The cinetrix got in touch with her inner cinemaniac last night, and it wasn't pretty.
See, every Monday night at 7 p.m. [cinetrix stalkers, take note], I attend a screening at the Harvard Film Archive, a scholarly joint without a concession stand. And every Monday night, the film starts about four or five minutes late. And every Monday night, at about ten past, movie already briskly unspooling at its 24 frames per second, this Julia Child-height Cambridge senior with her headband and her cane noisily arrives at the screening room, looking for a seat, preferrably aisle, to accommodate her and her cane. The first time it happened, I griped to the Fesser about how disruptive it was, who gently talked me down, as is his wont, and suggested perhaps that whatever causes her to use a cane might slow up her trip to the archive some.
After last night, I would suspect that whatever causes her to use a cane has also affected her ability to tell time. See, last night, she and a fellow biddy came in at ten past [mirabile dictu] and wanted to clamber over me [I was on the aisle] to sit in my row. I was pretty pissed off, and, well, I kinda yelled [hissed yelled, but still] at the old ladies about how inconvenient and inconsiderate it all was, and how they always did this. To which I got some Mmmph mmmph fluffed up feather-type comments in reply. I was livid.
Here's the thing, old people. Your advanced age does not give you a bye. If anything, you are supposed to lead by example precisely because you are old enough to remember the rough and tumble world of the nickelodeon. If you are consistently late and inconsiderate, you will hear about it from me. Especially if you fuck with my row.
Of course, I say this, but coward that I am, I left during the credits, before the lights came up. Well, I had to pee. Also, I was a little afraid about just who might end up on the business end of that cane if I tarried.
[So, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the rest of the play? The movie, Memories of Underdevelopment, was pretty good. It comfortably inhabited the middle ground in the trajectory of films about oblivious and inert rich people overtaken by historical upheaval--between, say, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis on the one end, and Il Conformista on the other. Which makes sense, given director Gutiérrez Alea's training in Rome.]
