There's a Time for Turkey ...

In Kevin Murphy's "A Year at the Movies", he recounts his covert mission smuggling an entire Thanksgiving dinner into a movie theater. While I admire his cheekiness after the fact, I am not so sure how I would have felt if I was sitting in the same theater as him that day, with the sounds of a Tom Jones-like bacchanal going on in the front row and smells of roast turkey and canned cranberries wafting about. Especially if I had just eaten just that.

Which brings me to this note on cinematic etiquette: a movie theater is not a food court. When I go into my local cineplex, I expect to smell popcorn, nothing else. No burritos from Baja Bungalow, no marinara from Mama Meloni's, no fish sticks from Fran's Fry-Daddy. If I wanted an international taste sensation, I'd go to Epcot.

What is even worse about this situation is not just that people do this (who then don't even have the decency to hide the food in their purse), but that theater employees allow them to do it.

Note to all ticket takers out there: I know you are either still in high school or never finished it, so you may not have the "life experience" to recognize such situations, but pay heed. If someone walks up to you and has to balance a styrofoam container with ranch dressing oozing out of it on your tiny little ticket taker pedestal in order to dig out their ticket from the pocket of their acid wash jeans, don't let them go any further with that food.

We have all been taught since we were tiny little children that you "cannot bring outside food into a movie theater" and dammit, rules are rules. If I can't bring in an 89¢ Big Gulp and instead have to buy a $4 drink of the same size (upsold for just a quarter more), then Peter and Polly Picnicker can't bring in their pot stickers from the Panda Palace.

That is all.

Links via Amazon.com and Imdb.com.