Transformers: Struggle in Disguise

We've been over my love of all things sci-fi and their related fantasy cousins (anyone see Willow? Dawves? Tiny guys with french accents? Val Kilmer? Is there any better combination?) So obviously I found myself waiting in line last evening at the Riverview Plaza Movie Theater right here in Struggledelphia. Never mind that I had work in the morning. Never mind that this is the sort of theater where your shoes not only stick to the floor but in some cases refuse to move another step. Never mind my disapproval of Shia LaBeof and the way he just talks and talks and talks. The movie promised alien robots in, and out, of their respective disguises. I was down.

Though we reached the theater forty minutes before the 9:50 show, the extreme popularity of the movie mixed with the extreme trashiness of the theater meant that we had to wait an hour and a half to see the 10:20 show. Super, I thought, there went my plan to be in bed my midnight, might as well talk to some food about this. Before I got a chance to smother my troubles in a butter-like substance, however, my friends Benjamin and Michael convinced me to play a video game before I turned to the therapeutic powers of popcorn. Now, I didn't really play video games growing up, because I have no hand eye co-ordination and I tend to give up after the first two seconds and find something to read. But we were stuck in a giant building with terrible carpeting and excessive air conditioning so now seemed like as good a time as ever to get back into it. This game was some kind of adventure with things shooting and lots of explosion. I know. That really narrows the playing field. I lost pretty quickly and let Michael take over, but I will say one thing, and that is, sorry, blue states, but shooting guns is fun. No other way to say it. If even me, a bleeding heart liberal with a compost pile and compact fluorescent light bulbs in every lamp can get into this, I can't really blame the rest of the country for being a part of the magic.

As we chatted up a young lady behind us who had brought her infant daughter to see the violent, loud action film about angry robots who want to destroy the sun, I could only reflect on my own childhood, with it's early bedtimes and pbs oriented viewing. Thanks, parents, for neglecting to expose me to far-fetched narratives about killer robots until I was at least old enough to be properly freaked out by them. Say, you know, the age of six. I did eventually get that popcorn, by the way. I promptly spilled about half of it on the floor of the lobby. Oh well, it's not like I significantly altered the landscape, I only gave it more of the same.

Is my cell phone a decepticon? I may never know...Damn you Megatron!