WHEN'S THE LAST TIME YOU WENT TO TH E MOVIES?

As I write this, it happens to be shortly after India just won the World Cup against Sri Lanka, ending a 28 year drought of winning the cup. You’d think I’d be celebrating and joining hands with the horns, firecrackers, drums, Indian flags, “haaaaaaaaayyyyys”and people that I can hear and see outside my window right now, but I’m not. Maybe the age of 29 is the crossing point where a person becomes “too old for this kind of stuff” and that would explain my lack of enthusiasm to celebrate India’s wins, but I think it has more to do with team India not being my team and cricket not being my sport. I also wouldn’t even feel comfortable trying to match the emotion of the Indian people right now as trying to do that would be like me trying to match the enthusiasm of a person that just found out they won the lottery for $300 million dollars. Sure, I’m happy for them, but I’m not the one that won the lottery. All I know is that if the spirit of celebration seen in the Indian people after the World Cup win is anything close to what I’d feel if Gonzaga won the national championship in basketball, I can only hope this is something I can experience in my lifetime.

With the weather here starting to get hotter and it only taking about an hour outside now to leave the backside of my shirt as wet as a bed sheet of a 2 year old, I’ve started to become quite the frequent customer at the movie cinema since it’s a great venue to escape the heat and get some air conditioning for a couple hours. When I say frequent customer too, let’s just say I went to “The Fighter” on back to back days and that by the way is another 1st for me, and not because I went to the same movie on back to back days, but because I went to a Mark Walberg movie on back to back days. Come to think of it, me going to a Mark Walberg movie on back to back days at the theater just might be a 1st for anyone and that might be something that could get me in the World’s Book of Guineas Records. If you can deal with the F word being said about 30 times in a movie, I’d highly recommend “The Fighter” since the story is quite inspiring and to give Mark Walberg credit, he’s didn’t do a bad job in this one.

On my second trip to “The Fighter” I also took with me Mike, Johnny, and “Tubby” from the senior citizen center and they enjoyed the show as much as any person would that hasn’t gone to the movies in 20 yrs, as was the case for them. In asking them why they didn’t go to the movies more often, the response I got was “because it’s too expensive” and as reminder to all of you, the cost of a movie ticket here equates to $1 U.S. Back home we have kids complaining because they can’t get both a bag of popcorn and a box of candy when they go to the movies, and here, you have some people that will never even have the opportunity to see a movie in a theater. Just makes you think a bit.

Go VCU!