Harry Potter and the Crack Smoking Legion Of Zealots!

Jun 21, 2004 17:09

Yes MA’AM!

It’s time again for another thoughtful day in the life of Ant. Forte. Me. That guy you all refer to as Angry, Mean, and Abrasive! But anyway, and yes I did begin a sentence with ‘but’. I spent the last year traveling the globe, but since I bought it at the Rand McNally Super Store, it wasn’t that long a trip. When I got back however, I decided I’d just go see a couple movies with my friend Greg.

Opening day, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. - I’m gonna say this now and get it over with: Yeah, I read the books. Yeah, I saw the movies- fuck off!

I can’t really say this is so much about the movie as it is about the people who were there- I… I don’ think I’ve laughed so much in a single outing in my life as I did when this movie opened. First of all, I work late into the night and my friend Greg who went with me works all through the night. I had to stay up all night to make the 8:30 show, but that’s fine, I hardly ever sleep anyway, you all know my thoughts on that from earlier posts. I pick him up in my then-in-one-piece vehicle (long story) and we boogie down, in our work clothes, to the theatre. When we get there, there’s a sea of people waiting in two convenient lines for the theatre to open- at this point, it’s about 7:40 in the morning.

There had to have been close to eighty people there, but the scary part was that they were all wearing robes and pointy hats. I shit you not, robes and pointy hats, people. That aside, there were dogs and cats running around, barking and meowing nonstop, all wearing hats or glasses or all of the above- fucking maroon and golden scarves billowing in the wind as children whined about their feet hurting for standing there since 4:30 IN THE FUCKING. MORNING! For God’s sake, a man had a guinea pig dressed as Harry Potter up on his shoulder that’d been pissin’ down his back for the last hour, staining his K-Mart Blue Light Special Robe! What mystified me is- why in the hell did these little witches and wizards bring their ‘familiars’? For one, the theatre doesn’t serve animal food and for two, I don’t even think they let them in.

We’d been standing there not ten minutes when a sea of cars suddenly pulled in off the highway. Parking spaces were being filled like young girls on Virgin Day at the Playboy Mansion, and the sad part was, every person- every. Fucking. Person, who got out of a vehicle, was dressed as Harry-Fucking-Potter!

Greg and I watched in sheer horror and amazement as an old Geo Metro puttered into the parking lot in all of it’s three-cylinder glory, bounced and slide into a space up front and out of it climbed a pimply, half-shaven man wearing tattered, torn, ketchup stained robes. He stood, struggled to tug his arms through the armholes, put on his pointed hat, then reached back into the vehicle to produce none other than a little Harry Potter case. From it, he pulled the essentials; a McDonald’s bag, a custom made and Harry Potter etched wand made of real, polished wood, a book of spells and the BOOK. OF THE FUCKING MOVIE. HE’D JUST. COME. TO SEE.

We waited in the hopes that someone else was going to get out of the car- a parent, a wife, a child, something. Nothing. He, like the rest of the here-after dubbed Ocean of Otaku, had simply come to embarrass himself. Hurrying up, he explained to all those watching; “Heh, almost forgot my wand.”

Sad truth- no one seemed to mind that part, they just waved with their own wands and someone replied, “You almost missed the show!” I can’t stress to you how bad it is if this is your existence. Half of the people in attendance actually took time off of their jobs to be there. That’s usually why Greg and I go see movies during the day, PEOPLE. ARE. AT. WORK WHEN WE AREN’T! But apparently not this crowd! Oh no, no, no.

All you hear is their dogs, cats and various other animals, theories about the movie, pages upon pages turning at the same time as geeks read the book, mothers scolding children for poking each other in the eyes and crotches with wands whilst screaming useless spell gibberish, it never, fucking, ended! Come on, man!

In just under twenty minutes, hundreds of people had arrived, all for the 8:30 show- most had bought tickets online, days in advance, others were standing there since sun up hoping to get a glimpse of the box office employees. For the first time in movie history, people said ‘Sir’ and ‘Ma’am’ to movie clerks arriving in their cars for work clearly trying to establish some ‘inside ties for better treatment’! How fucking pathetic is that? The manager had been out an astounding five times now to comfort the crowd of chanting bobbleheads screaming ”We want Harry Potter, We Want Harry Potter!”

8:25 rolls around, once again the Manager makes a grand appearance to calm the crowd who had at this point pushed in so close to the door, Greg and I literally had to issue threats to some people to back the living fuck off of our asses. He proclaims in Shakespearean style that the people who had been there since 4:30 would get to go in first. I say Shakespearean because like many theatrical plays; something went wrong with the plan. The 4:30 people scream for joy and lineup by the middle set of doors wielding their newly acquired box office tickets or their pre-purchased pass.

The box offices open for everyone else and we buy our tickets, shortly after the door opens. That’s when the Greek Tragedy begins. The 4:30 people’s doorway got jammed. Motherfuckers shove us out of the way and run down the hall, ignoring popcorn, sodas and the lot just to go claim seats with shoes, purses, scarves, whatever artifact they had on that they could remove. The 4:30 people start a mini-riot, slamming and kicking the doors while the Manager yells at his employees through a walkie-talkie like it’s the fuckin’ Secret Service: “Get those doors open, do it NOW. We gotta get these people inside! Get down here with the keys, move, move, move!” The mob then storms back out for popcorn, candy, hotdogs, whatever they can grab- completely emptying many of the racks behind the counter. Greg and I get inside just as a woman is literally socked in the face for sitting in someone else’s seat! At that point we realized we didn’t want to be in there with these people.

By the sheer volume of people inside, and the fact that nothing was going right for the management, we figured it was only a matter of time before an even bigger riot broke out and people started dying. We walk out and get tickets for the 9:00 show starting half an hour later.

Guess what? When we get in, NOBODY showed up for the 9 o’ clock. Not ONE fucking person. It was almost nine before anyone else got the same idea. The movie begins, runs and ends and the only ones in there save my friend and I were two families who’d showed up late.

To beat that; the movie was terrible! I slept through an hour of it. Those people did all that rioting, screaming and cursing for nothing. Absolutely nothing! A lady was punched in the face for Christ’s sake. We get out of the movie and people from the 8:30 are still piling out, turns out there was so many people in there that people who had tickets that showed up slightly late, demanding the 8:30 show were sitting on the floor, in the isles and up front. Kids were even sitting in the laps of parents to make room!

I’m so glad my favorite term has become: “Fuck. That.” You couldn’t pay me enough to deal with that bullshit.

Hybrid:Out.
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