Harry Potter and the Daunting Plan

We went to see the final installment of Harry Potter last night. Eva had procured tickets through her work to a special showing at 6:30 p.m. (the movie technically opened at midnight). We were advised to be there by 5:30. Really? I thought. An hour before curtain drop? That seemed odd to me, given that we didn't have to worry about the theater selling out--our group had the only tickets.

We actually got there well before 5:30...and we were lucky we did, or we might not have managed to snag two adjacent seats. Any later than, say, 5:45 and it would have been impossible to get two seats in the same row.

I hesitate to even write this...I can hardly believe it...but there were at least sixty people lined up for the MIDNIGHT showings when we got there. Almost seven hours in line. There is nothing on this earth I would line up seven hours for. Nothing at all. Leaf Stanley Cup Final tickets? Screw it, I'll watch it on TV. Sexual favours from (insert fantasy-women here)? The real fantasy is not having to wait seven hours!

I've noticed that nearly everyone I know, upon entering a stadium style theater, makes a beeline up. We don't. We go for the front row. Not the front front row, mind you...the row you first stumble upon when you enter the theater and turn around. Lots and lots of legroom there. You're less conscious of the press of humanity. And sitting close immerses you in the movie.

I managed to get the two seats adjacent to the far aisle in that front row. Even better: Eva had to contend with one person sitting on her lap, and that person was me.

Concessions in movie theaters have gone from obscene to almost inconceivable in price. Two pops and two popcorns with extra butter: $25. (Extra butter because otherwise your popcorn might as well be plain. I don't know about you, but personally I have an aversion to eating little bits of styrofoam.)

Wouldn't have mattered, anyway. The popcorn was actually cold by the time I dug into it, and if that was "extra butter"...then I was actually eating styrofoam. Yum.

I don't know whether it was the styrofoam, the Coke Zero (dear Coke: can you please try and produce a diet cola that doesn't taste like goat-spit?) or the endless wait, but I was kind of soured on the movie before it even started.

Don't get me wrong, it was a fine and fitting spectacle and a worthy end to a great franchise. But the 3D was totally unnecessary...it's only a means to extract more money from us moviegoers. I found the audio mixing to be slightly off: for the first time over the course of eight films I occasionally had trouble deciphering dialogue. And the pacing is...unusual. Frantic action for thirty seconds or a minute, then everything jars to a halt for some drama, then back to the action. It's not the weakest of the set--Half Blood Prince takes that title by a landslide--but nor is it near the top of the heap. At least as far as I'm concerned.

Harry Potter is all grown up. As for me...

Acting on doctor's advice-cum-orders, I have joined a gym for the first time in my life. It's the same gym that Eva belongs to. Put it this way: I'd rather spare myself Dad's heart attacks if I can help it. (He's looking fitter than he has in many years, down a considerable amount of weight and several inches. Besides, he feels great, exercising four or five times a week.

Part of me--the childish part I still struggle to quiet--is skeptical. Exercise has never felt good to me. Exercise is that thing that makes you stiff and sore for hours afterwards. Then you do it again and you're even more stiff and more sore. I'm given to understand that after some unknown number of repetitions, you become less stiff and less sore...but I'm less stiff and less sore sitting here in my chair. Besides, I'm further told that if you don't "feel the burn", you're not doing it right. Well, doing it wrong doesn't HURT! "No pain, no...pain! Duh!"

And then, at the end of your hour, you've done...what, exactly? You haven't gone anywhere or experienced anything other than rapidly increasing stiffness and soreness.

Against all odds, I might enjoy myself and become this guy in a couple of years:

Okay....

I'm going to try, damnit. Whenever I feel my resolve faltering, I'm going to think of my dad coming very near to death in his hospital bed, victim of a leg cramp that suddenly and without warning became a heart-cramp. (And by the way, his son gets leg cramps, too. Entirely too many of them, almost always in the left leg, sometimes high, sometimes low, always excruciating.)

How I wish I could just wave a magic wand. On the other hand, maybe after enough of this rigamarole I might be able to do new things. Like stand in line for sev-- No, not that. Never that.