The Core Dump

The Core Dump is the personal blog of Nic Lindh, a Swedish-American pixel-pusher living in Phoenix, Arizona.

[By Nic Lindh on Sunday, 01 April 2007]

Done with movie theaters

Nic has (yet another) horrible experience at a movie theater and swears he’s done.

Yesterday I went to see 300. Paid my money down and went in to see the show. After that, I’m done with movie theaters. Not movies. Movie theaters.

What broke the camel’s back?

Was it spending good money and then being forced to sit through 15 minutes of trailers for movies I have no intention whatsoever of ever seeing? No.

Was it the overpriced popcorn and soda? No.

Was it having ushers walk around during the movie to make sure I wasn’t bootlegging? No.

It was you, my fellow breeders.

The couple who decided that bringing an infant to a movie would be a great idea. Who could possibly be disturbed by your infant’s crying? Turns out, everybody, actually.

The crying infant some self-absorbed ass decided to bring to the movie was a bit of a distraction from the whole, you know, actually watching-the-movie-I-paid-good-money-for bit, but it’s not the worst.

See, I know there are a lot of idiots out there breeding. People who can’t hang on to a driver’s license are popping out kids and being allowed to keep them. These people apparently have not managed to comprehend this whole movie rating system thing we have going on in the States. The one where a movie being rated R means that kids should absolutely not be allowed to see it. There will be content in that movie that a child simply is not ready for.

As a bonus, if you go see an R-rated movie at a movie theater, guess what kind of movies you get trailers for? Ah, yes, you there in the back of the class? That’s right! Other R-rated movies! And what kind of movies usually end up with R-ratings? Oh, don’t all answer at once… Horror movies! That’s right. So apart from the content of a movie like 300 where, for the love of all that is holy, the title is spelled out in blood spatters, if you were to take your underage child to see it, he or she would also have to sit through about 15 minutes of crank-bump-stab-Satan previews.

Awesome idea.

As a parent myself, I’m just flabbergasted at the idiots that bring their three-year-olds to fare like Saving Private Ryan or Starship Troopers or 300. What, if anything, are you thinking?

Perhaps you should suck it up about being a parent and realize that you won’t be able to watch a lot of movies until they come out on DVD and you can rent them when Junior is asleep? And that yes, sometimes it’s hard to have an infant, and it would be great to get out of the house, but that unless you throw down for a baby sitter or go one at a time to the movies, perhaps your one-month-old should not be allowed to turn $7 into shit for a whole theater full of people?

So if you’re one of those people, I truly hope the CPA comes for you sooner rather than later.

Oh, and enjoy your child’s adolescence. Payback’s going to be a bitch. And you deserve every moment.

Until then, I’m done with having you ruin my movie watching experience. I’ll rather watch the thing six months later on a laptop wearing head phones if it’ll allow me to forget about your miserable existence.

You have thoughts? Send me an email!