carlin's stand ups. I'll take a seat, venture to YouTube, and watch a line of his episodes for countless hours.
The other day, my insides agitated with laughter to one of Carlin's comments that suitably fits the premise of this column, "I like people… But I have a very low tolerance level for stupid bulls***!"
George and I share this idea. My most despicable peeve is the ruthlessness of brainless acts of a fellow human being. I'm not out to call other people brainless, but sometimes there is just that one person – or few people – that just have to be aggravating to be around.
You want an example? I'll give you one that drives me to the threshold of lunacy.
Last Saturday, my movie-posse and I checked into our weekly appointment at Regal Cinemas. The Woman In Black was the unanimous choice, and the only doable showtime for the entire group was at 11:45 p.m. I didn't even consider the late showtime, which is normally inhabited with a sea of intolerable teenagers. I was merely excited to see Daniel Radcliffe's first post-Potter movie.
As soon as I found my seat, all was lost.
One chair separated me from a noisy popcorn eater. He devoured his buttery snack the way a lawn mower trims grass. I couldn't go one minute without hearing my obnoxious neighbor consume his prey.
Seated a row ahead of me were two teenage girls, roughly 14 years old. They obviously had stuff that were so imperative to discuss that they – not whispering, mind you – talked and texted on their cells with their minds in careless oblivion. One of the lawnmower's friends kindly asked them to quiet down. They didn't.
Why didn't I personally ask them to shut up? Mainly because I'm allergic to meaningless conversations, and I knew full well that the girls would blurt out a generic, hollow line like, "Mind your own business!" or "It's a free country!" or, my idolized favorite, "Nobody else seems to care!"
That's a false assumption. Everyone cared, but nobody wanted to be ‘that guy' to tell them off. I have already confessed that even I wasn't ready to mouth my honest opinion to these two harpies.
But someone should. Each movie theater should hire an undercover watchman/woman during late-night movie premiers. These guardians will quietly protect the audience from any obnoxious noisemakers. And if anybody so much as inhale to speak, that said guardian would spill his/her soft drink onto the noisemaker's head. Even the movie theater needs its dark knight.
But there is just no need to discuss your life story during a public showing. Some people don't consider that there are moviegoers who take film seriously.
Now, of course there are loopholes. Comedies, for instance, pretty much require a noisy audience to make laughing easier. And horror films will understandably cause girlfriends to shriek and clutch onto her date for dear life. The Woman In Black even caused me to jump once, and erupted screaming and fearful chatter among the crowd. I expected and ignored that.
The worst encounter happened about two years ago at a screening of Paranormal Activity. One guy in the audience shushed another guy seated two rows below, and that was a good enough excuse for him to climb over inhabited seats to publicly battle a stranger.
Don't do it. Don't be the one who tortures everyone else with your voice and/or blinding cell phone and/or popcorn eating. You will be hated for X amount of minutes by people who paid a high price to see a movie. If you truly yearn to gossip and obnoxiously text cute boys or girls, go to the mall. You just might walk out not covered in soft drink.
Email: jacobkno@buffalo.edu
