Elly and the Enchanter

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A hotel lobby doesn’t really seem like the best place to pass your time, but on the first day of a fan convention, it is the best place.
“Pyramid Head!” Elly called, pointing at a guy lugging a huge costume across the room.
“Another one?” asked Lissy. “Why is that even a popular character?”
“You’ve never played Silent Hill?” Lissy shuddered, but Elly grinned. “I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave,” she teased.
“Being brave doesn’t mean you go looking for trouble,” Lissy quoted. “Or that you should play horror games just because everyone else does.”
“A Browncoat!” gasped Autumn, looking up from her phone suddenly as though she had fellow-Firefly-fan radar. She looked toward a businesswoman walking across the lobby to the front door.
“You don’t know that,” Lissy protested. “That lady could just have a brown coat. She could just like the color.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see if she hangs out in any Alliance-friendly bars come U-Day,” Autumn replied sagely, returning to her texting.
Elly let out a sigh of enjoyment. “This really is the best. I’m so glad I can go back to the dorm tonight and sleep, instead of having to pack up all my stuff and haul it here, inevitably forget some of it and have to do without. If I forgot my Sonic Screwdriver, I could just go back to my room and get it.
“Pff,” Lissy interjected, “like you’d forget your Sonic Screwdriver.”
Elly tossed her a grin and reached into her back pocket, where she located the tool and waved it at her friend. “The point is, I could go home and get it. I don’t have to deal with the mess and hassle of actually staying at the hotel through all the con craziness.”
“That’s true,” Lissy agreed. “One time I was cosplaying Hermione, and I totally forgot my tie! I just wore a scarf instead, though, so everything was okay.”
“You wore a scarf? What a sacrifice!” Elly laughed, eyeing the Gryffindor colors which permanently adorned Lissy’s neck.
Lissy laughed and rolled her eyes. “Nobody noticed, but I was pretty upset for about fifteen minutes.”
“It’s definitely better being able to get out of the hotel when you need to.”
“Yeah, I totally agree,” Lissy echoed, watching a guy with long red hair (Just like Rupert Grint in Goblet of Fire, she thought) as he struggled with four large suitcases.
“What’s that Shakespeare quote with the ‘protestheth...’” Autumn chimed in, mispronouncing The Bard’s 16th century English.
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’?” Elly provided, with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s not ‘pros...thetic’?” Autumn asked.
“Are you trying to say that you think we actually do want to stay at the hotel this weekend?” Lissy asked, translating for her roommate.
“I didn’t say it,” she replied, then reimmersed herself in her phone.
Elly and Lissy exchanged a look.
“I… kind of do want to,” Lissy admitted.
“Me too,” Elly agreed.
“There probably aren’t many rooms left,” Autumn remarked.
“Go up now and see,” Lissy advised. “We can split the cost, but don’t, like, get a presidential suite or anything.”
Elly laughed, already out of her seat and walking toward the front desk. “You mean you don’t want to throw the most amazing The Doctor Takes Hogwarts crossover party that this hotel has ever seen?” she called back.
“That wouldn’t be hard,” Autumn muttered.
“Do you have any cosplay planned?” Lissy asked her roommate politely. She still hadn’t quite forgiven Autumn for stranding her in a back hallway of the hotel the day before.
“Yeah,” Autumn said. “I’m going to be a plucky space cowboy on a job that has an elaborate plan... that involves me dressing like a hotel employee for most of the day.”
Lissy nodded. “That sounds nice.”

Standing in line didn’t provide the view that her previous vantage point had. Within the first five minutes, Elly was convinced that she’d missed seeing several of her geeky brethren, and in fact only managed to spot one: a girl who had painted her rolling suitcase to resemble the TARDIS. She didn’t mind the sacrifice, however, and bounced on the balls of her feet, knowing that soon she’d be able to partake of the entire CON experience, with the added bonus of being close enough to go home whenever she needed to.
When the couple in front of her moved forward to speak to the pretty concierge, Elly was first in line. She bounced faster, but she didn’t have long to wait. A person in a DragonBallZ t-shirt grabbed their bag and walked toward the elevators, and the guy behind the counter beckoned her forward.
“I know you might think I’m crazy for asking this,” she gushed out, “But are there any rooms left?”
“I think there are a few,” he replied, tapping at the computer in front of him.
“Are any of them… not the presidential suite?”
He laughed. It was a nice laugh. Elly looked at him. Before, she’d glanced at him like he were a piece of the background, like he was playing Extra #6 in the movie of her life. But when he laughed, it made her want to know what that movie would be like if he were one of the stars.
“It looks like you’re in luck; we’ve got one with two queen beds that I’m reasonably certain no president has ever stayed in.” He looked up and smiled at her. “No Secret Service, foreign dignitaries, or even the president of a neighborhood association, or anything.”
“We’ll take it,” she replied, and waved at her friends to signal her success. Lucky Lissy strikes again! she thought.
He fished out a keycard and began to get her checked her in. “Any big plans while you’re in town?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah! We’re gonna high five some people, stay up way too late every night, and probably marathon a bunch of movies! It’s gonna be awesome!”
He smiled again as he glanced up at her. “Wow, that was a real response. I do this pretend ‘small talk’ thing with pretty much everyone, but you must be the most excited guest I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to.”
“You’re welcome!”
He laughed.
“Your weekend is probably gonna be pretty awesome too, with CON stuff to keep an eye on.”
“It’ll definitely be interesting,” he agreed. “You’re here for the CON? You didn’t bring much luggage with you.”
“Uh, yeah!” Elly stepped back a little from the counter and pointed at her shirt. “Did you expect something different from the girl in the Union Jack?”
He squinted through his glasses to read her red, white, and blue top, which was emblazoned with the words: “ASK ME ABOUT MY DOCTOR WHO OBSESSION”.
“Doctor Who… that’s the guy with the scarf, right?”
Another poor soul, just waiting to be converted, Elly thought, and nodded. “Yes. For the purposes of our conversation, yes. He’s the guy with the scarf.”
“Is that what you’re going to watch all weekend?”
Elly laughed. “I wouldn’t mind, but my friends probably want something else for a change. I’m not sure what else we’ll have, but at some point we’re definitely watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
“‘There are some who call me… Tim?’”
Elly’s momentarily startled eyes swept across his face and took in his nametag, pinned to the front of his suit jacket, which read: “Timothy Gray, MANAGER”. Then she laughed. And laughed. She got a few weird looks from the other concierge and the people standing in line behind her, but she didn’t care.
“You,” she gasped out when she caught her breath, “are my favorite. You’re totally invited to our The Doctor Takes Hogwarts party. If we decide to have it.”
He looked amused as he gave her credit card back and passed her the keycards for her room. “As long as you don’t mind someone from Middle Earth showing up,” he replied. “I’m more of a Lord of the Rings fan, myself.”
Elly grinned, collecting all of her stuff. “Well, thanks for all your help, and your small talk. I guess I’ll see you around!”
“Sure,” the manager replied with a smile. “Enjoy your stay.”
“I will!” Elly turned to walk away, but felt compelled pass on a warning. On her way past the line of people, she pointed at the manager and informed them, “I wouldn’t try to mess with that guy if I were you; he’s an enchanter.”

Review: The Desolation of Smaug

It makes the Lord of the Rings fan in me sad to say it, but I honestly was not that impressed with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Sure, we got to go back to Bag End and they got Martin Freeman to play Bilbo, but there’s tons of dwarves everywhere that you can’t keep straight unless you memorize them beforehand and Gandalf is acting like a super creepy dude, “hey I knew your mom so it’s okay for me to be here and by the way you should come with us on this road trip and you won’t mind if I bring a few of my friends?” There was some cool action, and the endearing The Hobbit-esque tendency of getting captured and nearly killed every time they turned around. (“What, really? Again?”)

When my husband asked me if I wanted to go see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I shrugged and said, “Okay… If you want, I guess.” This weekend, we headed off to East Park, the last theater in town still playing it.

I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe the mediocre feeling I had after leaving the theater last year when An Unexpected Journey ended? I knew The Desolation of Smaug had plenty of things going for it: it was made by Peter Jackson, was going to be the same interesting story I’d read when I was eleven or twelve. Plus, I knew from internet rumor that Bilbo’s conversation with the dragon was in there. Maybe I didn’t want to be the same kind of disappointed by going in with hopeful feelings.

I did expect more party elk.

Of course, I loved it. Anything that can make the group’s trip through Mirkwood more clear is bound to be an improvement on the book, and speaking of improvements, I enjoyed the addition of Tauriel. The three Lord of the Rings movies had so much material to cover, it was understandable that some things be left out. When you’re making three movies based on one book, moviegoers should see the need for a little more material to be added. And everyone enjoys a good love story.

The barrel scene was great (though the “Bombur knocking orcs all over the place and then fighting from inside the barrel” gag was a little bit much), the conversation Bilbo and Balin have before he goes after the arkenstone was hilarious, and the banter with the dragon was awesome. And the ending was perfect!

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was such a fun movie. The addition of Evangeline Lily, Peter Jackson with his carrot in Bree, Stephen Colbert the king of all Tolkien nerds, and Stephen Fry made the original story more enjoyable. It was wonderful, and the best way that it differed from An Unexpected Journey was that it made me wish it was July so I could go see the next one!

We stood up and stretched as the ending credits began to roll, and listened to Ed Sheeran’s I See Fire playing over them. We left before the song was over, but the second I got home, I looked it up on youtube and hunted out the lyrics.

I see fire

Inside the mountain

I see fire

Burnin’ the trees

I see fire

Hollowing souls

I see fire

Blood on the breeze

The idea of fire “hollowing souls” perfectly captures what the people of Laketown would feel every day. Gazing up at the Lonely Mountain, they would have given anything not to see fire. Fire meant the end of everything to them: their boats would be charred and unable to aid them, their homes would burn, and their lives would be lost. The fire would hollow their souls, leaving them hopeless.

Bilbo’s final line of the movie, “What have we done?” shows that he understands what fire will do to the people who awaited the dragon’s wrath.

Desolation.

Lord of the Nostalgia

I recently took a backpacking trip behind the couch in my living room to find my DVD copies of the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I found them after spelunking in some boxes. I dusted them off, and plunked them into the PS3 to watch them (because when you don’t have a working DVD player, a 7th generation gaming console will have to do).

There are lots of great things about December. Christmas reunites you with family, and New Year’s Eve with friends. Aside from the holidays, what December reminds me of is my senior year of high school and the first two years of college.

On December 19th, 2001, my best friend Bruce was visiting from the east coast. We went to East Park Theater and stood in line, then found seats next to each other while his parents and brother had to sit several rows behind us.

On December 18th, 2002, we found space in two or three cars and drove across Norfolk and stood in line along with everyone else from school. Afterward, pushing the later dorm curfew that had been stretched just because it was movie night, we gathered back at Sam’s apartment to recap it. Jonathan jumped around making “arrow from the string” noises, pretending to be Legolas sliding down the stairs of Helm’s Deep on a shield, taking out imaginary invading Orcs. A couple of days later at East Park, Schmoove started giggling during a very serious Ent scene and leaned across me to tell Sloan what Jess had quipped to induce his amusement: “Fear the Maple Leaf.”

On December 17th, 2003, Lindy used one kleenex out of the box and I used the rest. There’s nothing more emotionally draining than last stands, heroic rescues, friendships reunited, and Kings restored to their rightful throne.

It’s fun to get out the movies and watch them again, because it reminds me of a time when my friends and I could get together without having to reschedule three or four times. When Lindy and Elizabeth and I played drinking games to Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit (and even knew most of the brown “movie” answers!). When I went to see Two Towers by myself and ran into Forrest and Jason and other Star Wars Classic Card Game players that I’d met in high school. When sitting up talking late into the night in the living room at the guys’ house was a common way to spend an evening. I miss those times.

When the credits roll, I can close my eyes and remember how much fun it was seeing those movies with the people that I love, and treasure the fact that I will get to relive those memories anytime I watch them.

One Ring to Concern Them All

This is a true thing that happened.


Forty-seven days ago, it was a cool, crisp Saturday in May. My husband and I were busy with household chores and chasing children. It was getting a bit late in the day for lunch, and neither of us felt like making anything, so we decided to go into town for lunch and to pick up some groceries. He corralled our daughters into the car, and I stopped in our bedroom on my way out the door to put on my rings: the one I wear on the ring finger of my right hand (a blue round cut stone with two round diamondish stones on either side of it, set in a plain sterling silver band), and the two I wear on the ring finger of my left hand.

I walked out of our bedroom and into the storage/laundry room to toss one more thing into the washing machine, which I had turned on a few minutes earlier. Then I stepped out the door, locking it behind me, and went out to the car quickly, holding a couple of things in my hands. It was a lovely day, a bit chilly, but not chilly enough for a coat. I hurried to where my family was waiting in the car, knowing that my husband was hungry, and I don’t like to keep a grumpy, hungry husband waiting.
My husband took my purse/diaper bag from me when I opened the passenger’s side door, setting it in the back seat for me. I sat down and he revved the engine, moving the car forward around the garage/storage building. I pushed my hair out of my eyes and started to talk about what we would eat, and glanced down at my finger. All that was there was my wedding band.


My engagement ring was gone.


The first time I saw it was when my husband (then boyfriend) pulled it out of his pocket at our table at the Melting Pot in Omaha, Nebraska and asked me to be his wife. We had gone there with some friends, and while one of the girls and I were in the bathroom, he had shown off the ring and made the rest of the table aware of his plans. Before dessert, the rest of the girls in the party trooped off to the bathroom, and Sam just kind of... wandered off. The first person to come back to the table was our server, so he was the first one who got to hear the news: “we’re engaged!”


It’s a gorgeous ring. A white gold band, featuring a one carat marquis cut diamond (my favorite cut), with two small marquis cut sapphires on either side, which are surrounded by three round cut diamonds. Since it’s a bit strangely shaped, my wedding band was made to fit it, with a bump out for a sapphire on one side, and its own row of three round cut diamonds in the middle. My husband chose it himself, and I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful ring. I wouldn’t want to.


We went to lunch. I fretted through the whole thing, and we decided to take the girls home and put them down for naps instead of going grocery shopping, and while they were sleeping we could retrace my steps. We did so, my husband walking on one side of the sidewalk while I scanned the grass on the other side, and when we got to the parking lot, we switched sides and walked slowly back to the apartment, searching as we went.


We found nothing.


I told myself it would turn up. “Maybe it’s somewhere in the apartment,” I thought. I made the staff of the apartment complex aware of its disapperance, then daydreamed about someone finding it and bringing it to me. Two days later, employees from the lawn care company came to cut the grass, and I ran out to one of them and explained the situation over the sound of the gigantic mowing machine he had stepped off of, and though he nodded at me, I wasn’t sure he understood. I felt sick thinking about the amount of people that walk their dogs along that same sidewalk I had walked, wondering if one of them had picked it up and given it to their girlfriend or pawned it or something.


A couple of weeks later, in a fit of frustration, I called a nearby pawn shop. The girl who answered the phone was completely unhelpful, refusing to even hear what my ring looked like to glance through their inventory for me. “Have you reported it to the police?” she asked me. “They get all our reports and we just take in so much volume it wouldn’t even be worth looking.”  Though I was sad, I didn’t think I needed to bother the police. It wasn’t like my ring had been stolen; it was just lost. It would turn up. I called another pawn shop. The kind man on the other end of the line listened to my description, saying, “No, I haven’t seen anything like that,” but added that the girl at the other place was probably right; if any pawn shop in the area got the ring, they would tell the police, and if the police knew, they could tell me.


Reluctantly, I submitted a lost item report to the Boulder Police Department through their website. I was glad to be able to just do it online, I didn’t want to bother an officer with my silly lost ring. Of course, five minutes later, I got an email informing me that I did not live in their jurisdiction and that I should call the Boulder County Sheriff if I wanted help.


It was past 5 PM, but I called anyway, thinking that I could leave a message and someone would get back to me during business hours. To my surprise, I was told by the man who answered the phone that an officer would be sent to my home. I felt a bit ridiculous to be relating the story of losing my ring to the officer who showed up less than twenty minutes later, knowing that he definitely had better things he could have been doing. He patiently wrote everything down, and left me his card so that I could email him a picture of the ring.


My habit of adjusting the rings on my fingers with the middle finger and pinky of each hand made me feel a bit silly without my engagement ring. I found the original Shane Co box that my wedding set had come in and enshrined my wedding band inside. I closed the fuzzy gray box up inside the dark red box that it had come in, and placed the ring that I wear on my right hand on top of it, determining not to wear either ring until I could wear all three together.


Last night we were driving home from getting boxes at Home Depot in town. “There’s that rental place my dad told me about,” I said to my husband, pointing at the glowing green and yellow sign, “where we can rent the metal detector.” We learned that we were going to move about a week ago, and since then my husband has been packing up boxes of books every night. I’ve been preoccupied making baby shower invitations, but I have been secretly planning to look for my ring when I start packing. I thought I would shake out sheets, look under large pieces of furniture, etc.


Today I am finishing up making the baby shower invitations for my sister-in-law. Every one I make is cuter than the last, and I love them all. The worst part about working with paper is that lots of tiny pieces of it get everywhere. There aren’t so many that it necessitates the trash can being moved over to the table where I’m working, but if I leave the tiny pieces in a pile next to me to throw away later, my two year old comes along and blows gently on it, making sure that the tiny pieces get spread everywhere. On the ledge of the window between the kitchen and the dining room, I keep a gift bag full of fancy chocolate that I won at some function. The other day I noticed the bag splitting along the side, so I decided to use it for storing tiny pieces of paper until I could take them to the garbage can, and figured that would both keep them all in one place and be less tempting for my mischievous two year old.


I removed the chocolate.


There, in the bottom of the bag, was my engagement ring.


I called my husband. He was in a meeting and didn’t answer. I texted him and then called my mother, sobbing with joy. “What happened?!” she cried, scared that something terrible had happened to one of my children. “I found my engagement ring!” I exclaimed. I told my friends on Skype, emailed the police officer whose time I had wasted, updated my facebook status, then called my mother-in-law. Tomorrow I will go tell the ladies in the apartment complex’s office.


I can wear it on a trip to a water park without worrying. I can show it off on a trip all the way to the Bahamas and back. It stays on my finger during two C-sections (not in a row, of course, but properly two years apart).


Why is it that the most stressful time for me is when my ring has hidden itself away, safe inside a bag in our apartment?

OMGZEITGEIST

Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age." Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The term is a loanword from German Zeit – "time" and Geist – "spirit" (cognate with English "ghost").

-"Zeitgeist" article on Wikipedia

I have never liked fads. I never had any pogs, never wore bell bottoms in middle school, and I don’t like Twilight. Lots of people have liked or do like these things, but they don’t interest me. One reason is that I could never see the point of scattering little pieces of cardboard around, I think bell bottoms are ugly, and I’m not into vampires. The other reason is that I generally tend to dislike anything that is currently considered “cool.”


What I have is sort of the opposite of a hipster’s “I liked it before it was cool.” I’m more of the “I liked it way way after it was cool” type. I couldn’t see the point of green nail polish when the popular girls were wearing it in middle school, but in college it was hard to find me without my fingernails painted a strange shade. I was disinterested in the early hullabaloo surrounding the Harry Potter series, and didn’t see any of the movies until at least five of them were out, and now I have seen all of them and have read the books through several times. I absolutely refused to join any social networking sites when they first became really popular, and now my computer is rarely on without being accompanied by facebook.

The only thing I have been on the bandwagon at the time for was the Lord of the Rings movies, and I think that mostly had to do with the fact that I was hanging out every day with a group of friends that were all into them too. Fangirling alone in your apartment is not as much fun as fangirling with a bunch of people. They call solo fangirling “stalking.”

Don’t get me wrong, I will enjoy something whether or not others enjoy it. Although I will usually try to share it with someone else if they will listen, and the one who falls victim to this most often is my poor husband: “So she didn’t want to tell him about it and asked her friends not to tell him, but then this other guy who knew about it tried to tell him so they all tried to make him be quiet and...” He is very sweet and just sits there and lets me talk, and eventually I realize I’ve been talking for ten minutes and he’s been mentally checked out for at least 7 of those minutes, and I finish up with “...but whatever, you don’t care anyway, go back to what you were doing,” and laugh at myself. (And he goes back to playing video games, breathing a sigh of relief that he’s not going to be quizzed on it later.)

I like to watch very popular television programs after they have reached the peak of their popularity and are on the down slope. I never watched Scrubs (until about a week ago), Bones (until the middle of season 5), or NCIS (until about season 6 or so) when other people were watching them. I love all these shows, but one thing I can’t stand is a cliffhanger. I will wait for six months to a year before catching up with them, and then watch everything that’s available except the last two or three episodes. I’m okay to be left hanging between regular episodes, but every single show on television likes to do a little “OH NO WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT” episode near the end of the season that makes every viewer hate summer.

And I like summer.

So I don’t watch TV like other people do. The exception to this rule is pretty much everything on USA Network (Burn Notice, White Collar, Royal Pains, etc.). The nice thing about USA Network is that instead of doing one season of shows beginning in the fall and ending in the spring, they break up the season into two chunks. Like, the first half of the season will show in the spring and the second half in the fall, or the first half in the summer and the second half in the winter. Then they stagger when the shows are on, so that there’s always something new showing, no matter what time of year it is. Of course, with a double dose of cliffhanger opportunities per season, there’s more “OH NO WHAT WILL HAPPEN” frustration, but since after one half season ends, another great show starts up again, I can’t be too sad about the disappointing ending of Covert Affairs because, ooh, Burn Notice!

I really enjoy reading a book series after the author is finished writing it. For some people, the anticipation makes the book even better, but for me it’s annoying; I just want to find out what happens! With things that I love, I don’t mind much, because every time a new book comes out is an excuse for me to read the whole series from the beginning again. But my friends have a hard time convincing me to pick up a new series sometimes.

Thankfully, I did not miss out on the works of Jim Butcher due to the persistence of our good friend JR. I was disinclined to start the Dresden Files series: he had made the mistake of telling me that not only was the author remotely close to finishing them but that they also predominantly featured vampires. I never really got excited about vampiry things before the universe got all “OMGZEITGEIST” about them, so now that they are a fad I’m even more disinterested.

JR baited me with Butcher’s finished series, The Codex Alera. The two things that drew me: no vampires, and JR’s description: “Somebody challenged him to write a story combining Ancient Rome and... Pokémon.” That description may turn some people off, so don’t worry, Butcher’s “furies” aren’t really anything like Pokémon. It is plenty Ancient Rome-y, though, and the history major in me was like, “YES PLEASE.”

After I shook JR down for his copies of every book in the series and read them twice, I figured that the Dresden Files would be okay to try, too, vampires and all. I shouldn’t have worried: Butcher’s vampires do not sparkle.

I don’t like popular things. I almost have to be forced to try something that everyone else in the world won’t shut up about. Usually I shrug and say no thank you, but on the rare occasion, I will regret not trying something sooner.

I’m too slow to catch up on what’s popular that I will never be a fashionista, but give me time and I will most likely come around and watch that movie or read that comic that you recommended. 

Unless it’s about vampires.

Life Changes (and so do Movies)

The last movie I saw in an actual theater was the final Harry Potter film. And before that, it was the second to last Harry Potter film. It’s not that I don’t like movies, it’s just that it’s been a good long while since one interested me enough to get me out of the house and to the theater to see it.

In high school and college, it was a rare weekend that I wouldn’t be forking over an unnecessary amount of money to see a movie in an uncomfortable seat with an unnecessarily large bucket of soda in the cupholder beside me. And it was pretty often that the movie I was sitting down to was one I’d seen before. I saw Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers at least a dozen times, and more than half the time I was by myself.

I’m in a very different place in my life now than I was when I toted my copy of the complete compilation of Lord of the Rings with me to East Park to see the second movie by myself yet again in December of 2002. Back then, I could wander out of my parents house whenever I felt like it, my only responsibility being the fact that I needed to shut the door behind me. Now, if I wanted to go see a movie, I’d have to make sure my husband knew I was going, find someone to keep an eye on my children, get something ready for them to eat in case they got hungry while I was gone, and then shut the door behind me.

Movies are for dating. They’re a nice way to spend time with the person you like, and afteward you have plenty to talk about, comparing your thoughts of the movie. It’s also an interesting way to learn about the person you’re attending the movie with: do they let you choose what to see, or do they insist on choosing their favorite thing?

Now that I’m married, I don’t inflict movies that are predominantly concerned with kissing upon my spouse. If I want to watch one, I don’t force him to sit through it with me. And he’s got friends that will take him to the movies that I’m not interested in that are predominantly concerned with explosions.

Another reason I don’t head out to the theater these days is because many of the movie trailers that come out of Hollywood nowadays have all the best parts of the movie in them anyway. Also, they’ve recently all been either remakes or boring. And when a movie’s trailer is boring, how much more boring is the actual movie going to be?

My husband and I don’t have television (no cable, not even a pair of rabbit ears), so our movie news comes from the internet. One movie that has shelled out (I hope) quite a bit to be the only ad that I see recently is Battleship. I need to put it out there right now that I have no idea what the plot of this movie is. The teaser I see about 8 times per day is only about 15 seconds long, but what I’ve got from it is this: tense situations are happening that cause the characters to stare off into the distance in a concerned/astonished fashion. I would imagine that the situations most likely have to do with explosions, since the board game the movie is based off of is also concerned with blowin’ stuff up.

But talk about boring! A board game, Hollywood? Really? I have remarked to my husband more than once after watching this riveting teaser, “What’s next, Connect Four?” “Coming soon, to a theater near you: Backgammon!” “It started as an innocent river rafting trip in Africa. But what those coeds neglected to plan for was the presence of some Hungry. Hungry. Hippos."

Maybe movies were better when I was in high school, or maybe my own world has changed so that my life is interesting enough not to need the escape that movies provide. I’m not saying I’ll never go to another movie again.

After all, the first installment of The Hobbit comes out this December.