Zachary Backes - CP 7

6/17/12

So me and Faisal had been saying we were going to go to a movie for awhile now but both of us were so busy the last couple weeks we still hadn't gotten the chance. Today we both had the night off so we figured we would meet and go catch a quick flick and then some dinner. However, when we get to the theater we both realize that neither of us has any idea what the movies are that were out.

I had just seen the Avengers with Talal the day before and he had seen it with his friend's last week. And outside of that we had no clue what was playing. We tried to get an idea of the films based off the rotating poster frames...I'm from this country and those things, without any context, are wholly uninformative. So after choosing something that looked good, we settled on "The Dictator". I asked Faisal to see what times it was playing, the request was off-handed since my roommate just called asking a question. He walked off like he understood me and I ignorantly assumed he could decipher the craziness that is the movie schedule board. This is one of those culturally, even regionally, specific. Like subway or bus transfers or menus at restaurants, you need some previouse information (schema) to understand these things. I found him staring blankly up at the board wiht a look of utter confusing. I waited until he finally asked me "so...all of those are...movies...yes?" I felt like an idiot. I assumed he could make out the random, half hyphenated/abbreviated movie titles and times.

Sometimes I forget just how much falls through those cultural gaps. I asked him how he had navigated the movies the last time he had come this theater . he told me that he had looked everything up on his phone which translates most of the information for him. Imagine if your phone was your only way to communicate, ok...I guesds thats not too far of a stretch for some of us. But imagine how much closer we would hold that little device if it was both your translator and your only means of making sense of the world around you.

So we finally get up to the kiosk and discover that the movie we want to see is no longer playing. Since we have no idea what anything else is i suggested we hit up the "Cheap Movies" or Movies 8, a few blocks over. But as Faisal said "Food should happen first" of which i agreed. Apparently, throughout his vast exploration of the American fast food industry, Faisal had never experienced Wataburger, a travesty. If you have not had your bowels ransacked by the glory that is a wataburger, then you have truly not experienced the extent of the American pallet. So I introduced them.

We finally settled into the movie, a crazy jason statham movie about how awesome he is at killing other people. Neither of us liked it all that much. It wasnt until after the movie that we actually started asking what tyoes of movies we liked and turns out...we both hate really violent movies. go figure. so we decided to try again ina few days and see if we couldn't find something we both like. he said he is a romance fan, so I'm going to try and start research current movies and find something we can both enjoy.