Movie: Superbad

Sis and A and I saw SUPERBAD this Sunday, which was really the whole point of the originally planned, hyped-up trip to Great Adventure anyhow, to go do the water slides and say, "I can't wait till we see Superbad!" as we splash around in the water and then when the park closes, go see the movie. You know what I mean?

Every summer we go to a water park and then see a movie that begins with the word SUPER. That's what we do. It's kind of our thing. You can borrow it if you want. But we didn't make it to the park this summer. Why? Because of threatening rainstorms that would have left us cold and miserable on our big yellow rafts. And actually, we would have been wet too, which, now I realize, probably wouldn't have been the worst thing to happen at a water park.

But.

We went to the movie theater in Union Square and I used one of those computer operated machines where you stick your credit card into a slot and push a lot of buttons to get your movie ticket to pop out of a different slot. I find those machines confusing and condescending. It asked me if I would like to process my request in English or Spanish or Other and while I enjoy speaking Other from time to time I was tempted to select Spanish. But the last time I did that it made fun of my accent. What accent? I can roll my R's better than a sushi chef, thank you very much.

Sis said she's been using those machines forever. But I was like, What? Huh? Because I have not. I enjoy human interaction during the ticket purchasing process of my theatrical outings (and for your information, movie in Spanish is PELICULA). I enjoy the question 'n answer session that we engage in, the attendant and I, on either side of the glass. So close yet so far apart. I've grown accustomed to that intimate moment when I slide my credit card in-- (with a subtle but not so subtle twist of the wrist) --and under the half-circle open space on the bottom of the glass plate, into the hands of the eager but not so eager movie ticket attendant.

Where was I?

The process of finding seats in the hottest movie in town. Right. We were there early so we got the coveted recliners in exactly the best location. Then Sis had to go outside and wait for a friend and A had to go buy a tub of popcorn (because we like our popcorn consumption to resemble that of our current presidential race: arriving way too early, and yellow). So that left me alone, guarding, for my life, the three seats that we had coveted (see the beginning of this paragraph for a recap on how we got the seats).

I witnessed an incredible display of human emotion, as people, young and old, hefty and slim, rich and poor, ambitious and lackadaisical, asked me if the seats were taken. I found it incredibly difficult and challenging to answer them because each person asked the question differently and with such confidence that I felt like an idiot for not inherently understanding their facial expressions and hand gestures. Let me explain in simpler terms.

Like, one guy would spot the empty seats, look at me, nod his head quickly, point, then raise his eyebrows with a victorious smile. So I would say, "No." Then he would smile and start to leap towards them. And I would say, "No, no." And he would say, mid leap, "Those aren't free?" And I would say, "No." But I was very confused. And he would say, "No, they're free or yes, they're taken?" I nodded, "No, they are." "They are?" "They aren't."

Then another guy would come by and say, "Seats?" But this time I learned from my mistakes, and I would say, "Yes." And he would say, "Cool!" and run towards them. And I would say, "No! No!" and block them, throwing my limbs across the seats.

And then the guy would go like this. He would shoot his fists up into the air and let out this gush of wind from his mouth that sounded like "Ohhhhuughfff!" like I had just told him Yankee stadium was being torn down, or something horrible like that. I felt bad.

Finally the girls were all back, and the movie started. And let me tell you, it was HIGH LEAR EE! US.

Michael Cera is funnier than a monkey's uncle. Any movie that bases most of its jokes around penises and can still make all the females in the audience go, awwwwww, through most of it, is pure genius. We laughed ourselves into oblivion and I would definitely give it one thumb up, because if I showed you my other thumb you would be like, "What? Huh? What's up with your thumb? That's weird looking." But I'm older now, so I'm totally OK with it.