Tales of the City

When I go to screening in NYC, it's usually pretty routine. People file in, sit down, and quietly watch the movie. The same applies to travel on the train--folks tend to keep to themselves. I get the chance to finish some work, listen to some music.

However, the last few times I've ventured into the big city, I've encountered some strange behavior. The three events that I'm about to chronicle happened within the last month.

--At a huge screening of An Education, an older woman asked if I was a film critic, to which I said yes. Twice in the course of the movie, she made two observations that were meant to frame her as an observant film watcher. But they made her sound a bit like a lunatic. They were:

1.) "She didn't give him back the change."

2.) "That car has been parked there the entire movie."

Those would have been fine if we were watching movie centering around espionage and double crosses, not a precocious girl growing up with a broken heart in 1960s London.

--A few days later I was back in the city to catch Precious. Now for those who haven't seen the movie, it's pretty intense. For reasons I can't comprehend, there were two chuckleheads sitting behind me who kept laughing, to the point where some other audience members were getting peeved. I didn't say anything because it was hard for me to gauge if these guys were douchebags or if that's how they reacted to the movie's heaping portions of misery.

Either way, I'm sure they found their way to the short bus after the screening ended. Maybe they even stopped for ice cream.

--On the way home from Precious, I took the train home and watched with absolute joy as a 30ish drunk woman belligerently and drunkenly flirted with the petrified 21-year-old guy who foolishly sat next to her.

"I'm such a cougar," she bellowed at one point.

Then, for reasons that still baffle me, the older guy sitting behind her began talking to her. She then began criticizing the guy--who, let's be frank, was a moron for initiating a convesation with this ditz--on his dating life. It was fantastic theater--you could tell the guy regretted his decision, yet he couldn't pull away--and the one reason why public transportation cannot be beaten for sheer entertainment value.

The best part about this? The woman thought she was hot, but she was clearly five years, 25 pounds, and a bad dye job past her prime. It was more awkward than watching Sandra Bullock play someone 15 years her junior in All About Steve or Tara Reid play a brainiac in Alone in the Dark.