The Economics of Film

Seeing movies is a pricey hobby. I mean, it’s not like owning a boat or anything, but those ticket stubs and giant Diet Cokes add up, and in an economy like this one, you can’t just shell out for each and every film that crosses your favorite theater’s threshold. You’ve got to have some kind of a system.

For instance. The latest Harry Potter movie comes out, and I’m willing to pay the full $8.50 to see it at the midnight show rather than waiting for the Saturday afternoon matinee. In fact, I’m even willing to pay the $15 or so it costs to see it in IMAX, if possible. To take it even further, a midnight showing of a film my friends and I are as excited about as we are Harry Potter is an event—we may wind up meeting for dinner beforehand, or at least filling our tankers a time or two at the Movie Tavern. This winds up being a $20-30+ evening.

Then take something like the just-out How Do You Know. I think this looks cute, and I’ll see anything with Paul Rudd’s name on it. It probably won’t warrant a nighttime viewing, however—what am I, made of money? I’ll save it for a matinee on a rainy weekend afternoon.

But then there are movies like The Green Lantern, which I said I’d probably see, but it might get relegated to the dollar theater a couple months after its release. Ryan Reynolds or no, you’ve gotta draw the line somewhere.

My scale goes something like this: IMAX movie event --> Full-price nighttime movie --> Weekend matinee --> $2 theater --> $1 theater --> Talk mom into taking me next time we hang out --> Impulse Redbox rental as I’m walking out of Kroger --> Wait for it to maybe come to Netflix streaming --> Read synopsis on Wikipedia --> Nod and smile when its mentioned in casual conversation.

Or with a movie like Yogi Bear, you go all the way down to the bottom of scale where I laugh derisively at anyone who suggests we go see it.

A girl's gotta have priorities.

COMIC #2!!!!

Here is my second shot at a comic. Click on it to make it bigger. THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!

When The Morning Comes

I’ve never been much for mornings. In the same vein, I’ve never been much for morning shows, either. They’re typically overly-cheery and vapid, the audio equivalent of reading a Cosmo magazine or eating a powdered doughnut. Sugary but insubstantial.

But now that I have a grown-up job, I’ve also gained a grown-up commute. I’m held captive in my car for 40 minutes each way. There’s no means of escape. That’s 80 full minutes every day-- oftentimes more; this is Atlanta, after all—just me, alone with my thoughts and the radio.

At first, I listened to music on my iPod like I always have, but with two 30-45 minute drives a day coupled with our headphone-friendly work environment, I’m honestly all music-ed out. I have an arsenal of podcasts for the long afternoons, but for that drive into work, morning radio is almost unavoidable. Now nearly every morning, I find myself inexplicably tuned into The Bert Show on Q100.

I’ve written before about my questionable taste in music, but you should know that Q100 (“All the hits,” they promise joyfully) is not my radio station of choice. If it’s not Beiber, it’s Usher. If it’s not Usher, it’s that one Pink song where she drinks a lot. I really just don’t dig this stuff. So why do I find myself unable to touch that dial?

Something keeps me coming back. Some voodoo radio witchcraft has made me actively listen to this show. I know these peoples’ names. I am interested in what they have to say. Only I’m not! I can’t be! Why do I keep listening when I know all they’re going to talk about is the best Christmas present to buy for your “hubby” and listeners who have accidentally sexted their bosses and grandmothers? Why can’t I stop listening??

I know why. Stockholm syndrome. I’ve developed an emotional attachment to my captors, and it’s not pretty.

Is there some kind of 12-step program for this?

The TKO's

WHO PICK THE WINNERS???
WE PICK THE WINNERS!!!!
IN YO FACE!!!

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'Tis The Season

The holidays are all about giving. Giving to friends, giving to family, giving to charity. I happen to love giving gifts, and I have it on good authority that I’m an excellent gift-giver.

But I don’t want to talk about giving. I want to talk about getting.

Mikey and Mattie covered their best gifts ever on a podcast episode, so if you want to know all about them, you can go ahead and fire up your iTunes and give that a listen.

In the meantime, what were my Christmases like?

One year I received Moon Shoes, Nickelodeon’s low-tech, plastic-and-rubber-bands attempt at simulating low gravity. These were the loudest, clunkiest contraptions ever created and so of course I spent my Christmas day afternoon galumphing around the cul-de-sac, disturbing the neighbors with the terrible sound of hard plastic on cold concrete. Surely my parents regretted this purchase right away.

Technically the best Christmas present I ever received was probably my DSLR. Two Christmases ago I got a Nikon D60 and a couple of lenses, and while I barely used it for the first year I had it out of sheer terror of breaking it with my clumsy recklessness, I use it a lot more now, and surely will well into the future. Unlike the camcorder I received Christmas of maybe 9th grade, when I was sure I was going to be an award-winning filmmaker, which sits in its case to this day, underneath some forgotten shelf in a dusty closet.

The worst gift ever? Probably pajamas picked out by grandparents. Don’t get me wrong; I love pajamas. But I sleep in t-shirts and cute comfy shorts. I don’t need a matching pair of long-sleeved shirts and pants with cartoon reindeer saying “Ho ho ho!” silk-screened onto the front. If you’re going to go that far, at least go all out for the grown-up footie pajamas. But I think I’ll stick to my standard shorts-and-t-shirts, thanks.

Footie pajamas aside, being a grown-up sucks in a lot of key ways, and I think Christmas is one of them. When you’re a kid, it's the best day ever, because you wake up in the morning to all these toys and then you have all day to play with them. As an adult, your Christmas list consists of clothes, and “necessities” like a new DVD player to replace one that broke, or an external hard drive. After the initial unwrapping, you’ve got the whole day ahead of you to... play with your brand-new Gap winter coat? That doesn't sound quite like the makings of the most wonderful day of the year.

This Christmas? Well, I'm hoping for some awesome boots. I still need a football to complete the sporting good store in my car's trunk. What else will be up to Santa. I'm just hoping it won't be coal. Or grandma pajamas. I've been good; I swear.

Well. I'm trying.

Finals Week

This week is finals week. So thousands of students around campus are like behaving total fucktards in preparation. Last minute cramming abounds, and it's a worthless technique.

This technique is more understandable during finals week, that I will grant. But the students in the class I TA seem to think it's TOTALLY AWESOME ALL THE TIME. I anticipate seeing students pretty much non-stop for 7 hours today, because their exam is tomorrow. Again, finals week is okay for that, in my mind.

But I get very annoyed with "my" students. They have a retarded sense of entitlement, like if they don't understand something, that it's not worth doing and someone should just tell them how to do it without producing a single individual thought on the matter. They don't understand that if the only time you put in work is the night before the test, you won't do well. They don't have any homework (it's a class of 300 people, so homework would be unfeasible), and so they think there's no incentive for actually.... trying to understand the material. I don't get it. I DON'T GET IT. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

Then, when I make them do work during tutoring, they get frustrated with the professor, as if it's somehow his fault they don't understand. Granted, professors should get some blame for students not understanding, but I will side with the professor every time when students (frequently) tell me they don't go to class and don't do the work.

The other thing is that these students have MEMORIES LIKE GOLDFISH. For example, there is a mathematical quantity called expected gain, and these kids have been calculating expected gain since WEEK ONE of this fucking class. I will, without a damn doubt, go to tutoring today and have to re-explain expected gain AGAIN.
Out of all the students I tutor with any frequency (and by "frequency" I mean once a month around exam time), maybe three of them can calculate expected gain without help. Maybe. They have been figuring out this expected gain thing literally all semester long. How is it that you can do something hundreds of times over and not remember how to do it??? The answer: they're not really learning how to do it. It's not a deep concept, by any means, and they can't even be bothered to remember what it is, let alone learning what it is.

Anyway.

I also wanted to talk about football, but I'll be brief. You may remember that I've been making predictions on games the past weeks. Last week I went 13-3. So far this week I am 9-5, YIKES. There are still two games today (Holy cow, Metrodome!), so hopefully I'll hit double digit "wins."

But out of my 5 "losses," two of them are head scratchers in my opinion. (1) What the fuck happened to the Jets? They got humiliated on Monday Night Football, and I really thought they'd come out (at home, mind you!) fired up to bounce back from that. Nope. Instead they played a goddamn miserable game against the Dolphins. (2) Really Seahawks? I know you're not a great team. Hell, you're not really that good of a team. But the 49ers? They have been pretty awful lately, and you guys got trounced! Ugh.

Comic!!!

I have been debating for awhile about doing a comic. I did one about a year ago. I am trying a different style this go around.