Fiction/Humor Memoir

Picking Your Seat

Picking Your Seat

There is an old Dad joke that was used when a kid would get caught pulling at his underpants, squirming this way and that. The Dad would say, “You going to the movies?” The kid would, of course, say, “no, why?” And the Dad would ask him with a big grin, “Then why are you picking your seat?” Its always a good one because its a cute play on words and it is a universal issue that invariably kids will get caught pulling at their trousers at one time or another. It is all very innocent and a well-meaning lesson for life that tends to stick with you, just like your underpants stick in your crotch at times.

The movies are my subject for this morning because I noticed all the chatter about the Golden Globe Awards show last night, which got somewhat panned, particularly because of a somewhat lackluster and relatively unknown host. It seems that Oppenheimer on the big screen and Succession on TV, took away the bulk of the awards, which is somewhat understandable, given that they were the blockbuster favorites. The movies have always been a big part of my life, mostly because of my love of storytelling, but also because the format of movies, more so than TV series and other mediums, have always figured more prominently in my upbringing, mostly due to my days in Rome, where movies (specifically English language movies) were the medium of expat adolescent socialization, as I have mentioned on several previous occasions. I am generally known among my friends and family as a big movie-goer and years ago I would review movies and publish them in a blog, which eventually involved me in some unwanted notoriety since the New York Times used it to claim that I was going to the movies and thereby fiddling while Rome (my asset management business) burned. The two movies that jumped out from that expose were Evan Almighty with Steve Carrell and Mr. Brooks with Kevin Costner. I happen to like both actors, but would otherwise consider those two movies to be highly forgettable had they not gotten so much undue profile during that late spring of 2007.

Yesterday I did something I don’t do very often any more, I went to the movies by myself. When I lived in New York City, that was a very normal occurrence because movie theaters were all around and escaping for a few hours was no big deal in the City that never sleeps. Now it happens far less often for several reasons. First of all, it is far less convenient. I used to have no problem going to the local Regal or AMC theaters, but now I am spoiled and the absence of reclining seats at those theaters makes me focus my attendance on The Angelica or Cinepolis, where the seating and ambiance are nicer. That means I have a 20+ minute trip to and from the theater, so the total time dedication is something like a round of golf, or four hours. The other reason is that I just go to fewer movies, somewhat because COVID took us all out of the habit of relying on the movies for our socialization and also because the gradual trend towards the home theater alternative sort of turned a corner during COVID with better programming, more streaming choices, easier pay-per-view access and bigger screens (I am up to 85 inches of viewing pleasure in the Living Room), the promise of movie watching at home took root.

The movie I went to see yesterday was The Iron Claw, which is the story of the Von Erich family, that was a big part of the professional wrestling scene for most of the 80s and 90s. I didn’t know anything about the family until this movie came out, but I assure you, my oldest son Roger knew the whole story and then-some. It looked like an interesting story of a tragedy-afflicted family but since it was about pro wrestling it seemed to only appeal to my two sons and me in my family. Women seem to understand the appeal of pro wrestling far less than men do. The truth is that this was a far more human story than a sports story. The drama was 25% about the quest for sporting glory and 75% about how a family gets through a series of unfortunate and tragic life events and still comes out the other side with their spirit in tact.

Yesterday afternoon, I dedicated my post-movie time to rereading a group of deposition transcripts for a case I am working on. I am coming into the deposition-prep stage of the case, where I am required to activate my memory of the details of the case the way a first-year law student must recite the facts of the case to Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman) in The Paper Chase. While reading through the mind-numbing transcripts, I got a call from my old motorcycling pal, Arthur. He called because we had had a few polite exchanges about a story I wrote about our mutual friend Andy. Arthur was more or less a professional writer as an ad man copywriter in his day. That makes him a bit more critical of people’s writing, so we debated the value of my daily blog production, which he called “The Marin Output”. The bottom line of that criticism was about whether it was necessary or not. I guess that his discipline as a paid writer was to always be sure that his output was necessary to the reader. Nothing could be further from my purpose in writing than that. He commented that when I used to write my movie review blog, he always read it because he found it necessary for some reason. He claimed that my movie perspectives had value to him, presumably in a way that my current blog content does not.

That is an interesting perspective to me because I tend to remember my movie review blog for how it landed me in hot water over my reviews of Evan Almighty and Mr. Brooks, two movies that could not possibly be a valuable part of my or anyone else’s life as far as I can tell. I tend to think that my current blog stories are far more lasting in their value because they address more life issues than an ephemeral movie review could possibly do. Movie reviews only really have value for as long as people are considering going to see that movie. I suppose you could argue that they have lasting value because those movies will move to a TV rerun platform, but let’s face it, free movie fodder is not exactly a scarce commodity, particularly if it is comprised of B-run movies like the two for-mentioned movies.

That brings me back to the issue of going to the movies. I do it, as do many others, as an escape. I like the two-hour storytelling format because it seems to be just the right amount of escapist time to both get out of your existence and yet not get so far out that you forget yourself and your connection to the material. I guess we all like picking out seat in life, and yes, I mean that in every imaginable way. I like picking my seat at the movies and picking my seat while contemplating life in my blog stories. I guess Arthur’s version of picking his seat is to think of me as some ill-fitting underwear that has lodged itself in the crack of his ass for a moment and worthy of a moment of comment, just to remind himself of his being the professional writer that worries about relevance where I think only of expression. My respect for Arthur is great enough to withstand the analogy, as much as it makes me squirm in the moment.