I guess I'm old-fashioned but I enjoy the theater experience still.
As do I. My wife is resistant to it, though. I have always loved it since I was a kid. I hear all these reports of rude and thoughtless people ruining the experience, and I have o wonder if the people in our area are just better behaved overall; a bad experience locally has been rare for me. There WAS a run maybe 20 years ago where there were a few movies with dunce in the audience messing around with laser pointers, but it has been many years since I encountered that.
It is a different experience having to haul my entire family to a theeater, though. It gets pricey. I'm perfectly okay skipping all the expensive concessions, expect for maybe a soda, but the rest of my family won't have it. Sometimes my wife goes to Walmart and fills her purse with snacks. Much less expensive, but I personally feel a little guilty for that -- I know the prices are insane at the theater, but I also know that is where their actual profits are made -- the profits that allow them to stay in business -- and that the rules stipulate no outside food or drink, and it is private property and they do have that right.
I just got a new 75-inch 4K QLED TV, replacing the 11-year old 60-inch plasma we had. There's a long story there, involving honest-to-God temporary insanity (I fervently pray it is temporary) for my wife, and her having a way over-the-top temper tantrum in which she hurled random objects at the screen until the TV stopped working, then pitched it off the entertainment center face-first for good measure. Never been so angry with her before in nearly 15 years of marriage (and she's done wild stuff before with her anger-management issues, but never
THAT crazy). I was so angry I was trembling, but I guess I learned that I really just don't have it in me to beat my wife -- I guess she'd have to physically hurt one of our children to push me over that edge.
But anyway ... The other day she was pouting about wanting a new phone to replace the one she, through her own negligence, allowed to be stolen during an impromptu 1,000 mile drive to Texas that resulted in her being admitted to a mental health facility, resulting in her dad and I having to also make a drive out to Texas to get her and bring the other vehicle home -- part of the same whirlwind of craziness that resulted in the destruction of the TV. She wants an iPhone 11 to replace the one that was stolen (whoever stole it has a useless paperweight, since I locked it remotely right away), and I have offered her an iPhone SE (with the same storage capacity) for a couple hundred dollars less. "You bought a new TV," she whined. As gently as possible, I replied, "Ask yourself this question -- WHY did I get a new TV? No, my love, YOU bought the new TV. I would have been perfectly happy with the one we had for a few more years."
But I digress ... As impressed as I am with the 4K HDR picture and massive size (literally as large a TV as I could possibly fit in the space available), it still isn't the same as seeing a big movie -- Marvel, Star Wars, Bond, Pixar, you name it -- on a huge screen with 40-eleven-dozen speakers, with a crowd of other people laughing, crying. exulting, and, now and then, applauding. I
love that!
SSB
