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At the Movies

 Most Wednesdays, I travel to Newark for an 11 AM screening at the Cityplex. The charge is $6.50 and, inevitably, no other fan is in the building.


The ticket-takers seem puzzled and even distressed by my appearance. Once, the vendor had to cancel a prayer group to make way for me. The assumption was that no one would be paying to see Julia Roberts, in "Ticket to Paradise," so the "Paradise" screening room had become a setting for Bible study. I sat, in awkward silence, as the disciples of Christ exited the theater.

I tend to travel to Newark right after therapy -- so I find that I'm "raw" and ready to weep. I cried not just for Julia Roberts, but also for Gerard Butler, in "Plane." It seemed that -- stranded on an island of machete-wielding killers, in Indonesia -- Butler was having a hard, hard day.

This building is not for me. I know it because, at the start of any showing, Shaquille O'Neal appears on the screen, and he says, "Welcome, Newark residents....BRICK CITY residents..." But the things that work for me are often just slightly odd. I'll take a six-dollar "Evil Dead" revival over Maplewood's "Almodovar Festival" -- I'll make that particular choice at any given time, on any given day.

I gotta be me.
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