Best Of 2023 - Going to the movies is fine

New York Times Co.. Getty Images.

There's truly something perfectly OK about going to the movies. It's as American as going to other places to do other things with other people. 

Lately this blog has been on fire with the type of back-and-forth bloggery usually seen at companies where most of the good employees aren't escaping to Chicago. It's been incredible. Chris Castellani (our Minnesota guy) and Jeff D. Lowe (Kirk Minihane's reacharound caddie) both blogged about the merits of going to the movies in the last few days.

I didn't read either of them because I form my very passionate opinions based on headlines, like any Allen Iverson detractor in the early 2000's. Chris opined that "We need to stop pretending that going to the movies is" I dunno I stopped reading but he appeared to be down on the whole experience.

Castellani's favorite movie-going experience was seeing Chicago in 2002, though he was ushered out before it started.

Jeff D. Lowe, meanwhile, countered by waxing poetic about the experience of seeing movies in person. His headline was "Going to the movies is an experience both magical and unmatched," which is a sentence that's just preposterously too much. It was, however, an extremely well-written blog. That's what Jeff thinks anyway.

So now I have decided that since I moved to Chicago a month early to ween my body off Chick-Fil-A by fooling it with vats of custard and cheese curds from Culver's, I have plenty of time to weigh in.

Going to the movies is fine.

Listen I've had a lot of great times at the movies. The popcorn tastes better. The candy tastes better. The Sprite has an oddly acidic taste that shouldn't be good but somehow kinda works. 

Additionally, there's no better place to get a handjob than in the darkened back row of a small theater while a shitty movie plays on the screen in front of you. I never received one, I'm just going on the wisdom my dad passed along to me after he made me sit five rows in front of him during a mid-December showing of Land Before Time so he could make a deal with his friend named Johnny. I don't know what kind of deal they made, but that was our best Christmas ever. My dad called it our only white Christmas even though it was 76 degrees and stormy on Christmas Day.

Anyway, we all have fantastic memories of the movie-going experience, right?

My first movie theater kiss was in the back row on a Sunday afternoon showing of Beethoven's Second with a girl named Heather.

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My last movie theater kiss was in the back row on a Sunday afternoon showing of Beethoven's Second with a girl named Heather. Now every time I see a St. Bernard, I get that familiar feeling of teen tingling in my loins that I got that day. I don't think it's related, I'm just casually into beastiality and even in the animal kingdom, I can only get fat broads.

I have had my share of defining moments at the movies. As the crowd sat enraptured by the onscreen chemistry of Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in Rush Hour 2, I noticed a group of ruffians being a little too loud just to the left of my date and I. 

At first I shrugged it off, deciding to let boys be boys even though half of them were girls. But at some point, the tomfoolery became too distracting, at which point my date quietly but politely shushed them like the passive aggressive know-it-all southern bitch she was. Well wouldn't you know it, these miscreants didn't like her shushing and they retorted with a kindly "you shut up, bitch."

Well, I'm Brandon Walker. Brandon Fucking Walker. I'm not gonna sit there at let somebody talk to my date that way. She looked at me in horror and asked "Are you going to do something?"

Ypu're goddamn right I was. I stood up, gathered my things, leaned down and whispered "Come on sweetie, we can watch this on DVD in four months." Then we left and got Arby's. People shit on Arby's but in 1999, the chicken bacon swiss sandwich with curly fries and a sweet tea was my favorite meal. She left me for a dude that lived in a trailer.

Anyway going to the movies is whatever. If you like it, great. If you don't, whatever. 

Jeff and Chris suck anyway.