I slept in my bed last night. Hooray. I'm a big boy now.
So last night I went to the drafthouse to see 'X-men'. It turned out to be a pretty good movie. The only thing that annoyed me was that freakin' shim that was always walking behind magneto during the later half of the movie. I never did see what that he-she's power was. Maybe I went to the bathroom when he-it used it. Maybe simply being a shim WAS its power.
Another thing that struck me was how damn clean the Xavier mutant mansion was. The place was a school.. you not only have kids running all over the place, you have kids with weird powers. Yet the place was squeaky clean. Not even the occasional burn mark on the walls. And not once did you see someone with a mop bucket or polishing with a aerosol can of pledge. Perhaps there's some mutant out there who has magic cleaning powers.
They put the wrong movie in by accident at first. The guy in the booth had accidentally put in the remake of 'The shaggy dog'. Since I have not seen either movie, I thought I was watching x-men. I kept waiting for the dog to turn into a mutant or something. Finally when (gag) Tim Allen wandered into the film, I knew something was wrong. For a moment I thought I might be in the wrong theater. I craned my neck and looked behind me and saw other members of the audience start to get antsy. Two particular portly and goateed gentlemen who were the model image of comic book aficionados were starting to look downright belligerent. After a short time the lights flicked on and the film was removed to the chorus of cheers from the audience.
I started to get a little antsy myself when halfway into the movie my nachos had still not arrived. I did not think much about it, because I was enjoying my beer, but at one point I looked around me and saw everyone else in the audience had piles of empty and dirty dishes pushed in front of them. Alarmed that the night might become nacho-less, I stalked out my waitress to ask what had happened. This was no easy task because I had forgotten what my waitress had looked like. In fact most of the waitresses in there looked pretty much the same. I actually knew I had the right one by her smell. She smelled like watermelon flavored bubble gum. I made fat-guy grumpy noises about being devoid of nachos and went back to my seat.
Finally my nachos came. Apparently there had been a minor crises in the kitchen and they had run out of cheese. Now, I have had draft house nachos before and they are usually pretty good. They use real cheese. The kind that is soft and gooey when it arrives but slowly firms up as you eat your way in. They had replaced this cheese with pump-cheese. The neon yellow cheese you see getting squirted out in ball parks and what not. I was a little disappointed, but it was not like I was going to complain.
I felt that damn pumpcheese all night. I was happy I could lie down in my bed again without pain, but in the middle of the night that stuff started to gurgle and burble in my stomach. For some reason it reminded me of the old 'hall of doom' from the super friends and the great bubbly noise it would make when it emerged from the swamp. Eventually I drifted back to sleep.
No plans this weekend. I will just have to see where life takes me.
2026 Update
Setting coordinates for June 2006, where Ed will battle neon cheese and a missing waitress.
Ah, 2006. A time when you could stumble into a theater, have no idea what movie was playing, and still call it a night out. You had a waitress who smelled like watermelon gum because she actually had to walk to your seat and take an order. Now you'd be lucky to find a human at all; you'd be tapping on a greasy touchscreen to pay a convenience fee for the privilege of having your nachos dropped by a robot. The projector mix-up is another fossil—back then a guy in a booth could put in the wrong reel, and the whole audience would boil over like a kettle of comic-book rage. Now it's all encrypted digital files and automated playlists. And pump cheese, that neon abomination, is still out there, but you used to have to wait for it to arrive via a confused waitress. Today you could just order it on an app and have it delivered to your seat, which somehow makes it worse. You praised real cheese that firms up as you eat, then spent the night with a swamp gurgling in your gut. You had no plans that weekend. What a simpler hell that was.
“2006 Ed, after all that trouble, did you ever find out whether that shim had a power, or did you just accept the mystery and move on to your gurgling cheese?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I never did find out. I thought about asking around on some message board, but then I got to thinking about the cheese and my stomach made that swamp noise again. I figured some mysteries are best left alone. Maybe the power was just being confusing, you know? Like a walking riddle in a cape. I half expected to see them in the sequel with some big reveal, but I haven't gotten around to seeing that one yet. Probably will wait for DVD. Anyway, the pump cheese did its thing all night, and by morning I was just glad to be alive and not sleeping on the couch. So yes, I accepted the mystery and moved on. That's pretty much my life motto: if it doesn't make sense, blame the cheese and take a nap.
