Cheating on a movie theater, using its own popcorn

I had to say two things that were inspired by my viewing of How to Train Your Dragon on Friday night, but I think you'll agree my diatribe about the humans improbably surviving the improbably ineffectual dragon scourge was worthy of its own post.

This one has nothing to do with the movie, directly.

You may remember, but probably not, that the Sun Theatre in Yarraville, my regular theater, gives its customers a nice benefit, if they happen to attend the last screening of the night and they're still hungry when they get out. Instead of tossing their leftover popcorn in the bin (to use the Australian term for a trash can), they bag it up nicely in the individual bags they use when you purchase it, and leave it on the counter of the snack bar/ticket purchasing area for anyone who wants to collect it on the way out. There's no sign that tells you this is why it's sitting there, but there's no one else around, it's 11:30 at night, and it doesn't take much to put two and two together.

Sometimes there's just one sitting there. On Thursday night there were six. So naturally I did my part and grabbed one on the way out of Dangerous Animals.

Being good, I gave myself just a taste of the salty goodness with the faint butter taste, saving the rest for the next day. 

I figured I'd munch on it whenever the mood struck. I was going in for a rare Friday in the office because my longtime work computer, which I've had since 2020, was finally forcing my hand and requiring me to turn it in for a new one, something they wanted me to do at least two years ago. A piercing fan-whirring sound, which started on Wednesday, was too much for me to continue tolerating, forcing me to give up on the hardware that had served me so well. I hate change, but I have to say, the transition to my new computer, which also involved moving to Windows 11 for the first time, was pretty smooth. 

Anyway, being in the office may have preventing me from getting the idea to snack on it. While I can shove handfuls of movie popcorn into my gob when sitting in my home office, it tends to beg questions, or at least funny looks, when you do the same thing in the office. So even though only a very scant number of people I actually knew were in the office that day, I just let the opportunity go by the boards.

Which meant I still had more than half the bag remaining when I went to the movies again that night.

Ordinarily I don't get to movies on back-to-back days these days, but when my wife suggested I stay in the city to go to a movie after my rare Friday in the office -- a possibility that had been in the back of my mind anyway -- I'd already gotten the idea to go out to Dangerous Animals on Thursday night. My wife encouraged me to do both.

And I must say, it's been a long time since I've stayed in the city for movies after work. I used to do this with some regularity, maybe once every six weeks, but both of my usual days in the office, Wednesday and Thursday, now feature for me some obligation on the home front regarding my kids' sports trainings. It's my older son's second basketball team on Wednesday and my younger son's only soccer team on Thursday. Yes, my wife could take them to these on occasion, but it would be an inconvenience for her so I haven't claimed the benefit yet. Going in on a different day made for a great opportunity to take advantage. 

So that takes us to my 6:30 screening of How to Train Your Dragon at Village Crown, the first of two Village Crown screenings, followed by Materialists. (If you want to see how much I disliked that particular movie, my review is up here.) 

And even though I'd had an earlier dinner at my favorite ramen bar, I still found enough room in my stomach for the remainder of that Sun Theatre popcorn, given freely to me at one movie theater and eaten at another.

If it's actually cheating, it can't be a very serious case of it. Given my lack of viewings in the city lately, I am seeing about 90% of my movies at the Sun these days. They can't feel any serious envy. They know my loyalty is true.

Then again, they don't benefit very much from that loyalty. My tickets are always free due to my critics card, and I only rarely by a small packet of lollies (or so they are called here). I did buy a $3 small bag of mixed gummies for Dangerous Animals.

And if you think this was a betrayal of Village -- after all, I did bring in outside food -- I made up for that one later on. Before Materialists, enough of a hole in my stomach had opened up again that I could not resist the purchase of a box of their sweet and salty popcorn. Which, it must be said, was mildly disappointing next to the Sun popcorn.