Lights out at Mission Tiki

I guess it wasn't the rain after all.

In my last -- and what now appears to be penultimate -- post about Mission Tiki Drive-In in Montclair, California, I surmised that two of the screens were likely closed due to flooding from recent rains in Los Angeles. My second theory was that the drive-in was going under.

The second theory proved to be correct.

Sixty plus years! What a shame. The drive-in survived COVID -- in fact, it was probably uniquely configured to survive COVID -- but it hasn't survived the return from COVID. Maybe those who patronized the theater during the pandemic didn't need to anymore, and that, combined with the big shift to watching movies at home, spelled doom for Mission Tiki.

It's a sad day for me. Mission Tiki was one of two drive-ins we attended, which actually were not very far away from each other (but both a 40-minute drive from my house), and I tend to forget which movies I saw at which one. In fact, I think I went to the other one more (and since I didn't get on their mailing list, I'm not even sure if I remember what it was called, let alone whether it's still open). Plus I believe it was Mission Tiki who were dicks to me the time I tried to switch screens between movies in my double feature, which is forbidden for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. 

It's probably not Mission Tiki specifically I'm mourning today, but the second death of drive-in culture. The first death was before I was born, of course, as a primary movie-going venue of the 1950s slowly disappeared from the landscape. Now the revival of that culture, which for a time was pretty successful, is ending too.

The good news? A drive-in that's near where I actually live is still open.

The Coburg drive-in -- which we have attended only once, I might add -- is within 20 miles of my house, and it's still showing movies. I just checked to be sure. 

The closing of Mission Tiki is a reminder not to take this for granted, though. We need to go with our kids soon, because we never know when it might suddenly be lights out for any of us. 

It's been raining in LA

I think it's stopped now, but it was raining in LA like the Dickens until recently. 

I'm not there anymore to report first hand, of course. This year I will have been ten years gone.

But I'd know it was raining even if I hadn't constantly been seeing my friends' Facebook posts about it. I'd know because the closing of the sale of my house has once again been delayed by a partial ceiling collapse in one of the rooms. They had to test for asbestos and lead, and while fortunately those tests have come back negative, they may have to do mold remediation. It never ends.

I'd also know it was raining because I got an email from Mission Tiki Drive-In with the following subject: "The Weather Forecast Calls for Movies."

I thought that was just a play on one of the new movies coming out this week -- I don't know, maybe Twister 2 -- but then when I saw the image above I realized "Ah right, there's been rain -- and it looks like part of the Mission Tiki grounds are still flooded out."

See, a drive-in movie lot is not usually just set up as a large, flat space. At least the ones in LA are not. They have long rows of humps laid out, kind of like giant speed bumps, so you can angle your car either up slope or down slope, whichever give you a better view of the screen. (I think it's supposed to be up, but once you get in there it's sort of up to you.)

Now, these valleys in the pavement cause drainage issues, I'm sure. Only they've never really had to worry about drainage in Los Angeles, because the annual rainfall is usually pretty minimal. They're far more likely to experience drought conditions than have more rain than they know what to do with. 

So yeah, I can see the possibility that full two screens have giant lakes where the cars are supposed to go.

I'm a bit confused by the timing though. I feel like it was closer to New Year's that I was hearing about the majority of the rain, yet all four screens were open in the Mission Tiki email that came out two weeks ago. Last week, one screen was closed but I thought nothing of it, maybe just a lapse in the programming due to the start of the year. (Though why Avatar would already be off the screens there is a mystery to me -- maybe it was too expensive.)

With this week's email, either the situation is getting worse, or the drive-in is starting to go under -- drowning financially if not actually. 

In any case, we really need to get our house sold, so please, no more rain in LA. 

What even are these movies

I thought the "pre-Christmas new release slowdown" was only an Australian thing, but apparently not.

Even without specifically having Boxing Day as a major national holiday upon which you heap anywhere from six to ten new releases, like Australia does, the U.S. is running on pre-holiday fumes, if this weekend's movies playing at the Mission Tiki Drive-In in Montclair, California are any indication. 

I no longer live in California, of course, but even after being gone for nine years, I still get the Mission Tiki emails.

I suppose there are two unique different shocks I could register over this weekend's offerings.

The first is, as the title suggests, the very random nature of two of these four movies. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever? Sure. Major hit. Violent Night? A Christmas movie that most people seem to like, even if I am not one of those people.

But what even are these other two movies?

Christmas Bloody Christmas? What the hell is that?

Just when you assume that all this year's Christmas movies have been released, along comes this not-ready-for-primetime nugget of seeming awfulness. It stars (checks notes) Riley Dandy, Sam Delich and Jonah Ray. You know, Jonah Ray. It was directed by (checks notes) Joe Begos.

If you look down far enough in the cast on IMDB, you will see exactly one name you recognize, but maybe only if you watched ER and Parker Lewis Can't Lose back in the 1990s. That's Abraham Benrubi as Santa Claus.

For what it's worth, the film was also released on the internet on the same day, which was Friday.

Savage Salvation? What the hell is that?

This movie at least has recognizable stars, though you can't trust them not to have crossed over into that phase of their careers where they are happy enough to take the same sorts of roles as Nicolas Cage, John Travolta and (before he retired) Bruce Willis. Robert De Niro and John Malkovich star, though De Niro is a whisper away from 80 and Malkovich a whisper away from 70. (In fact, Malkovich celebrated his 69th birthday on Friday with the release of this film. That may be more a curse than a blessing.)

This film is directed by Randall Emmett, as you do. And wouldn't you know it, he did direct Willis in Midnight in the Switchgrass, a 2021 film co-starring Megan Fox that earned multiple Golden Raspberry nominations, not to mention a similar essentially straight-to-video fate.

Except this one isn't straight to video. It's playing at the Mission Tiki Drive-In.

This is the place my wife and I used to go when we were poor and wanted to see two new first-run movies at a discount rate, while bringing in whatever snacks and drinks we saw fit. Which brings me to my second point of criticism:

All four of the movies that are playing are playing as a double feature with themselves.

I've seen Mission Tiki pull this nonsense before, but it's usually only on one screen. I noticed it specifically with last week's email, where Black Panther was playing back-to-back on the one screen. Since they don't let you drive around and change screens between movies -- a lesson I learned the hard way once --  I figured they considered Black Panther to be a marquee enough attraction that they could essentially charge you the price of two features to see just the one. Sure, you could stay and watch it again, but most people probably wouldn't. And those cars would be replaced by the ones who drove in for the later showing.

But each screen showing only one film, played a second time on the same screen?

That's some bullshit, or maybe, sadly, just a sign that times are hard for Mission Tiki.

Maybe there aren't a lot of new releases right now, but I'm a bit shocked that they had to scrounge to get two movies that were no better than straight-to-VOD -- and then not even give you two of them for the price of one ticket. 

I'll have to monitor the health of Mission Tiki from here, but I wouldn't be surprised if next week's email has Avatar: The Way of Water on all four screens -- back-to-back as a double feature with itself, of course. 

A drive-in I hadn't been to -- just eight miles from my house

How does a cinephile -- particularly a cinephile who likes drive-ins -- neglect a nearby drive-in that's only eight miles from his house, for nearly eight years?

I'm not really sure, but that's what happened with Village Cinema's drive-in in Coburg. Google Maps shows that it's only 12.7 kilometers from my house, and in a separate transaction, Google shows me that 12.7 kilometers is 7.89 miles. 

To put that in perspective, my most recent run on Friday afternoon was 7.57 miles. A little extra push and I could run to this drive-in from my house, though somebody would have to pick me up to take me home.

I suspect having kids at the wrong age has something to do with it. As my kids are now 10 and 7, they have really only been a patient drive-in audience for a couple years now. In a bit of a funny twist, they went to this drive-in even before their old man did, with their aunt, who lives just a stone's throw from it. (And in fact, there's a run along a stream that I do when I've dropped them off at her house, and you can see the backs of the drive-in screens from the running path.) But my wife and I had never been, as apparently we have never prioritized this for a date night on the occasions her sister was watching the kids. It's taken nearly eight years for all the variables to finally align. 

The Coburg Drive-In has certainly been operating a lot longer than those eight years, or 7.54 years, if we're already talking about things that are seven and a fraction. Google again tells me that it opened in November of 1965, though it closed from 1984 to 1987 before being acquired by its current corporate parent, Village Cinemas. I'm kind of surprised it didn't spend more time closed given how drive-ins fell off the cultural landscape for a while there. (The year 1984 is an interesting benchmark in my personal drive-in history, as that was the year I attended my first drive-in on a visit to Colombia, South America -- and didn't go again until 2002 in Los Angeles.)

I almost missed my chance. There was word that they were planning to close it, a probably not unexpected development after the rise of streaming started to reduce the hunger for the theatrical experience in general. Then again, drive-ins are an entirely different type of experience, as COVID-19 has taught us, and now the place seems to be thriving. 

How thriving? When we were driving in, we were told we had to park two cars between each white metal pole with the concrete bases that littered the parking lot, which once held the speakers out of which the sound played. (Nowadays you tune your car to a certain FM frequency to get the sound.) This maximizing of available space was necessary to accommodate all the tickets they'd sold. We twice tried to park our car in such a way that two cars could squeeze in, but we never could manage it. What can you say, Fords are not known for their sleek design.

You can tell from the menus at the on-site diner that it's meant to evoke 50s nostalgia, though this little number at the entrance is your first indication of that endeavor:

The Dromana Drive-In, which we attended on New Year's Eve a couple years ago (as discussed in this post), has an X-Wing fighter above its entrance rather than this beauty. I guess vehicles perched atop the ticket booth -- be they real or fictional -- are a thing at Australian drive-ins. 

The actual experience was not really noteworthy in any way. Unlike most of the other drive-ins I've visited, this one is set up for only one movie rather than a double feature, which is just as well. My kids didn't get to bed until nearly 11 as it was, even with an 8:20 start to the movie, and I had no need to tack an extra couple hours on to that. 

I guess I should tell you, though the poster art has stolen my thunder, that we saw Raya and the Last Dragon, Disney's latest. It was enjoyable to watch without feeling particularly distinctive. I'm supposed to be reviewing it but haven't written anything yet. 

I did have some of the normal "why are people the way they are" annoyance about this drive-in experience. For example, there were still cars arriving and jockeying for viewing spots 20 minutes into the movie. Come on, at that point you've just missed the experience. Cut your losses and do something else with your evening. 

Of course, this probably wouldn't have annoyed me as much if I'd been inside the car. I chose to sit outside in a camping chair, at least for the first 45 minutes, at which point it was getting a bit nippy and my wife asked if she could close the car windows. This would cut off my access to the sound, so I moved inside the car with the rest of the family. Which turned out to be both a warmer and more sonically optimized way to view the movie. 

The diner burger I bought repeated on me a bit -- we actually had to crank down the windows on the way home to escape the toxicity of my burps -- but overall it was a really good experience that we expect to do again a lot sooner than 7.54 years from now. If 2021 has a fairly normal slate of high-end children's movies released, we could be back in just a couple months. 

In fact, Raya gave a slightly skewed indication of the current popularity of the drive-in experience. It seems clear it's a thing being embraced by families, not the groups of young people who may have once been the venue's bread and butter. There were far fewer cars for Chaos Walking, which started on the neighboring screen about 45 minutes after Raya, and fewer still for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on the third screen, though I watched that screen fondly as we drove out, The Two Towers being my favorite of those movies. Of course, one of those is a new release that's been poorly reviewed by critics (including me) and one of those is 20 years old, so they may not provide the perfect barometer of the health of the drive-in as an institution. 

Even the Raya ticket sales may be an example of artificially inflated enthusiasm, though, as this was a Disney film, in its opening weekend, on a three-day weekend, at the tail end of summer. You can't duplicate those specific conditions every weekend. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the theater's biggest single night since the pandemic began.  

The internet tells me the drive-in is still for sale, but I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing. Being for sale is different than deciding to tear the screens down. It's a pretty big commitment to prevent a vacant lot from being able to function as a drive-in, as there would have to be a pretty compelling competing usage in order for a prospective buyer to remove the screens entirely. Hopefully even if it does close for a period, as it did in the mid-1980s, they'd keep the screens up and leave it just a buyer away from rejuvenating. 

So let's keep pumping out those Raya and the Last Dragons, which can carry Coburg through and allow the rest of us to see our occasional Lords of the Ringses. 

And if other families have kids like mine -- who declared the movie one of the best they'd ever seen, and also the night one of the best nights they'd ever had -- then the Coburg Drive-In should be with us for the foreseeable future. 

A statistical anomaly among movie theaters

I'm not sure what percentage of the world's movie theaters are closed right now, but it's something approaching 100. If not because the actual local restrictions demand it, then because there aren't any new releases flowing out of Hollywood right now. (Almost any, as we will see in a moment.)

Not every movie theater in the world relies on Hollywood releases, of course -- in a country like India, most theaters probably wouldn't -- but I have to assume most other countries are following the rest of the world in terms of isolating their people, and, consequently, holding back their new movies for times when they can actually make some money on them.

There's at least one exception, though, and that is the Mission Tiki drive-in in Montclair, California.

This used to be our drive-in when we lived in Los Angeles, though it was a 30-minute drive or so from where we lived -- that's 30 minutes without traffic, I should say. In LA it might have taken you 30 minutes just to make it from the 10 to the 101. Before these End Times, anyway.

And because it used to be our drive-in, I still get the emails telling me what's playing. And, despite this pandemic, those emails are still coming.

Only in this latest have I noticed them having to try to get creative, programming Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on one of their four screens. (And what a fun double feature that would be.) (Two quick takeaways about that: 1) They skipped Temple of Doom, which I think was a good choice; 2) They spelled it Raiders of the Lost Arc, which is funny.)

So yes, this was also, presumably, one of the only ways for anyone, anywhere to see Trolls World Tour on the big screen, as the vast majority of us who have seen it (yes, that includes me) did so through digital rental.

The drive-in, of course, represents a perfect scenario for keeping open a movie theater in a pandemic. The isolation of its viewers in their own hermetically sealed environments is part and parcel to the experience. People have to rub elbows in the bathroom or at the snack bar, assuming it's still open, which it would not need to be as you can bring in any food you want. But a little common sense social distancing -- the type that isn't possible when you are seated in a movie theater -- could override some of those concerns as well.

Still, I can't imagine many drive-ins are remaining open, because of those chances of incidental mutual exposure, and because of the paucity of new releases to keep crowds coming. I know the ones here in Melbourne are not, because I checked -- believe me, I checked. If the goal really is to keep people apart by all reasonable means, the responsible solution is, indeed, to close any place that promotes social gathering, even one with the built-in advantages of this one.

That said, you still can't really stay away from everybody in the normal course of the things you have to do. I note that every time I go to the grocery store, it's like diving into and swimming around in a germ pool. Theoretically, anyway -- we've flattened the curve and had so relatively few cases here in Australia in the first place, that you don't tend to feel like coronavirus is out there in any actual way. But if it were, I feel like you'd get it on any trip to the grocery store. People are not very effectively social distancing, even when the store has put measures in place -- such as stickers on the floor that tell you were to stand, and plastic shields to separate clerk from customer -- to help enable it.

I feel like movie theaters could be entrusted to be the social distancing equivalent of a grocery store. Throw a plastic bag over every other seat, the way you do when the seat is broken, and you've got your 1.5 meters or six feet or however you want to measure it. Heck, throw the plastic bag over two out of every three seats and you still aren't cutting in to the necessary capacity for most theatrical releases these days, based on how many people are actually buying tickets to them.

But that would have only been possible if the film industry hadn't made a coordinated effort to prevent all new movies from getting released. What we needed was a coordinated effort a month ago to figure out how they could still be released, just by changing some seating plans.

But I don't want to sound like one of those people suggesting everything should be opened up. Eff those people. Their concern for our economy is commendable. Their lack of concern for our elderly, though, is decidedly not.

Still, when I hear that AMC is probably going to have to declare for bankruptcy, and shudder to think of the impact on smaller theaters who haven't specifically made the headlines, I wonder if it all couldn't have been done differently somehow.

The "new normal," when it does arrive, will take many shapes and forms. I just hope movie theaters will still be a part of them.

For now, residents of Los Angeles still have the Mission Tiki, to watch a handful of "new" releases that you figure everyone in the vicinity has already seen if they ever intended to, plus some genuine classics that I'm sure will win some eyeballs this weekend. And as they are the only shop in town, I wonder if that giant parking lot, with its various small slopes in the grade to maximize viewing angles, has been filled to the brim every night. It was a pretty popular activity even when there wasn't a pandemic on.

But pretty soon, all four of those screens will have to have Raiders of the Lost Ark or the equivalent if they want to get any eyeballs at all. And pretty soon, that last bastion of seeing movies on a big screen could close, to reopen lord knows when.

New Year's Eve with John C. Reilly and Kelly Macdonald

It's possible the programmers at the Dromana Drive-In realized they were scheduling a John C. Reilly double feature for one quarter of their New Year's Eve audience. However, they probably didn't notice they were also curating a Kelly Macdonald double feature.

However, I'm getting ahead of myself.

First of all: Happy 2019! It won't actually be the new year yet for most of you when I post this, but here in Australia, we're already nine-and-a-half hours into the last year of the decade.

Secondly, my family and I are spending five nights down on the Mornington Peninsula between the 29th and the 3rd. It's a long stretch of beach towns about an hour's drive from Melbourne, making it an ideal spot to feel like you're truly away from the city without having to drive for ages.

We had more or less this same holiday last year, and at that time, I had a desperate urge to scratch my vacation movie itch by going to the nearby Dromana Drive-In, about 15 minutes from where we were staying. Coco, my eventual #5 movie of the year, was one of the movies playing, and it seemed like the perfect beach holiday activity.

For whatever reason, we didn't do it. My wife must have seen my puppy dog eyes, but she didn't yield. Something about keeping the kids up too late, maybe. She did throw me a bone -- to extend the dog metaphor -- by taking our kids to the theater in nearby Sorrento for a viewing of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle on our last day. We all really enjoyed it and that worked as a compromise.

When my wife scheduled another beach holiday for the same area this year, I think she knew she couldn't avoid the drive-in for the second year in a row, and indeed, she didn't want to. So she leaned into it. Not only would we go to the drive-in, we'd spend our New Year's Eve there, with fireworks at midnight and live music leading up to the 9 p.m. start time, once it was finally dark enough to start showing a movie. Because of the extra benefits, the tickets were $50 a head for adults and $30 for kids. Yep, that's one quick way to spend $160 on New Year's Eve.

But we both sensed it would be fun to do something festive and celebratory to ring in the new year -- which was also ringing in the fifth birthday of my younger son, a January 1st baby. What's another $160 here and there?

At one point she'd made the case to me that we should hold our Grinch viewing, which occurred on December 23rd, for this very eventuality. As it turns out, we could have. One of the options on four separate screens was The Grinch and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which would have been half of a great double feature. But I took my older son to a Spider-Man critics screening in order to review it, and though he would have been happy to see it again, we had initially determined it might be a little too intense for the younger one when debating whether to take him along to that screening. (Even becoming a big boy at age five.) As we ended up finding out, this was the one pairing in the deckchair cinema venue, which did not involve the essential drive-in experience of sitting in our cars. Better to have our kids' first drive-in experience -- or the first they can remember anyway (we took my older son twice when he was an infant) -- be of the traditional variety.

Two of the other three options would have been Aquaman and Bohemian Rhapsody or Bumblebee and Mortal Engines. I've already seen Rhapsody and Engines, but that wouldn't have been the most relevant factor in rejecting those pairings. We aren't even taking the older one to movies like Aquaman just yet, although he turns nine this year and that will probably be a good time to start. All three of Aquaman, Bumblebee and Mortal Engines seem to be about that level of maturity. Plus, we're seeing Aquaman at a different outdoor venue at the end of January, as discussed in this post. And Bohemian Rhapsody? I have no idea what the kids would do with that one except be bored.

But Ralph Breaks the Internet and Holmes & Watson seemed to be a perfect fit for us. Ralph was the one I'd targeted way back when I learned its release date, and knew we might be on the peninsula at that time. And sure, Holmes & Watson might be a bit ribald, but we figured that at least the younger one would be asleep by its 11 o'clock start time (which ended up closer to 11:30). The older one is just getting into comedy and they both loved Elf, which also stars Will Ferrell, so no further debate was necessary.

We spent a lazy afternoon recovering from a hot day at the beach, so we weren't there when doors opened at 5:30 or 6. When we did arrive just before 7, we'd already yielded some of the prime viewing angles to our more proactive neighbors, who were expanding outward from their cars with all sorts of camping chairs and a cornucopia of picnic-related paraphernalia. But we did find a decent spot on the left side, which we quickly switched for a more centered option that was a row further back. At the time we selected the spot, it had nice breathing room and few obstructions.

By the time we returned to our car, after dinner in the 1950s diner on site and throwing around a football for a bit by the playground, the situation had become a lot more dire. We could no longer properly open the doors on one side, and large pickup trucks with people sitting in the bed, not to mention SUVs with their hatchbacks open, were now proving significant obstacles. The kids had wanted to sit in the front seat, but my wife and I quickly determined we had no vantage point on the screen at all when we were sunken into the back. Desperation was on the verge of setting in.

Even though we saw our $160 flashing before our eyes, we didn't panic. The key decisions? Moving our car back about six feet, to improve its angle of incline, and removing the headrests from the front seats. With the headrests gone, the kids could see the screen from the back seat, and my wife and I didn't need them for our own viewing comfort. We were kind of like bugs in a rug, and I made an effort never to shimmy out of the passenger side unless absolutely necessary, since I had to suck in my gut to do so. But we cracked our beers and chocolate milks and were ready for the movies to start.

It occurred to me fairly early on that John C. Reilly was in both of these movies. If it's not clear to you, he provides the voice of Ralph, as well as the voice, face and all the actions of John Watson. In the U.S. he wouldn't have had two movies released on the same day, since Ralph Breaks the Internet came out at Thanksgiving, but here it seemed as though Boxing Day was Reilly's day to strut.

But it wasn't until deep into the second movie that I noted Kelly Macdonald's role in both films, which was oddly similar in its comedic function. It took Holmes (or was it Watson?) saying to her character that he didn't understand anything she was saying to remind me of the fact that Macdonald is also in Ralph Breaks the Internet -- in a role where nobody understands what she's saying. Macdonald is Scottish, as you will remember from her breakout in Trainspotting, and she leans into her accent as Merida in the Pixar movie Brave. Merida makes an appearance in the famous (notorious?) Disney princesses scene in Ralph, and spews forth an indecipherable combination of Scottish brogue and vocabulary. One of the other princesses says they can't understand her because she's "from the other studio." As Holmes and Watson's housekeeper, her dialogue is easier to understand, until it becomes more working class near the end and Holmes (or was it Watson?) comments on it.

I expected to enjoy Ralph, and thought Holmes looked dreadful from the trailers -- plus it had a rare 0 Rotten Tomatoes score at one point, though that's now up to a hearty 8. In the end, though, I derived more enjoyment from the second movie than the first.

Holmes & Watson is clearly the least fruitful of the collaborations between Ferrell and Reilly, which is probably to be expected when Step Brothers is one of my favorite comedies of all time and Talladega Nights has some really funny moments. But I'd be lying if I didn't admit that their line deliveries caused me to burst out laughing on a dozen occasions, if not more. It's perfect silly drive-in fodder (though by 1 a.m. I was desperate for it to be over, through no fault of its own). And though there are probably some things I wish my kids didn't hear -- neither of them fell asleep as we'd planned -- it was better than exposing them to action that was too intense. My older son and I laughed at the same stupid fart and vomit jokes, so that was nice.

Ralph Breaks the Internet produced very few laughs, and very few things that I thought were genuinely inspired, including its core emotional conflict. This is going to sound like sacrilege, but I'd take last year's similar The Emoji Movie over this any day. I think some people are conflating their affection for Wreck-It Ralph with this, but it's just not that good. And the extent to which Disney travels up its own ass in this movie -- with its use of the princesses, stormtroopers and other intellectual properties over which it now claims dominion -- really annoyed me.

Although I've rambled on at far too great of a length for you to read on either the last day of the old year or the first day of the new, I can't finish without telling you about the fireworks. With about two minutes to go before midnight they shut off the movies and replaced them with a clock counting down to zero. That was a relief, as part of me had thought they might just play the movies through the fireworks show, which would be counterintuitive but wouldn't really surprise me.

So we all piled out of the car, me in my socks, the kids in their pajamas, and counted down to both New Year's Day and my son's birthday. It was the first time my kids have been up at midnight on New Year's Eve, so that would have been fun enough itself.

But the fireworks ... oh the fireworks. They were shot off from a field just beyond the playground, so we were no more than a hundred yards away from them. I guess I expected a modest regional drive-in to give us a minute's worth of low-end pyrotechnics, and that would be good enough. These fireworks went on for six or seven minutes and included all variety of colorful explosions, some of which I'd never seen before. I thought I knew everything that fireworks technology had to offer, but had several welcome surprises in the offerings here. While my younger son covered his ears (NOT a great birthday present for him) and the older one looked on with a mixture of trepidation and awe, my wife and I ooh'd and ahh'd and both called it the best fireworks show we'd ever seen live or from this close. Right then and there our entry fee was justified.

We were all in bed by 2, and now I'm awake writing this.

And off we go for another year.

Guardians of the Galaxy and itself: a heckuva double feature

I don't still live in America, but I do still receive my weekly emails from Mission Tiki Drive-in, the pride of Montclair, California.

This week they are doing something extra-special awesome: showing customers the same movie twice in a row.

I've written a number of drive-in posts over the years The Audient has been in existence, and if you're interested in perusing them, you can follow the "drive-in" label at the bottom of this post. If you recall reading any of them, you also recall that going to the drive-in is designed, at a minimum, as a double feature. We've seen as many as three movies on a visit (the first movie usually plays a second time after the second, and if you switch screens you can catch all three) and as few as one (we once got busted for trying to switch screens, which you're not supposed to do).

It's the second parenthetical point in the sentence above I'm calling attention to now. YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SWITCH SCREENS BETWEEN MOVIES. In fact, two dudes in a golf cart started to follow us when it became clear we were trying to do that back in early 2011, when we saw Battle: Los Angeles and then tried to see Hall Pass on another screen, rather than sit through Battle's double feature partner, The Green Hornet, which I'd already seen. They didn't force us to leave, but that's what we decided to do rather than endure The Green Hornet again.

Unless they've changed their policy, which I seriously doubt (those guys had major poles up their asses), that golf cart is going to be pretty busy this Saturday night.

After all, if you are going to abide by their rules, your only option is to sit there and watch Guardians of the Galaxy twice in a row.

It's supposed to be a really good movie, but that's a little much, don't you think?

But this isn't just faulty logic. Oh no. It has a very business-specific intended outcome.

See, Mission Tiki wants to start upselling the most popular new releases. Instead of getting Guardians of the Galaxy AND some other movie for your $7, you get just Guardians. And then they clear out most if not all the cars from the Guardians lot, in order to sell Guardians to another group of cars arriving for the second screening.

Well, shouldn't they be worried about having to police people who leave one screening to go to another, and the extra strain that will put on their resources? Aren't they concerned that this pairing forces people to consider breaking the rules?

Nope. By running 122 minutes, Guardians ends well after the start of all the other second movies. (Which are The Purge: Anarchy, Maleficent and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, in case you're keeping track at home.)

It's a dick move by people who have proven themselves to be dicks before. However, you should take my outrage with a grain of salt, as living in Australia has acquainted me with just how good a deal people are getting at Mission Tiki. If this same concept existed in Australia, they would charge $20 a head and consider it a bargain. The fact that you are getting even one new release for $7, let alone two, is astonishing. Sure, it's not theater-quality sound or picture, but you also get to bring in as much of your own food as you want, further mitigating the costs.

And as for what many people are now calling their favorite Marvel movie -- a bold statement considering some of Marvel's recent successes -- we Australians will get our first crack at Guardians of the Galaxy next Thursday.

Just the one time, for most of us.

Some pretty crap pairings

I like me a good puzzle.

Not necessarily those brain teasers that threaten to drive a person crazy. I'll try those from time to time, but I'm usually driven crazy before I solve them.

No, more than anything I mean I like fitting things together so they just plain work. And one "recent" (almost five years ago) example of that was the seating arrangements for our wedding.

That was my responsibility, and I attacked it with gusto. I loved the challenge of taking a group of disparate guests (nearly 100) and dividing them up so that each table included the perfect blend of similar personalities, and at least one really gregarious person who could help get everyone talking. The key was working out the whole table, not just eight of the ten seats. The final results of my mixing and matching left me with a much greater sense of accomplishment and satisfaction than such a task probably should have.

The Mission Tiki Drive-In needs someone like me.

With many fewer variables to consider, they've done an absolute shit job figuring out which movies should fit with which this week.

As I may have told you before, I get a weekly email from Mission Tiki telling me which movies are paired for double features on which screens. They've probably made some bad pairings before, but this week's pairings are particularly egregious.

The only prominent new movie opening today is Killing Them Softly, which joins a slate of seven returning movies: Skyfall, Wreck-It Ralph, Flight, Twilight: BDP2, Taken 2, Rise of the Guardians and Red Dawn.

Now, if you want a little challenge of your own, take a minute to pair off these eight movies in the ways you think would be smartest.

When you do so, keep in mind that this drive-in theater does not let you switch screens between the two features. I should know, as discussed here.

Therefore, also keep in mind that both movies should be appropriate for the same audiences to watch. I'm sure there are some people who come to watch only a single movie and then leave, but you're paying for two movies, so they should arrange it so you can see both of them. (Actually, you're paying only $7 for adults and $1 for kids from 5-9, with those under 5 free, so the price is justified for only watching a single movie. Still, that's no fun, and it's not how the movies are advertised.)

Have you made your selections?

I'll show you mine in a minute, but let me first show you theirs. The first movie listed below plays twice, both before and after the second movie, to accommodate the late-arriving crowd.

Killing Them Softly with Skyfall
Wreck-It Ralph with Twilight
Rise of the Guardians with Flight
Red Dawn with Taken 2

If the problem with this arrangement doesn't immediately jump out at you, let me give you a little assist.

Three of these pairings are basically fine. Not ideal, but fine.

The fourth is an outrage.

I'm talking about Rise of the Guardians and Flight.

(And very minor spoilers about Flight are about to follow.)

Guardians is rated PG. But since it's an animated movie, you wouldn't be surprised if some parents assumed it was rated G. Meaning it would be suitable for their youngest possible tots. And believe me, there are always plenty of young tots at this drive-in.

Flight? R. R for Restricted.

R for full frontal nudity and cocaine use in the first five minutes.

That's right, all you lovers of the female flesh -- in the first five minutes of Flight, you see Nadine Velazquez, erstwhile cast member on My Name is Earl and The League, boobs and bush front. (You see her butt, too, but that's comparatively quaint.)

Actually, forget what I said about five minutes. You see this in the first one minute of the movie.

Not long after that, major movie star Denzel Washington leans over a glass table and snorts a couple lines of cocaine.

So even if parents were savvy about the rating and prospective content of Flight, and even if they were hurrying to pack up their kids and leave before the next movie started, there's a decent chance those kids would be exposed to pubic hair and drugs before their parents even had a chance to do anything about it.

And any parents know that you can't pack up your kids to leave somewhere in only a minute or two. Especially if you've got coolers out and a half-dozen kids running around like maniacs, you're looking at ten or 15 minutes.

What's more, it's one thing to know that an R-rated movie is coming on, and what it may contain. It's another thing to be assaulted by the movie's kid-unfriendly elements while the opening credits are still rolling.

And then of course there are all those parents who don't know what Flight's about, and will be just sitting there, blissfully watching the second movie, until all the sudden, a 40-foot vagina is staring them in the face.

Someone needs to put a stop to this before the first show tonight, methinks. At least it's raining in Los Angeles, so perhaps Mother Nature will step in where stupid human beings either can't or won't.

The thing is, this should be easy enough to fix.

And now we've come to the part of our program where you and I compare notes on our own pairings for these eight movies. This is what I came up with:

Flight of the Guardians with Wreck-It Ralph
Red Dawn with Twilight
Killing Them Softly with Flight
Skyfall with Taken 2

The first pairing is so obvious, it should have hit them over the head with something heavy. You have two animated movies with very little scandalous content. Put them together on the same bill.

The second seems pretty obvious as well. These are the two movies featuring primarily casts of late teenagers/early twentysomethings. I'm sure there's a fair amount of angst in both. Not to mention that both of the damn movies have the word "dawn" in their titles. (A little on-the-nose? I don't care, I like it.)

The remaining four movies could probably be divided up in almost any fashion. In fact, I was tempted to pair Skyfall and Flight, just because of their similar titles.

But when you look a little closer, a more logical configuration does present itself. There are two PG-13 movies here, and two R movies. Just match up the two R movies, you idiots.

Last week they weren't smoking this much crack. Killing Them Softly replaced Hotel Transylvania, which finally finished an improbably long run that would have started in late September. Transylvania had been matched up with Guardians. Ralph was with Twilight -- not perfect, but at least the younger audiences probably aren't going to be scarred for life by anything that happens in Twilight. Flight was with Taken 2 (that's fine) and Red Dawn was with Skyfall (that's also fine). There are some Rs mixed in with some PG-13s, but I don't really think that line of demarcation means what it used to mean.

Who knows why they got soft in the head this week.

Now, I don't want to rule out the possibility that there's some kind of profit algorithm they use to determine what goes with what. Maybe strong performers only go with strong performers, or maybe just the opposite -- maybe strong performers need to prop up weak performers. (Though I don't know how you can accurately determine which movie is responsible for a double feature performing well.) Or maybe there's a newness variable, or maybe there's some kind of variable to determine which movie needs to be shown first. After all, if you match the two animated movies, you are pushing the start time of Wreck-It Ralph back to 9:30. Maybe they've witnessed the exodus of cars from the lot after the first movie ends, and they know that most of the tykes clear out after the first movie anyway.

But even just the risk of incurring the anger of dozens of parents, for whom Nadine's "special area" was never part of their evening plans, seems like a good reason to throw that algorithm out the window. At least for one week.

At this point I should admit that protecting kids at the drive-in from things they shouldn't see is an imperfect science to begin with. All you have to do is rotate your head to watch any one of the other three movies. You can see all four screens from almost any vantage point (though the other three would be farther away and therefore harder to make out clearly). The drive-in logistics department just assumes you're going to want to keep your eyes trained on the screen of the movie whose sound is also playing on your FM dial. But if you're talking about a young kid, that's not a safe assumption. If you're a young kid whose attention easily wanders, his/her eyes might easily and unwittingly wander to Nadine Velazquez' crotch. 

At least in that case it would be a random occurrence, not part of our regularly scheduled program.

Of course, they could solve some of these problems by just allowing people to switch theaters between movies. I've never quite understood why they're so strict about that. Except that it probably does have something to do with judging which movies are performing and which are starting to stink like old fish.

Besides, power-hungry assholes get off on being power-hungry assholes, and no, I'm not talking about those guys who drove up to us in their golf cart to prevent us from switching screens to see Hall Pass after we'd finished Battle: Los Angeles in March of last year.

And no, I'm not still bitter.

Though they could go a long way toward mending fences with me if they hired me as a "pairings consultant." I would do it for a very modest fee: $25 a week.

If they're looking for referrals, I offer for their consideration the hundred happy guests at my wedding. 

Drive out the old year, drive-in the new

Parents going out on New Year's Eve without needing a sitter?

Mission: Possible.

On Saturday night, we rang in the new year with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and The Sitter at the Mission Tiki Drive-in in Montclair -- the site of both successes and failures in our moviegoing past. And we got to be (semi)-responsible parents by having our son right there in the back seat with us. (Better than leaving him at home with Jonah Hill, right?)

It had been a rather late-developing plan. The initial idea was to do more or less what we did for his first New Year's, which was go out for an early dinner at somewhere that was fancy enough to serve us a celebratory cocktail, then return home for a movie (last year, it was the thematically appropriate countdown movie Run Lola Run).

But this past Wednesday Mission Tiki sent me its weekly email advertising its offerings for the upcoming weekend, and it was clear they would be open on New Year's Eve. In fact, we were being told to "ring in the New Year under the stars." Since we'd failed to decide on a movie (Roland Emmerich's 2012 had been batted around, but did we really plan to see this behemoth a second time?) or a place to eat, going to the drive-in would take care of both, as we'd buy sandwiches to picnic at the theater. In fact, the sandwiches and the $7 entry fee per head might make the whole evening about as expensive as just our two celebratory cocktails.

We'd learned our lesson about trying to switch screens between the first and second movie (see the "failures" hyperlink above), so we needed to be convinced that both the movies were ones we a) at least sort of wanted to see, and b) had not already seen. The only one of the four pairings that met our criteria was M:I - GP and The Sitter. (With The Adventures of Tintin and Hugo, we'd both seen Hugo; with Sherlock Holmes and The Darkest Hour, she'd seen Sherlock Holmes; and with Chipwrecked and We Bought a Zoo, I'd seen Zoo. And besides, not even at a drive-in would I see a chipmunks movie.) And since they repeat the first feature after the second one finishes, we could risk switching screens at that point and might even catch The Adventures of Tintin. (Though it would be weird watching the clock strike midnight in the middle of a movie.)

Ah, but there was one more criterion we haven't mentioned: They both needed to be movies we'd be willing to see in the compromised environment of the drive-in. Here was where I almost tripped us up.

See, everyone's been talking about how great Mission: Impossible is -- and specifically how great it is in IMAX. If there were ever a movie to see in IMAX, this was apparently it. I knew that most of the action set pieces had been shot with an IMAX camera, but I didn't know what most of those set pieces were, meaning I might be able to claim bliss by virtue of ignorance. However, the film's most famous set piece -- Tom Cruise climbing the outside of Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building -- would always haunt me if I didn't see it in IMAX. This is what I wrestled with once my wife had decided she was on board for the drive-in, lured particularly by Mission: Impossible.

I wrestled for less than a day. Ultimately, I felt pretty fortunate in the first place that my wife wanted to wade back into the unknown dangers of going to the drive-in with a toddler, and if I got hung up on whiny technicalities ("But I wanna see Mission Impossible in IIIII-MAAAAX!"), I'd run the risk of throwing a wet blanket over the whole affair. You can't see every movie you want to see in the ideal setting to see it. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good.

So we got all our ducks in a row and left around 5:25 for a 7 o'clock show -- in other words, at least ten minutes later than we'd wanted to leave. It's funny, because after last time, we swore we'd never be running late to the drive-in again. Last time, we were fumbling with our walkmen (that's how you don't bother the sleeping baby with the sound) as the opening credits were rolling, desperately trying to find the correct FM station on cheap equipment we'd bought for $10. When we got a late start Saturday night for the hour-long drive, I felt the same nerve-jangling scenario arising again.

Never happened. In fact, we were parked and ready to go at about 6:40 -- early enough even for me to sneak off to the bathroom for, ahem, something more than a trip to the urinal. (Since I don't want that innuendo to be misunderstood, I'll remove its usefulness as an innuendo by explaining: I had to go #2, and was already worried that I wouldn't have the time for it, leaving me in a potentially desperate situation during the movie.)

The place was dead. We thought there was a decent chance parents would see this as a way to get out with their kids for New Year's Eve, especially with two family-friendly double features playing. But we were one of only about a half-dozen cars facing our screen when we got there, and that number only doubled by the time the show started.

It went mostly smoothly. Our son slept all the way through to the Burj Khalifa sequence. At this point, my wife got into the back seat and fed him the bottle we'd warmed up at home before we left -- and I started to panic. See, my wife had left her walkman in the front seat -- I think she didn't want to get tangled up in the headphone cable. I thought she'd planned to just hand him the bottle -- he can drink it without our assistance -- but she stayed back there until he was done, and even comforted him when he wouldn't return to sleep. So I was filled with that sinking certainty that she was missing ten minutes of the plot (the scene where they set up the fake exchange at the Burj Khalifa), and it started distracting me terribly. Eventually I went diving for her walkman on the passenger side floor, and handed it back to her. It was only later that I learned that she was hearing the scene fine, albeit at a quieter volume -- there was a car less than ten feet to our right, and they were playing it at full volume.

Whew. Had the chance to ruin the whole movie for her.

Our son was up for a good 90 minutes at this point, but surprisingly, it was not that much of a distraction. We each took turns rocking him in place in the carriage, and even though he didn't go back to sleep, he was pretty docile. And all you really have to be doing is facing the screen with your headphones in. Who cares if you're standing up or sitting in the car? Seeing the movie is the important part.

And so it was that we didn't care that we both watched the first half (the weaker half) of The Sitter outside the car, as a sign of solidarity to the other person who wasn't doing the rocking/pushing. He finally went back to sleep, and we both watched the more heartfelt second half of the movie back inside the car.

We had decided beforehand not to stay for The Adventures of Tintin when it played again at 11. We knew that things would time out perfectly for us to get home just before the ball dropped if we were lucky, and that was a goal worth striving for. Being on the roads before midnight, rather than after, would also cut down on the knucklehead factor in terms of other drivers. But the people at the Mission Tiki made it easy for us anyway, taking the microphone during the closing credits for The Sitter and thanking us for coming -- "We are now CLOSED." So much for ringing in the new year. My guess is that they looked at the paltry attendance and figured that they could at least salvage something from the evening by sending their staff to a local party in time for midnight.

Sure, it wasn't like the old days at the drive-in. We didn't get to eat as much of the wide variety of food we'd brought as we'd planned, because it's much harder to locate where you put things when you're trying not to rustle and crinkle too much around a sleeping baby. (And that was even with my wife taking precautions to organize everything better than last time.) We lost a small bit of each movie to baby logistics. And listening to the movies through our headphones rather than the car's radio was a definite step down in the auditory experience.

But hey, as a New Year's Eve activity with a 16-month-old? First rate.

And we did get home before the ball dropped. In fact, it was 11:49 when we pulled up outside our house, and though our son woke up and started wailing, I appeared to have him down by about 11:58.

As soon as I exited his room, he started wailing again. But by now, it was a mere 80 seconds to midnight. We decided he could endure 80 seconds of wailing and watched the ball drop in Times Square -- three-hour tape delay, of course -- then finished the countdown with the customary kiss at midnight. In that moment, we really didn't notice the screaming baby soundtrack.

Just two parents finding that compromise between the way things used to be, and the way we're so glad they are now.

Something went wrong at the drive-in

I hate it when one of my perfect little (against-the-rules) schemes fails to come together.

Even when it was decidedly imperfect, like Saturday night's scheme.

It's happened twice now in 2011. Do I have to rethink my schemes?

First it was losing my wallet at the movie theater two months ago, when I snuck into a second movie after paying for the first. I still haven't gotten caught doing that, but this time I did pay for it in the form of losing my wallet. (I did get the wallet back about three weeks later, when I was finally notified by the theater that they had it in their lost and found -- but I'd already paid for a new driver's license by then.)

Then this past weekend, it was a snafu at the drive-in -- where you're not supposed to switch theaters between movies, but they don't usually enforce it. Usually.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Saturday night's plan was decidedly imperfect from the get-go, because it involved bringing our six-month-old son with us. Sure, it's a lot easier to bring your baby to a drive-in than to the regular theater -- optimistically, you think he'll just sleep in the back seat while you enjoy your movies in the front. But it's still pretty bold and carries a high level of risk -- both for your enjoyment of the double feature you're supposed to see, and for his sleep over the next couple nights. But given that there were a couple new releases we were interested in this weekend (Battle: Los Angeles and Red Riding Hood), and that we usually see crap at the drive-in because we tend to go based on our availability, not based on what's playing, we decided to take this opportunity of our availability lining up with movies we actually wanted to see. The optimistic plan was to see Battle: Los Angeles and Hall Pass, and then stay for the second screening of Red Riding Hood (since each opening feature plays a second time after the second feature, to accommodate the late-arriving crowd). The realistic plan was to see Battle: Los Angeles and Hall Pass, and then go home.

We did take precautionary measures to ensure our son stayed asleep, by using walkmen rather than letting the sound play out loud in the car. I dusted off my old cassette player walkman, which still works, and which I still use about once a year to listen to a baseball game while I'm rollerblading. For my wife, I found a radio-only walkman (they don't call them that anymore, of course) at Rite Aid for $10. This after finding an FM device that worked on scan-only at the 99 Cents Store. If we'd needed to rely on this device, it would mean we couldn't tune to the actual radio station playing the audio for the movie, but we should be able to find it on scan. They were so cheap that I actually bought two of them that were slightly different models, in case one didn't work. But we never needed them.

The first obstacle was that despite leaving in plenty of time, we were still cutting it fine when we got there, because the line to get in was longer than we expected for a late-winter weekend. (You're probably even surprised to hear that they're open year-round. This is the earliest we've ever been, with our three previous drive-in experiences all coming in July or August.) As the line slowly slogged along, we couldn't believe we were going to have to rush when we got to our screen. It was a comical scene as we each stood outside the car, fumbling with walkmen whose headphones had become tangled in one another, using the available light from my cell phone to try to tune to the correct station. I got there just before the movie started -- my wife, about 30 seconds to a minute in. This was followed by having to figure out where in the car the various foodstuffs we wanted were, without waking our sleeping boy in the back seat. I settled for locating my sandwich and the drink I'd already been drinking, even if I sort of wanted a different drink and some chips to accompany my meal.

The viewing of Battle: Los Angeles went reasonably well, all told. My wife ended up spending a good 20 minutes in the back seat, craning to see the screen while nursing our son back to sleep. However, this was a situation entirely of her own creation. He was actually sleeping very deeply, not fussing at all. But in trying to ascertain some proof of life, like a little movement of his hand or something, she had to unintentionally disturb him, and he was a bit restless from that point on. I spent about the last 15 minutes of the movie holding him on my lap in the front seat. He wasn't asleep -- and since it was about 9:15 by this point, that was unfortunate -- but at least he wasn't requiring anyone's specific attention. He looked out the window with wide eyes -- yet another sight he'd never seen before. It was about this point that I discovered we hadn't actually needed the walkmen, as the sound playing from other cars was basically loud enough to serve as our own soundtrack to the movie.

However, I started to stress out as Battle: Los Angeles winded down, for reasons that had nothing to do with the non-sleeping baby on my lap. I knew that Red Riding Hood, the feature that played before Hall Pass on the neighboring screen, was shorter than Battle: Los Angeles. Not significantly shorter, but enough shorter that Hall Pass would be starting before the Battle: LA credits finished. So as soon as the director's name came up on the screen of our movie, I turned the car on and started driving. According to the theater's rules, we were supposed to stay on this screen and watch The Green Hornet. But that was never part of the plan. Besides, I've already seen The Green Hornet, and am not particularly interested in a second viewing.

The thing is, my wife's bladder was about to burst. So she asked me to drop her off at the bathrooms, and she'd come find me in Hall Pass if I agreed to park in about the same spot we'd been in for Battle: LA. This worried me, since, as discussed here, I hate it when my wife misses parts of movies. But I didn't have much choice, since there was no arguing with her bladder. We knew before going in that it would be a close call on getting the start of Hall Pass, but were willing to accept that as one of the sacrifices of the imperfect experience of seeing a movie at the drive-in. Plus, neither of us was really that interested in it -- we were just using it as a bridge to potentially get to Red Riding Hood, if we decided to stay for the third movie.

However, I was determined to miss as little of it as possible myself. And right after I let her off, I looked up to discover that it was already starting. Since my son was still basically awake in the back seat, I just let Owen Wilson's voice fill the interior of our car as I was driving over. I couldn't see all the images or maybe hear all the words, but the idea was for most of it to seep in.

The real problem was in getting to the other theater. At this particular drive-in, they funnel you down these different pathways to get you to the various theaters, rather than having kind of the open floor plan that the other drive-in has (we frequent two different drive-ins that are about ten miles apart from each other). This means that to get to one of the other ones, you have to go back against the flow of traffic, although none of this is marked very well so it's all kind of vague. Since most of the cars are settled in their spots, this maneuver isn't dangerous.

But it does tend to call intention to what you're doing -- precisely because you're one of the only cars in motion at the time. And so it was that I looked off to my left and saw a golf cart pacing me on the opposite side of a mesh fence. When I turned in to Hall Pass, they turned in behind me. For a moment I tried to convince myself that I was not being followed, but it was useless. The golf cart flashed its headlight the way a police car would flash its rooftop lights. Yep -- I was being pulled over by drive-in security.

It was an older guy who looked kind of like an aged hippie, with a dark black beard, and a younger, clean-cut guy in his mid-20s. "Hello there," one of them said.

"Hi, I went into the wrong theater."

"Can I see your ticket please sir?"

"Are you serious?"

"Yes sir."

"Man, it's in here somewhere." It's true that I didn't know where the ticket was, but I also knew that the ticket would not help me.

"Did you just get here, sir?"

"Yes." Neither of us said anything. I suddenly knew I had no play other than the truth. "Okay, no, I just went to another movie. Can't I go to this one?"

"No sir."

Another moment of silence. And then defeat.

"Okay, but my wife is in the bathroom, I need to go pick her up."

"Okay, you can just flip a bitch right here and go back the way you came." It was the first time I had heard someone use the phrase "flip a bitch" in years.

I did just that. At this point, it certainly seemed as though Hall Pass was toast. Its audio was still playing on the radio, but the movie was slipping further and further into oblivion in terms of our ability to come in late. It's not that we'd be confused by what was happening, but missing that much of a movie just kills it for me.

I hadn't given up on the idea of other options, though. I noticed the screen that was playing The Adjustment Bureau followed by Unknown was still in the trailers prior to Unknown. But I also noticed that the Golf Cart Nazis were still observing me from a distance of about 100 feet away.

I pulled up into this no man's land by the bathroom and called my wife. Four rings and then voicemail. Left a message explaining our predicament. Called her again. Straight to voicemail. And again. Voicemail again. Now I was starting to worry that she'd already finished her business and was walking out among the cars in Hall Pass, looking for her car, not hearing her phone. And every moment that passed without her coming, I worried that the Golf Cart Nazis were doubting the validity of my story, and considering whether to interface with me again.

In another couple moments she materialized from the bathroom and got in the car. I started instinctively heading back toward where Hall Pass was -- not because I intended to try my luck again, but because I didn't know where else to go. For a moment we discussed whether to make a bee-line into Unknown. But then I noticed that the golf cart was still positioned strategically where it could observe what we were doing. You can violate theater rules once, without any consequences. A second violation, and they may try to get the police involved, or at the very least, brusquely escort you out. And that could carry consequences like them taking my wife's license plate number and banning us from the theater. Doubtful, but possible. (We'd just take my car next time. If there is a next time. More likely, we'll just go to the other drive-in, even if it's more ghetto. Or, we'll just realize we have to start out with two movies on the same screen, and then switch to another screen if we want to go to a third, since most of the cars will be in motion at that time, and we'll blend in to the general departure.)

Flustered, I drove back toward the golf cart and asked them where the exit was. They pointed me toward it. We left.

So the night that could have involved three movies involved only one. So we paid $7 apiece for one movie -- which is still cheaper than theatrical prices, but not when you consider the gas required to get us to this theater, some 40 miles from our house.

I was in an unshakable funk for the next 15 minutes. Any time you get busted doing something wrong, it puts you in a funk. I was as much frustrated by their attempts to enforce a stupid rule (once you pay, who cares which two movies you see?) as by the fact that we wouldn't be seeing a second movie. When you come right down to it, the tightness of our schedule meant that our second movie would be compromised anyway. So instead of seeing the movie we wanted to see and missing the first ten minutes of a movie we didn't want to see, we only saw the first movie. Not that big a difference, all told.

Plus, my wife pointed out a couple things: Now we'd be home sooner, where we could put our son into his proper bed and watch the second half of our double feature in our own controlled environment, without scrounging around in the dark for the food we wanted. Not only that, but this was the first time we'd been out to the movies together since we saw The Town back in October. Even getting to see one movie together was a treat. And getting home sooner was especially useful this past weekend, what with losing an hour to daylight savings and all. After initially discussing watching something funny, to take the place of Hall Pass, we then decided on War of the Worlds, since Battle: Los Angeles had whetted our appetite for that kind of movie. (You might say, we wanted to see a superior version of that kind of movie, having just seen a merely decent version.)

I'd like to say we segued perfectly into that second movie when we got home, but the challenges of the evening stuck with us. First my wife stepped in cat poop on our lawn, which had been hidden by the darkness. Fortunately, she discovered it before she got into the house, but it necessitated bringing out the hose at 11 p.m. And then of course our son wouldn't settle. We'd kind of broken him by throwing off his sleep schedule so much, and he was inconsolable. And then our speakers were giving us problems, emitting loud feedback rather than the sounds of the movie, so we had to watch the movie with only the sound from the TV. It was nearly 2 a.m. -- which was really 3 a.m. -- before we even got to the Tim Robbins scene. We decided to turn it off then and just continue the next day. Even fans of the movie will probably understand why.

So it was definitely an imperfect trip to the drive-in. But in another way, it was a perfect story, more memorable than if we had sailed through smoothly. "It's a funny story we'll tell people," she said, when she could tell I felt like a failure for having gotten busted.

And she's right -- you're people, and I just told it to you.

Drink paranoia

So we finally got to the drive-in on Saturday, and it was not without supplies.

That's right, we knew we'd be in for a three-movie night if everything went according to plan. This was a new drive-in for us -- the Mission Tiki in Montclair, rather than the Vineland in City of Industry -- so we didn't know how closely they monitored the rules. Theoretically, for the bargain price of $7, you were purchasing admission to a double-feature on one screen. Changing screens between movies, or staying to watch a third film when the first half of each double feature played again at 11:30, could be seen by some establishments as breaking the rules.

So we settled on the double feature of Gamer and A Perfect Getaway, hoping for an 11:30 bonus screening of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra on a different screen. As discussed in a previous post, we didn't have any interest in Joe's partner, Robert Rodriguez' Shorts. Truth be told, our interest in Gamer and A Perfect Getaway was only marginally higher -- and having seen them, now I can say we probably would have been better off with the much-maligned Shorts. But at the time, we decided to fit a square peg into a round hole if we wanted to get to the drive-in this summer. We had to decide on something. So Gamer and A Perfect Getaway it was. (Never mind that the drive-in stays open into the fall, and possibly year-round. In our minds, it's quintessentially a summer thing).

Of course, if we were going to see all three, we'd need plenty to drink. And eat. But mostly drink.

And when I say plenty, I mean plenty.

You see, serious drink paranoia settled in upon leaving the house. This happens to me a lot when I'm gearing up for two+ movies. If it's in the theater, I stuff a backpack with liquid and solid treats, on the theory that I never know what I might want over the course of four hours. (Surprisingly, they don't seem interested in checking your backpack when you go to the theater. I could be trying to bomb the place and no one would be the wiser).

When you're driving your car in, on the other hand, it's a lot easier. You can literally take whatever you want. It doesn't have to fit into a backpack. You can basically recreate the semi-unlimited options of your kitchen in the back seat and trunk of your car.

So we got out the big cooler, and loaded ...

... and loaded ...

... and loaded.

During the break between Gamer and A Perfect Getaway, I decided to take inventory.

The cooler contained:

Four (4) Newcastle Brown beers
Two (2) Mike's hard lemonades
One (1) Lemonade-flavored Vitamin Water
One (1) 20-oz bottle of Sprite
One (1) 1-liter bottle of Ginger Ale (with cups for sharing)
One (1) bottle of Juice Squeeze Mountain Raspberry drink
Three (3) Sweet Leaf ice tea drinks, two (2) mint & honey and one (1) mango (we got four free cases off the back of a truck from some guys marketing the drink, who were too lazy to give them away individually)
One (1) Lizz Blizz (pina colada flavored) Sobe drink
One (1) can of Coke

But were these 15 beverages enough? Oh no, not by a long shot. Not nearly enough caffeine represented there.

So after we stopped at Quizno's to pick up our sandwiches (and an individual bag of salt n vinegar potato chips for me, which will seem all the more ridiculous in just a moment), I made sure to stop at a gas station to stock up some more. (They only sold Pepsi products at Quizno's, and I wanted a Coke. The aforementioned can was purchased specifically for my wife. She likes them in cans, I like them in bottles. Somehow we make it work).

A superfluous stop at the gas station could have been a dangerous move, because we thought we could be running late. Once at the old drive-in, we got caught in a long line of cars outside the theater and had to choose a different movie that started later. This time, it worked out fine, but if it hadn't, my drink paranoia would have been to blame.

So at the gas station I purchased:

One (1) 1-liter bottle of Coke
One (1) 20-oz bottle of Mountain Dew (I wanted Mountain Dew Code Red, but they didn't have it)

Oh, and I also purchased:

One (1) bag of Twizzlers
One (1) bag of peanut M&Ms
One (1) Twix

And why was this so ridiculous?

Because in our possession, for food, we already had:

One (1) half-finished bag of Snap Peas
One (1) unopened bag of orange slices (the gummy candy)
One (1) unopened bag of Parmesan, Garlic & Herb Trader Joe's Pita Chips
One (1) tupperware container containing approximately 15 Trader Joe's dark chocolate mint creams
One (1) half-finished bag of Righteous Rounds chocolate chip cookies
One (1) unopened container of Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Crisps

And of course our sandwiches. I got a large. My wife was smarter and thought smaller.

And don't forget that miniature bag of salt n vinegar chips just to top it all off.

I guess that doesn't quite top it. I was also drinking a mango Sweet Leaf iced tea on the drive out, which I insisted on finishing before getting to anything else.

So did we drink and eat ourselves into a coma?

Nah. I'm sorry to say that we made a pathetic dent in our supplies. In fact, the sandwich pretty much filled me up, though I dutifully finished the chips as well. In Gamer I drank the bottle of Coke, and was rummaging around trying to find the Twizzlers buried under pillows and blankets in the back seat when the movie mercifully ended. I found and ate the Twizzlers during A Perfect Getaway almost to prove to myself that they were a logical purchase. I also drank one of the four beers, well, because I could I guess. You'd figure I'd really need sustenance for when G.I. Joe started at 11:30, but strangely, I didn't even drink a single beverage during its running time. Though I did bust into the orange slices, because I love those damn things. I did open the Mountain Dew to get me through the hour-long drive home at 1:30, but drank only a couple sips, and eventually finished it over the course of three sittings. My wife's consumption ended up being even more modest than mine, so I won't mention it.

So what did we learn?

Well, nothing, really. I'd say it was a learning experience if some of the stuff had gone bad and we'd had to throw it out. But the sloshing ice in the bottom of the cooler kept everything in good shape. The Twix did get a little melted at some point, but I think that must have happened while sitting on my kitchen table on Sunday. We shared it last night after hardening it up in the freezer a bit. The rest of everything else has rejoined our refrigerator or pantry, none the wiser for its brief role as concession insurance at the drive-in.