We didn't want to go anywhere tonight. Why? The Lakers are playing! Who leaves when the Lakers are playing? So instead, we went last night. I'm being rather vague, so let me continue. The plan was to go see Juno. That new film about the girl from Hard Candy (Matt's disgusting for recommending that to me, haha) who gets pregnant and looks for parents to adopt her baby. That wasn't the original plan, to go see Juno, but it became the final one. We wanted to go to the new ArcLight Cinemas in Sherman Oaks - when I say we, I mean I - at the Galleria to check out the new theatre. I'm not the biggest fan of the Galleria to begin with, but it's always fun to check out new places and complain about 'em, so that was the plan. They closed down the Pacific Theatres there a few months ago (ArcLight is a sister company of Pacific), so we became accustomed to going to the AMC in Woodland Hills instead. So the plan: Juno at ArcLight Sherman Oaks. Let me preface by saying we've never been to an ArcLight - this is the second one, the first one is in Hollywood, and we've never been there, nor did we know anything about it.

In the past, I've usually bought movie tickets online the morning of the movie and then just picked 'em up at the theatre. Or rather, that's what I always liked to do. I stopped because what normally happened was we all changed our minds at the last second - some would say I'm the one who changed our minds at the last second, haha - and go somewhere entirely different. It's happened many times in the past - but I guess if you think about it, if I did go ahead and buy the tickets online, we wouldn't have changed our minds to being with. Ah well. Anyway, the plan was to pick up Imadul and then pick up Carie (less vague now?) and head over to the Galleria for Juno, and Starbucks, all the while cracking Juno "you know" jokes. But then I showed up with a SoBe Nirvana (which was in the movie by the way! The best drink ever!) and we skipped Starbucks and went up to buy the tickets.

So, we take the escalator, and the first thing that changed was the place you had to buy your tickets. There was this big purple thing covering where you'd normally buy the tickets and it said to go upstairs to buy 'em. That's lame. So we went up upstairs, it was damn crowded.  Why? Because the ticket buying place was indoors. You enter from the left, and there's a stupid little store there, and the tickets are bought on the right. You have to climb over all these people to get to the ticket area, horrible arrangements. And the doors to exit and enter are exactly the same. How unorganized is that! Inside, it looks all fancy shmancy. Fake statue people, huge clock, crazy display. Tried to be totally state of the art, ArcLight did. So we say screw the lines and we go to the machines - only saps pay in lines. We go to the machine, waste some time - they say I'm the ultimate time-waster - and we check out what other movies there are even though we all know we're going to see Juno. We finally settle on the 8 o'clock showing of Juno, notice that infant prices cost more than children prices, proceed with three adult tickets, and click next. Then the unspeakable happens.

Maybe it's because I'm so inexperienced, but I had no idea that theatres like this still existed - reserved seating. ArcLight does reserved seating - only. Now right off the bat, you'd think, hey, reserved seating, that's pretty neat. It does away with some theatre annoyances... let's go! But what does it get rid of? Having a for sure place for you to sit instead of going and sitting on the floor in the back? Where you have to alternate positions during the movie because you're so uncomfortable? That's the fun part about theatres now-a-days! Reserved seating is fine for shows or plays, where you get all dressed up to go and you plan it weeks in advance, but not to a movie. Even major airline are doing away with reserved seatings! (and they're the only planes I fly on!) No one dresses up to movies anymore, it isn't some kind of elegant experience anymore. Reserved seating is highly unnecessary, especially today. And not only because of the philosophy of the whole idea of trying to make it sophisticated, no no. Also because it is totally inconvenient. Why? Because people don't plan movies weeks in advance: what they're going to see, what time, where they're going to sit, how many people are going to go with them - who does that! The most they'll do is have a small idea of what they want to see and with whom they want to go - who gets particular! Movies are always thought about at the last second - you show up five minutes into the previews, push your way in, sit down, take another five minutes to realize the movie has started, call all your friends from your phone and tell them you won't be available for the next two hours, and then you enjoy the movie. That's how a movie is supposed to be watched in theatres. Not with reserved seatings. That's disgusting. And not only that, they don't let people inside of the theatre after the movie has started. What are they going Hitchcock on us?! Don't make watching a movie with a hundred people you don't know an elegant experience. Because it's not. And it won't ever be again. You want to make a theatre elegant, you make one in your own garage. A theatre movie is a show that goes on every hour, with dirty seats and popcorn on the floor with iPhones in cup holders (like last night, haha) with crying babies, and if you want, you can logon to the Internet and download the movie for free in the comfort of your own home. Sure, movies might've originally been planned to be elegant shows, but they're not anymore, so stop trying to make them. If you're going to do reserved seating, say half of the theatres are reserved and the other half are for late coming procrastinators to make everyone's happy - wanna know why? Because you lost $35 last night. We went to the AMC instead. Where we gave more money to the mall by eating at Ruby's and we had an even better time. But the movie was stupid and the audio sucked - but that didn't stop us from showering them with money, cos ArcLight sucked more.

But then again, I'm probably going to be a big hypocrite because I want to go to ArcLight Hollywood tomorrow night because they're the only ones playing PTA's There Will Be Blood. So after I go see that with Jo, expect me to go on a rant about how great ArcLight is. And how amazing it is that they're playing four Kubrick movies in January. How awesome is that! haha. I'm such a hypocrite. I hope you enjoyed my rant. Now go get ready for the Laker game versus the Jazz tonight, less than four hours away! It's going to be great because as of today, we're the fifth seed, only a few steps away from jumping into the second seed after we overtake Phoenix. And we play the Celtics on Sunday in Los Angeles - so go get ready. But before I go, I wanted to mention what happened in Pakistan yesterday - I didn't want to go into detail about it because I don't want to get all political, but let's hope things get better in Pakistan soon, because if you don't know what's going on, things are bad over there. The ex-Prime Minister was assassinated yesterday after she was trying to run again, and now there are riots all over, absolutely no control. A lot of bad things have occurred, and personally, thankfully, my family is fine. But let's hope things get better, fast, Insha Allah. Before Bush feels the need to go invade Pakistan to make them more "Democratic", whatever he thinks that is, just as an excuse to go after bin Laden after all these years - if you do, stay away from the cities cos that's not where he's hiding as we all know. Oh, look at that, I'm getting into another rant. Stop me, haha. Alright, I'm done. Oh, and don't forget to watch the Pats/Giants game Saturday night, you don't have an excuse to miss it now that it's on THREE NETWORKS! CBS, NBC, and NFL Network are all broadcasting it at the same time. Watch the Giants stop the Pats from going 16 - 0! Take care everyone, see u.