Think back to the last event that you went to, matter of fact anything that required tickets to attend - Dog and Pony Show, Phantom of the Opera tickets, Zeppelin out of Germany. Now how did you get the tickets? You just got them, right? There wasn't a lot of thought involved.. little presto change-o and your Visa plucked them out of thin Internet.
There wasn't a lot of thought involved because it didn't require much. You got the tickets and everything fell into place. There are 3 types of people in the world when it comes to events.
- Person #1 will learn of an event, madly try and find someone to go with them and then purchase the required number of stubs.
- Person B will just buy some tickets and sweat the details closer to the event.
- Person iii will just buy a ticket for themselves and let others know who can get their own tickets.
You can break these people down however you want to but the easiest way to pigeonhole them would be to call them the Realist, the Optimist and the Pessimist. Depending on the choice of ticket you may fall into any one of these categories - a movie you might want to see could be a pessimist affair. Concert? Optimist. Kidney transplant? Realist.
Personally, id like to hope to be a Optimist which is the more expensive of the 3. Often resulting in the spare ticket syndrome which leads to the 4th class of people which acquire tickets - opportunists. Not all opportunities are unwelcome, matter of fact most of them are very welcome (like you'd turn down an evening with an attractive, interesting Blonde) as the choices the most basic of all use it or lose it - no refund available.
Cinema and movie purchasing was always the easiest choice of the 3 (or 4, or that little roman iv thing). Get your ticket, your friends get theirs, you purchase a terribly overpriced mini-spa of coca-cola with optional popcorn ammo, grab available seats together which have the least amount of stickiness to the floor and no pineapple heads to block the screen. While of course most central to screen and surround sound Utopia. But a blight has descended down onto our fair burg much like Mecha-Godzilla onto Tokyo complete with a lot of dazzle to spice up the levels of suck.
I am referring to allocated cinema seating. Not allocated in the posh gold class cinemas with the drinks waiter and the floor rests, but allocated in the non-gold cattle class cinema. When you purchase your ticket you have the (mandatory) option to pick your seats for where you would like to sit - in the stadium where every seat is the best seat in the house except those too close, too far, too much to the sides and not enough to the middle.
Gone are the days of rocking up to a movie 5 minutes in and having to suffer the outrageous fortune of a stiff neck, nay i say. With mere minutes of starting time you can have the best seat in the house providing no one else has picked it ending years of movie snobbery as camping for seats and waiting in long lines goes the way of the Dodo. No more small talk in the line, no more "Oh you like Diesel Sweeties? I like Diesel Sweeties too!"
Does this spell the end of social interaction with no time wasted in the cinema foyer? Are we condemned to SMS/IM/Email as our primary communication media never to talk directly to another human being unless trapped in a lift with half of the Swedish women's volleyball team? Are we condemning ourselves to Self & IM-5s? Whats next, ticket stubs like a deli for using the pool table at the local? Now ready pagers for restaurant toilet stalls?
Modern inconvenience is one of the social lubricants of the current electronic age. That and Guitar Hero/Rock Band with a full bottle of something tasty. Say nay to absolutely everything being handed on a silver platter and welcome those things that makes you go outside into the world. Its better than being discovered 2 months from now after falling in your apartment partially digested by your legion of cats by a neighbour investigating a weird smell.
Andy. Man in search of the perfect spot to watch the world go by... which does table service.
