Sacrifice for the digital experience

Why on earth would anyone write a song that mentions someone’s water breaking? Ewwwww. I guess people write songs about everything, so the real question is, why would someone record it?

I heard the song last night at the movie theater while waiting for Enchanted to start. My very own handsome prince had invited me on a date night for dinner and a movie.

Dinner turned out to be a spontaneous double date. We went to Macaroni Grill, which has been a favorite date restaurant for us since our first date many, many years ago (mostly due to my obsession with Macaroni Grill’s chocolate cake — best dessert ever!). We knew we would have quite a wait, but decided to tough it out. Just after we put our name on the list to be seated, a girl walked up and invited us to sit at a table with her and her date. They had just gotten a table, and hated to keep it to themselves when so many were waiting.

We decided to give it a try, and ended up enjoying a nice dinner with two charming people. The girl is a DJ at a radio station in Cookeville, and she said she figured the situation would make could subject matter for her show on Monday. So I decided it was fair game to blog, too.

Anyway, back to the movie theater with the gross song.

Paul has been a proponent of watching movies with digital technology instead of film for a long time, and I definitely prefer to watch them that way. As a result, we have an interesting choice of theaters when we want to go see a movie.

Saturday night we were at Opry Mills to eat at Macaroni Grill, but rather than see a film in all its grainy goodness at Opry Mills, we drove an extra 20 minutes to a theater with DLP. Green Hills is one of my favorite theaters as far as atmosphere goes (especially after I saw Nicole Kidman there), but the viewing experience there just doesn’t make the cut.

Our theater of choice? The Carmike theaters at Rivergate. Crystal clear picture, ghetto-fabulous surroundings.

Perhaps ghetto-fabulous isn’t exactly the right word. But the theaters are not in the best shape, either. Clean freak that I am, I refuse to sit on the chairs in the lobby. The walls and seats are dingy and torn, and the staff –while very, very nice and polite — seem a little confused.

Example:
[Waiting in line while the guy tears our tickets]

Paul: Has the movie started seating yet?

Ticket-Taker: [About to let us walk back to the theater.] What? Oh. Um, no.

Paul: Should we wait in the lobby, then?

Ticket-Taker: Uh, yeah. That would be good.

We wait for a few minutes in the lobby, and then the guy tells us we can go back to the theater. When we get there, we find that the movie literally has just ended. The credits are rolling and people are filing out. We beat the cleaning crew in there by several minutes. Funny.

Despite all the foibles, the viewing experience at this theater consistently has been the best in Nashville. Crystal clear digital picture and faultless sound mean that I will go back to this theater again and again. So many times at theaters in ritzier parts of town I have watched movies that include a hair down the middle of the screen or a splotch on a section of the film for much of the show and “surround” sound that fades in and out and occasionally disappears entirely (during Return of the King!).

Thanks to their investment in state-of-the-art equipment, Carmike Cinemas in Rivergate (there are two separate buildings that split the movies) has earned two faithful patrons.

[P.S. – Sigh. I switch verb tense a lot in this post. I just don’t have the motivation to fix that right now. Do you care? Will you still read me? Will you give me an F on my post?]