Dark Knight Night

Most of you know that I only go out to the movies about twice a year. Monica (who, if she has been campaigning this week for election as some kind of Social Coordinator, is doing a great job) got a group of eight of us together last night to go see The Dark Knight. My movie recommendation engine (and fellow blogger) Jay had asked previously in the summer if I planned to see anything this season and, when I said that I didn't but was open to a suggestion, told me that this would be the one. Between that and my desire to witness some of the bedlam that was sure to come with opening night of this movie in the city, I gladly accepted Monica's invitation.

I left work, headed up to Times Square, and dropped into Viva Pancho for a couple beers before dinner. Mel C. and her friend Kristen stopped by and I had the bartender take our picture.

"Pre-Pre Partying"

Pancho's is the kind of fancy joint that offers Quick Draw and I played a two-dollar seven-spot card. My winnings are pictured below in their entirety. As you can see, I'm upside-down on my wager.

Can anyone other than Ol' Dad recognize the significance of the numbers visible in this picture of my card? Click the photo to enlarge it.

The next stop was Virgil's for some barbeque. If you look up "six on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the highest" in a dictionary, you will see a picture of this place. Without question, it scores just on the good side of "average" in every category except for maybe "value" since it's located in Times Square. It was a nice and fun dinner but these guys can't hold the Dinosaur's jock.

Mary makes some adjustments to the foliage in her mint julep, which, predictably, scored a solid "6".

We walked over to the AMC Empire 25 theater at about 7:45 to claim our pre-ordered tickets and start lining up. There was a crowd, and you could tell that something buzz-worthy was going on, but it wasn't quite the zoo that I expected.


The theater had a show starting every 30 minutes and did a pretty good job of keeping people outside of the theater until shortly before each showing started. As someone who had to use the can at around 8:00, I would argue they did a little bit too good a job. I first talked to a ticket-taker, making the case to let me upstairs to use a restroom since there are none in the lobby level. I promised I wouldn't sneak into the 8:30 show, but still wasn't allowed up. I escalated things to a manager, who at first also refused to budge. I wasn't getting anywhere, but I also wasn't going anywhere. I played the "I'm a paying customer. You can't refuse me access to a bathroom!" card, unsuccessfully. Finally, I broke the situation down to its core and simultaneously asked him to put himself in my shoes: "Look. I badly have to take a piss. What would you do if you were me?" He paused, relented, and said that he would ESCORT me upstairs. I got on the escalator and, luckily, he didn't actually follow.

Afterwards, I re-joined my friends on the line. They were starting to get excited:


But probably not as excited as this guy:

If you look closely, you'll see that there are at least four people in this picture taking a picture of the Bat Mobile. What a bunch of losers. Wait...never mind.

I have somewhat weird and unpredictable taste in movies, I was balls hot and uncomfortable in the theater, and so exhausted that I had to fight to stay awake at times even though the movie is visually and aurally spectacular. I don't know much about the Batman series or stories and I didn't get too engaged with the plot of this movie. I felt the same way watching The Dark Knight as I did watching Lawrence of Arabia or the one Lord of the Rings movie I tried: it's quite a feat of film-making and I understand why people who love it think it's awesome, but I didn't find myself enjoying it and I checked my watch fairly often, wondering how much longer it would be until it was over. Beyond that, I'm leaving the reviewing to the professionals, who are pretty unanimous in their praise.

And on that note, I'm off to fashion a shitty Les Paul (the guitar, not the man) out of cardboard.