When the curtain falls to end the show

[austin_dern]

Cinematic Titanic played in Manhattan Saturday night, in the Best Buy theater, formerly the Nokia theater when I went to a similar show last year. The show this time was East Meets Watts, a kung fu movie putting the powers of kung fu against the drug dealers who're bombing Flynn's Arcade from Tron; spoiler: the drug dealers lose.

I took the bus up, naturally, and you might remember I had trouble at the park-and-ride getting my receipt out of the parking lot vending machine. This time around and with more time to figure it out I still had trouble. Other people clearly know how to get the plastic screen open and the receipt out, but I haven't managed the trick.

Since I had a couple hours to spare between getting up there and going to the theater, I went down to 11th street and The Strand bookstore. The advertising slogan of the bookstore is ``18 miles of books'', which would threaten to undo all the hard work I'd put into getting my reading pile under control the last several months. However, I was reasonably responsible and mature and only picked up three books, promising myself that after all I can come back anytime until I move out to Lansing. I felt awkward looking up the rather tall racks as I have this ``don't look like a tourist'' instinct about tilting my head too far upwards while in the city. But I also prowled around the mathematics books when I noticed they had Springer monographs because wouldn't it be the coolest thing in the world to see my book on the shelves here? Yes, it would. They didn't have it.

With all this I got to the theater about a half-hour before the scheduled show start time --- early enough I was the only person in my row, and even at the start time about half the row was still empty, next to me. It eventually filled up and I don't think they were avoiding me.

Trivia: Jack Benny entered vaudeville as a musician; he did not speak or tell a joke until during the First World War he was placed in a maritime revue at the Great Lakes Naval Station. Source: On The Air: The Encyclopedia Of Old-Time Radio, John Dunning.

Currently Reading: The Best Of Frederik Pohl, Frederik Pohl. It's unclear to me who if anyone edited this mid-70s Ballantine Books collection, but I note the advertisement on the last page promises a novelization of Young Frankenstein, which I guess is more novelizable than Spaceballs at least. (Spaceballs: The Novel sadly has them watch the movie on video, instead of reading the novelization, which may earn points for fidelity but not for thinking through the joke.)

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Ah, I recall reading Spaceballs: The Novel. As written by R.L.Stine, the goosebumps guy (and much more, but he'll be known for that now.)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

That's him, all right. It is neat seeing this kind of artifact from before someone contracted fame.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you!