Calling All Geeks!

It took a second for this one to click for me, but once I figured it out, I cracked up…

So I’ve been joking for a while about the fact that John “7 homes for me and 100 years in Iraq for everyone else” McCain bears a striking resemblance to a certain frackin’ character on frackin’ Battlestar frackin’ Glatica, but John “Doesn’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites but still thinks himself capable of dealing with the middle east” McCain’s recent choice for his running mate is really making me wonder how long before John “Hey, have I ever mentioned I’m a POW? Yeah, well, just in case I haven’t told you I’m a POW, I’m going to mention that I’m a POW. I’m a POW. There, now you know that I’m a POW.” McCain finally reveals his true Cylon nature.

Holy frack! The Republicans have actually nominated Saul Tigh and Laura Roslin! Ironic considering how much they butt heads on the show. Still, one thing is for sure, if the Republicans win in November, we’re going to see a whole lot of air lock executions.

On a side note, I just have to say that, even through I disagree with her on just about everything politically, the main reason I can’t support Palin is because she kind of has this naughty librarian look going, and I really don’t want to end up ogling the Vice President. (Oh, she doesn’t believe in evolution? Well, I have a bone for her that certainly wasn’t left by Jesus to test our faith. – Though I’m sure it’ll get her calling out to God – And she’s against abortion? Well, there are ways of working around that, baby. Just open your mouth and close your eyes.)

/ This is simultaneously my most political and most perverted post ever. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I’ve talked about it before, but I figured I’d finally back it up with pictures. Here are some images of broken iPhones. The level of schadenfreude I derive from these may be a little excessive, but then again, so is the level of smugness of the average iPhone owner, so I guess it all balances out.

Lots of interesting rumors surfacing for the next Batman movie. Rumor has it that the main villain is going to be the Riddler and he’s going to be played by Johnny Depp. Also, the Joker will return, and this time he will be played by Johnny Depp. Unfortunately, Christian Bale won’t be able to return due to his recent legal issues, so the roll of Batman will now be played by Johnny Depp. The story is said to be based on the infamus issue where the Joker kills Robin, “Death in the Family”, but for legal reasons, the movie will be called “Depp in the Family”.

Okay, people, seriously now: Johnny Depp isn’t the only actor in Hollywood. I know he’s a great actor (as long as you want him to play an ecentric weirdo. I can only think of one movie where he wasn’t the “weird guy” and he went uncredited in it.) and I like him a lot. But I keep seeing these gasping fanboys talking about how he’s playing the Riddler or the Joker like it’s set in stone, when in reality Christopher Nolan isn’t even thinking about the next one right now. Anyway, whoever the villian turns out to be, I doubt they’d go for such a big/obvious name. I mean, the very fact that everyone seems to think it’s a good idea is proof that it’ll never happen. One of the best parts about this series is that they’ve made risky choices in their casting. I never would have picked Christian Bale to play Batman. When they announced that Heath Ledger was playing the Joker, the (so called) fans freaked out and the message boards lit up with people swearing they’d never watch Dark Knight. But in both examples, the risky choiced paid off. IMO, Bale is the best Batman to date, and Heath’s Joker comes very close to eclipsing even the comic book version. At any rate, they did a hell of a lot better then the big name stars that pluaged the old Batman movies. So, yeah, Depp may sound like a convincing Riddler to some, but then again, Uma Thurman should have been a good Poision Ivy and Tommy Lee Jones should have been a good Two Face. And we all know how they worked out.

PS: For what it’s worth, I have one suggestion (Notice I’m not going around on forums posting it as fact.) as to a potential Joker replacement for Mr. Ledger: Paul Giamatti. Not an obvious choice, I’ll grant you, but I think he could pull it off. It’s his voice that really sells it for me, as I thought Heath Ledger sounded like him at several points. And if you’ve ever seen “Shoot ‘Em Up” (Very underrated movie, IMO), you know he can do psychotic sociopath.

I did a sketch of Doctor Who* tonight that I just felt like posting. Please enjoy: (Oh, btw, I don’t have a scanner, so I had to use my digital camera. Please excuse the quality.)

* For those of you who’ve only seen the modern Doctor Who, that’s Doctor #4, played by Tom Baker, who lasted throughout most of the 70s. If you like David Tennant’s Doctor #10, I highly recommend that you check some of his stories out.

Check out these fan made posters for the next Batman movie. The Riddler one is my favorite, obviously.

I always forget how much I like that movie until I’m watching it.

I really hate the way ScribeFire fucks up the formatting of my post sometimes. Unfortunately, I’m too lazy to go back a fix my last post. (All two and a half pages of it.) Sorry.

Hey, would everyone who still has a job please raise your
hand. Not so fast, me.

So, yeah, I’m 99.999% sure that I no longer have a job. It
all started yesterday. I wanted to talk to Dan about possibly getting out of
work early on Thursday so that I could go to the Clone Wars primer with the
Mercs. As I drove up to the parking lot, I noticed that there were no cars
there. Most of the employees who drive park on the side, so I didn’t really
think much of it. I was even getting ready to make a joke about their lack of
customers when I noticed that all of our outside posters were gone. Okay, now
I’m getting a little nervous. As I’m walking up to the front doors, I notice a
sign posted that says we’re closed for repairs. To put things into perspective,
the last two or three theaters to close for good are still listed as ‘closed
for repairs’.

I pretty much knew then what was going on, but I decided to
try coming in today anyway. I was scheduled to come in and no one had told me
that we were closed. I only knew through dumb luck, so I decided to just play
dumb. So, I got up and got ready this morning, same as always, and when I got
to work, I let myself in with my key. After all, I usually get there first on
Tuesdays anyway. Let me tell you, I was creeped right the hell out pretty much
from the second I stepped inside. Like I said, I’ve been there by myself
before. It was a little spooky the first couple of times, but I’d more or less
gotten used to it a while ago. But today freaked me out even more then it ever did
before. I said later that I had this irresistible feeling that I wasn’t
supposed to be there. And not in a “I’m trespassing” sort of way. It
was like walking into a haunted house and pissing off the spirits inside.

I come in at the far end of the projection booth and it’s
usually dark when I first come in. That would have been weird enough, but there
were a couple booth lights on as well as the upstairs office door open with the
light on. This isn’t really unusual either, but under the circumstances, it made
the booth look very eerie. I started walking down the hall and I notice that
all of the platters are empty and the prints are gone. Finally, I get to the
other end of the hall and I peak inside the office to see if any of the
managers are there. At this point, I still haven’t heard anything official, so
maybe the managers just decided to let us know when we come in. (‘Cause, you
know, calling my cell phone would make way too much since.) But, no, the office
is empty. The office door opened with the light on and no one inside added to
the creep factor. It was just … wrong. The office has never been super secured,
but they’d been a lot stricter about it since the shake up in management back
in June. And it looked like it always did, too. That was weird to me. Nothing
had been cleared out. The schedules were still posted on the corkboard. The
computer sat there. The thing that really got me was the framed magazine cover
we put up. A while ago, we started getting an industry magazine, I can’t
remember the name, but the tagline of one particular issue was “Giving you the
business”. It made us all laugh and it was removed from future covers (Someone
must have told the publisher what that meant) so we framed it and hung it up in
the office. And it was still there. I felt a small twinge of sadness at that.
The moment was short lived, however, as at that moment my shoe squeaked or
something and I thought someone was standing right behind me. I jumped and spun
around and more or less freaked myself out.

Anyway, seeing that I was truly alone, I turned towards the
stars. The booth and office lights had been enough for me to get through the
booth, so I hadn’t bothered to turn on the main lights when I got in. With the
main lights off, the stairs basically go down into pitch black. Now, that’s always freaked me out. You couldn’t imagine the hoards of
zombies and psycho killers who like to hang out down there, in my mind at
least. But I was able to flip the main booth lights on and it lit up the back room
enough for me to make my way down stairs and out into the lobby. That was a
little bit like stepping out onto some strange alien planet. Looking back on
it, I’d had that feeling there once before when the place first opened. I’d
gone there as a kid before it closed for a few years. Going in to fill out a
job application, the place had been both familiar and alien. That’s what it was
like today. It was the same place I’ve been working at for a little over three
years now, but it felt dead. We always turn off the crazy 70s looking lights
every night, but the main ones are usually just dimmed. But today, everything
was off except for the bathroom lights. The sunlight coming in through the
front doors lit everything up okay, but it wasn’t right. And all the posters
and banners were gone. They even took MY Dark Knight banner, those bastards.

And here’s the part that I think freaked me out the most.
Everything was set up like we were ready to open. Popcorn bags and drink cups
were sitting out. The saltshakers were out. There was even popcorn sitting in
the darkened popper. At first, it made me think of the Rapture in the Bible,
where people will just disappear but all their stuff will be left behind. Then,
remembering that most of us who worked there … well, lets just say we aren’t
exactly rapture material (lol), it made me think of the Stephen King story “the
Langoliers.”

I looked around a little bit so see if there were any more
clues as to what happened before checking the call sheet to get a couple of
phone numbers. I decided to call one of the concession girls who had worked
over the weekend. She was able to fill in a lot of gaps. Apparently, on Friday
as they were opening up, the GM called and told them that the company owed
Warner Brothers so much money that they were taking their prints back. (For the
record, WB did Batman.) So, they were told to just close up shop and leave. The
owner is supposedly trying to scratch up enough money to pay them back and
reopen the theater sometime next week.

After a little more poking around, I got the hell out of
there.

This evening, I called the assistant manager (who had been
there on Friday) to see if I could get some more info. Unfortunately, he knew
pretty much what Suzan had known and not much more. He was surprised to hear that
the GM hadn’t called me. That was something, as I had taken that point a little
personally. We discussed the possibility of us reopening and we more or less
agreed that it was a long shot. He speculated that the owner would probably be
selling the theater to a couple of friends from the industry. If we were to
reopen, it would most likely be under new management and there’s no telling
where the old employees would fit into that picture if at all.

And that’s where I am right now. I guess I still don’t know
for sure what’s going to happen. But I think I can guess. The AM told me that
the GM would be there for a little bit on Saturday and I think I may go try to
talk to him then. But beyond that, I should have two more pay checks coming to
me. (Well, one and a half, really.) I’m also going to follow the (former) AM’s
advice and file for unemployment. I’ve wondered, considering the owner’s
record, if he ever paid into unemployment. I almost hope he hasn’t, just so
that he can get carted off to prison or something. That would make all the
times he’s screwed us almost worth it. But as for me, it looks like I’m about
to hit up the want ads. (If anyone has any tips or advice, I’m all ears.)

Looking back, it was a strange wild ride. I was there from
the beginning to the end. I worked every job there from usher to manager at one
point or another. I’m certainly not going to sugarcoat it and say it was always
great. We were all screwed over hard on several occasions. But, believe it or not, it wasn’t all bad
either. There were free movies, popcorn, and soda. I have more movie posters
then I’ll ever know what to do with. Hanging out with coworkers, laughing,
surviving with each other. I basically enjoyed what I did, even if extenuating
circumstances had a way of ruining it. Ultimately, I’d be lying if I said that
there wasn’t a small part of me sad that it’s over. But I’m also glad to
finally be moving on.

In memory of Hollywood Studio Theaters

May 13, 2005 – August 8, 2008

*Well, now that place better be closed for good, or
I’m going to feel very silly.

If I had kids, I’d make them do stuff like this all the time.