Is it just me or are movies
getting really crummy?
Don’t answer that. We went
to see the second installment of The Hunger Games last night. I didn’t
want to go but I went because the kids and M were all keen. The main reason I
didn’t want to go is because I rather vividly remembered the first one in the
trilogy.
It’s not that the first Hunger
Games was a bad movie – actually it was quite good by what seems to be
today’s standard. What I mean is that I didn’t enjoy watching children forced
to kill each other. Sure, I might have gotten past that when I was a teenager
but it doesn’t work like that anymore. I just feel upset.
But that doesn’t
matter. All I wanted to tell you was that about fifteen minutes into the movie
a guy appeared at the end of our row of seats carrying a box of take-away food
– it looked like sushi – and delivered it to someone sitting in front of us.
I couldn’t stop laughing. I
embarrassed the kids and I think M, too, but I just couldn’t stop the laughter
from coming out. I couldn’t decide which was funnier: that someone had ordered
sushi for delivery to a theatre or that the restaurant agreed to the “address”
the customer gave. (There was a small cafe right outside the theatre which we
later saw did have sushi on the menu, so I guess it came from there, but
still...)
Speaking of deliveries, one
of Noonie’s friends ordered movies to our house last week when the girls were
here having a get-together. She rang up a shop called Nabilnet and said she
wanted such-and-such a movie, and another one, and short time later there was a
delivery guy at our door with the DVDs. They were for keeping, not for
borrowing. Of course they were pirated but the quality was good enough, and you
tend to forgive small flaws in clarity when the movies cost five thousand a
piece (around three dollars). Delivery was free.
You can’t beat Beirut for
home delivery service. You can order groceries for delivery, too, but I’ve
never done it. M’s parents used to get a lot of wrong numbers for a grocery
store in their neighbourhood with a phone number very similar to their own.
They said that at the beginning they used always to explain to the confused
caller that they had dialled the wrong number but eventually grew weary of this
unrewarding chore and began simply to take the orders.
I didn’t quite believe M’s
dad when he told me this but then once I was at their house when it happened.
The phone rang, M’s dad picked up and I heard him say, “Do you want the big
pack or the small one? We have paper plates in 50-count packs and in 25-count.”
M’s mom started cracking up, and then I realised what was happening. My gosh
but that man can keep a straight face. He pretended to take down the rest of
the order, which included tea bags and some kind of cheese, and then cheerfully
hung up the phone and continued talking with us like nothing had happened.