I saw Star Wars Episode III at 12:01 this morning, and although I’m not going to say anything about the movie now, I will say that my theater experience (having nothing to do with the movie) left a lot to be desired. First of all, there was a lack of nerds. I mean, people dressed up in Star Wars costumes, with plastic light sabers and such, and all that which would make seeing Star Wars at the first publically available time on opening night (or should I say opening morning) the most fun time to see the movie. There weren’t really any interesting people in line at all, it seemed. Perhaps, having often been in Hollywood or Westwood or populous places where such movies are a big deal among fans, I am spoiled in this regard, so nevermind. Because I saw the movie in El Monte. Why? Some of my friends happened to be seeing it there and invited me along, so I thought, sure, I’ll still live if I only get a few hours of sleep tonight. That’s the first-of-all. The second-of-all is that I was sitting to the left of a very large man, and I’m accustomed to booting people off the armrests so I can have them (“all your armrest are belong to us”), but this person overflowed onto the armrest so that it was his body which was taking it up, not his arm. And the seats were very narrow. The movie began 15 minutes late because some kid was raffling off a couple movie posters and didn’t start doing so until the time the movie was scheduled to begin. He didn’t have a microphone so it was hard for anyone to hear him, and he insisted on reading all 16 digits on each raffle ticket rather than just the last four and waiting while people climbed over seats to have their tickets checked under the light emitted from his cell phone, since he had no other light, then sent back to their seats because the numbers didn’t quite match. I’m not sure who arranged this. Actually it was part of a charity club of some sort, because this kid along with some others went down the line before the movie collecting money. I wanted to donate a dollar, like they were asking for, but I didn’t have a bill, so I fished out four quarters from my wallet. I gave one of the kids my quarters, and evidently he thought I must have been asking for change, because he gave me a dollar bill back. I said no, I don’t want change, I’m just giving you a dollar, so I gave the dollar bill back to him. And then he gave the quarters back to me, and I was thinking, maybe you just don’t want quaters, but he had taken the quarters from me the first time, so I assumed he could take quarters and tried giving them back to him, but he wasn’t paying attention anymore. Disorganized people. I kept my quarters. So the movie started 15 minutes late, and the show progressed without incident, but then, the second the movie ended and the main theme song starter to play and the credits started, literally that second, someone shut off the projector and turned on the lights in the theater. I know a lot of people don’t stay for the credits, and I was thinking about not staying this time because it was late and I’ll probably see the movie again with another group of friends, but it’s the principle of the thing. The theater shows the credits. If you walk out, you walk out with the music playing and the flicker of the screen at your back lighting the way. Maybe the projectionist was upset because the movie was a late showing and had started even later because of the antics of the raffle kid. I don’t know, but that’s no excuse, because no matter how many people walk out, you still show the credits. That’s how movie theaters work and that’s the expectation you have when you buy tickets. My friend and I went up and knocked on the projection room door and there was no answer (scared?), but thrashing the projection kid or whatever we were going to do wouldn’t have accomplished anything anyway, because the pervasive lack of professionalism had already left a bad taste in our mouths. Actually I’m personally placing a black mark in my black book next to the City of El Monte due to all of these issues, but particularly its dearth of nerds or otherwise interesting people. El Monte is a suburb east of Los Angeles. (Urban sprawl. Blegh.)