This Can't Be Good

This post is both a bit off sports topics (though I have always considered drinking a sport) and entirely out of character as it criticizes an innovative new way to mainstream public drinking in America. Regardless...

TALKER 2 - USA Today A3 - "Some food and alcohol with your flick? Cinemas hope so: It's all part of a nationwide trend to lure more people in to theaters for a pleasing (and profitable) time." The number of first-run theaters serving booze has grown from 14 in 1997 to more than 400 today, says a theater-owners' group.

This has train wreck written all over it. I suppose if you are married to someone who forces you to go to a movie theater it has merit, otherwise I think I saw my last Big Picture with the release of Casino Royale. I have come to consider theater visits among the worst experiences in life right after prostate exams and Devil Rays games. We pretty much limit our visits to once every 2-3 years when the horror of the last experience has sufficiently faded and we are deluded into believing, "this time it will be better". The low point was probably the literal drowning out of the Belfast brogues in The Boxer as the sound of a Giant Toilet Flushing blasted endlessly from the adjacent theater. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, some talentless ass began scream "Rose! Rose!" at the top of his lung. But I digress.

Boozing up the jackasses who flock to our nation's multiplexes to watch Live Free or Die Hard and Rambo LXVII seems about as wise as the introduction of Starbucks Methuccino. Besides, if they charge $12 for a small soda and popcorn now, what the fuck are they going to ding me for the two or three martinis required to make the experience merely insufferable? It will no doubt make the $8 beers at the ballpark seem a bargain.