Snap, crackle, pop you in the mouth

I need to get this off my chest.  I volunteered for the film festival all last week and very nearly strangled more than one person for violating basic rules of movie-snacking etiquette.  My friends hear this diatribe every time we go to the movies, but it’s worth repeating.  On the interwebs.  WHERE IT MATTERS.  I kind of want to send it out to all the movie theaters in the world, that’s how irritated I am after this week.  And it’s nothing new.  I always hold out hope that the next time I go to the movies, I won’t let it bother me.  But I just end up even more angry than I was the previous time.  I don’t like going to the movies for this very reason, but why should I be cheated out of seeing a great film on the big screen because some people were raised by cavemen?

The popcorn.  OH GOD the popcorn.  If I ever open a movie theater, this will be the first food I banish.  Why?  Here are a few reasons:

The smell.  It’s not pleasant.  Popcorn has one of those aromas that goes from “yum” to “vomit” in about 2.5 seconds.  And burnt popcorn is a category entirely unto itself, so I won’t even go there because we can all agree that burnt popcorn is worse than skunk ass.   I do like popcorn, just not in this setting.  And I don’t like having that stink in my hair for the remainder of the day.  When you’re in a theater for an entire week, everything starts smelling like Jiffy Pop.  My hair, my clothes, my purse, my car.  And this upsets me.

The packaging.  It’s annoying as FUCK.  Whose idea was it to put popcorn (a noisy and obnoxious food to begin with) in noisy crinkly paper bags?  This person should be forced to sit next to the old man that I had to sit next to yesterday for the REST OF HIS LIFE.  Maybe he’ll understand (yes, I’m presuming it was a guy who came up with this idea) why it was the worst packaging idea ever.  Digging, digging, digging in the bag, crinkling, smashing, crunching - I watched one person attempt to roll their bag down so they wouldn’t have to stick their hand all the way into the emptying container.   Guess how long that took in the dark?  Yeah.  The old man sitting next to me yesterday didn’t even try to be quiet, gingerly picking out popcorn to keep the noise to a minimum, oooh no.  I swear to you, he reeled his hand back and forcefully rammed it into the bag over and over again for at least an hour.  It was all I could do not to snatch the damn thing away from him.  And when he was done, instead of just putting the bag on the floor, he spent 10 minutes folding the bag.  OH MY GOD DO YOU WANT ME TO HURT THE ELDERLY?  Because I will.

After he finished eating, he proceeded to slurp his soft drink until there was nothing left.  I thought I was lucky because he finished it pretty fast.  Oh no.  He wasn’t even close to being done.  He took off the top and started chomping the ice, slamming the cup into the holder between mouthfuls.  Oh, before he got down to the ice chewing, he folded the top and tried to put it into the other cup holder along with the straw.  As you can imagine, the plastic top didn’t really “fold up” and kept sproinging out of the cup holder, so he absent-mindedly kept pushing it back down into the holder.  SO annoyed at this point.  I should also point out that the movie we were watching was kind of sad, so I’m emotional and crying and wiping my face with the hem of my dress.  So I’m not in any mood to be dealing with unruly geriatrics. 

So he’s chomped his last chunk of ice and I thought, “finally some peace and quiet!”  And that’s when he launched into the teeth licking.  You know, when you have something in your teeth and you try to use your tongue and the vacuum power of your own mouth to suck it out.  Yeah.  That’s not annoying at all.  He pretty much did that for the rest of the movie. 

I had another screening I was attending right after that, so I thought I’d be clever and move my seats far away from his (he was going to the same screening, too).  As if being made the butt of some big cosmic joke, we managed to sit in between two people who were even more annoying than the old man.  The guy to my right didn’t have popcorn, but he brought a plastic shopping bag FULL of snacks.  He had (and I counted) 4 power/protein type bars and he also had a big bag of Emerald Nuts.  I didn’t think it was possible to out-crinkle the popcorn bag noise, but let me tell you, Emerald Nuts in the resealable bags got the job done… handily.  And he didn’t just eat the power bars like a normal person, he would open the packaging and break up the bar into smaller pieces.   By some small miracle, he dropped the bag of nuts down onto the row in front of us, so he was left with only a few power bars for the remainder of the film.  Who eats this much?  The movie was barely two hours long, it’s not like he was going to starve.

On the other side of my friend we had the girl who got Cafe Express take out.  Are you KIDDING me?  Take out, in the movie theater???  I have no idea what the hell she ordered, but I’m pretty sure it was a giant vat of mustard covered in sauteed onions.  It was AWFUL.  The smell lingered for the entirety of the film.  I couldn’t decide who I wanted to smack more, but both of these people committed unforgivable offenses in my mind. 

So in summation:  all movie theater foods should be soft (Milk Duds, hello?), and packaged in dish towels and gauze. 

Let’s not even talk about Twizzlers.  Because I might LOSE MY MIND.

~ by Clare on 04.28.08..