On Thursday, mrsamedi and I attended an advance screening of ‘Paranormal Activity’, the movie being hyped as the new Blair Witch. FearNet, the hype machine, was giving away tickets in scads for the showing of this film; the problems inherent in this type of system are thus–when you give away a supposedly infinite amount of tickets for a small, finite amount of seats, people are going to inevitably be angry when they are turned away at the door after hours of waiting, and when they don’t pay for something, they tend to be less respectful patrons–either they’ll sign up for the showing and not attend because it didn’t cost them anything (which is the reasoning behind the overbooking in the first place) or they’ll run their goddamned mouths the whole movie (Bonus point: Guess what I complain about later!). Were I in charge, I would solve these problems in three ways. First, I’d implement a color-coded wristband system, so that people know they’re getting into the film and don’t have to stand around for hours, and the color coding would get them into the theater at their approximate place in line. Second, I would charge a nominal fee for the tickets and then give people their money back in concession snacks. It would still be a free movie, but people would be less likely to show up for a movie they’re not interested in. Thirdly, I would reserve the right to taser anyone I wanted right in the junk. Right in the motherfucking junk.

So when FearNet had someone post to the Seattle livejournal group a second time about the free tickets, I inquired as to what time one ought to consider getting in line to guarantee admission since with the RSVP system and infinite tickets, there was no way to gauge interest, and I didn’t want to drive up to the University District only to turn around and go home because the line had swelled beyond capacity already OR wait around for hours for no reason. Of course, no one answered my question, and I determined that the longest I’d be willing to stand in front of the theater for was four hours, which put me there at 7:30.

I vastly overestimated the draw, as I was first in line. I sent Brendan and a girl from the Seattle LJ community text messages and told them not to bother coming out for a while, and settled in for the long haul. Shortly after I arrived, another couple showed up, and they were thrilled to be as far up in line as they were–they told me horror stories about other free screenings they’d attended; mainly, there is a group of peoplefreakshows who attend every free screening, regardless of what it’s for, and a couple of them will camp out in line early, and have an entourage of fifty of their closest friends roll up bare minutes before the theater opens. The wristband/taser system would eliminate this sort of thing as well, people!

About an hour passed, and two more people arrived–these girls shared a story about a screening they attended where they were near the front of the line and witnessed a van roll up just before the theater opened and pregnant woman after pregnant woman popped out like it was a Dodge Clown Car Caravan and they ALL got to skip the line by virtue of being knocked up. They were also familiar with the Free Screening Freakshows.

Well, speak of the devil, next in line were the Free Screening Freakshows. One of them, a Tibetan monk lookalike except ensconced in a giant REI coat kept licking his lips as he shuffled his weight from foot to foot. Shortly thereafter, he was joined by Burnout Bleached Hair Dude and Captain OneEye. Captain OneEye lived up to his reputation by immediately pointing at the other Freakshows and screaming “YOU HAVE MAD COW! MAD COW! MAD COW! SWINE FLU! SWINE FLU!” and threatening that he would be watching which cars they got into, so they’d better run as soon as the movie was over, because he would be right behind them. These sentiments were repeated no less than fifty times. I would imagine that he would have to emphasize his threat as I personally had never before considered the idea that someone in a pair of battered Crocs could run me down.

I decided that since they represented LineJumping For Evil, I could counter that with LineJumping for Good, and sent another text to the girl from the Seattle Livejournal community to join us at the front of the line whenever she arrived. When she showed up, she called her boyfriend and told him to join us at the front of the line when he got off of work, and shortly thereafter Brendan arrived. This expansion of the line in front of them was perplexing to the Free Screening Freakshows; they kept shuffling out of the line to the front and shuffled back when someone called them on their shit. A midget-sized member of their posse started digging through the garbage at the theater, looking for a discarded pass, all to the chorus of ‘MAD COW! SWINE FLU! I WILL BE WATCHING WHICH CAR YOU GET INTO!’

Shortly before the movie was supposed to start, the Hype Machine people started allowing a bunch of special douchebags into the theater before the people who had been legitimately waiting in line for hours. It killed me to see girls with purses so large it appeared that they were attempting to run away from home cutting in front of me in line, because you know they’ve each got, like, five or six of their skeletal girlfriends in there along with the inevitable teacup sized dog.

When they finally allowed us inside, I must say that the Hype Machine tried to do right by everyone, by providing each of us with a bag of popcorn large enough to swim inside and a bladder-buster. The group I waited in line with all sat together, and it seemed like we got fantastic seats, which is important in the Neptune as the seats as not really graded and one basketball player can block a full third of the screen. The seats in front of me were actually empty!

…enter the 7 foot tall Neanderthal and his purse-size girlfriend. Of course, Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel made his way down the aisle and parked his fashion-disaster, braces-bedecked, cap-tilted-up-at-an-angle-that-screamed-hi-I’m-mentally-challenged, douchebag-moustache-having ass right in front of me, while his mail order bride sat to his right.

Don’t believe me? Have a picture.

Here he is, Mr. Plaid himself, slouching in front of me, so you can’t even see how much screen he legitimately blocks when he’s sitting upright. Yes, that is a bamboo design embroidered on his plaid shirt. Poorly captured in photograph form is the vibrant purple cap, under which a nest of pube-y hair poked out, along with one ear; the other was tucked up under the cap. Not pictured is the ‘tight as shit’ wannabe pornstar moustache and the birdlike girl who was far too attractive and well-dressed to be with him. That’s right. I can loathe someone for something they can’t help, like being colorblind and tall and sitting in front of me.

Two rows up, a girl dressed in an unflattering outfit that looked like she’d originally intended to attend a cocktail party but got sidetracked by a movie started furiously making out with the guy sitting next to her, blowing raspberry farts into his mouth. I’m not making this up, people.

When the movie finally started playing, I would have appreciated much less talking at the screen and guys trying to be funny by emitting womanish screams at sort-of tense moments. A LOT of the cocksuckers in the theater seemed to know one another, and the one guy who had the balls to tell them to shut up was mocked by a slew of them. When did this become acceptable? Tasers. Tasers straight to the junk.

For all the distractions and irritations (I considered walking pretty early on in the film out of fury), I really, really, really, really liked the movie. I got sucked into it. Because it didn’t fall into a lot of the horror movie stereotypes, because it didn’t have ‘tension’ music, because they showed much less and forced your imagination to work harder, because the setting is the home and the bedroom where generally people feel MOST safe and turned out to be least safe, because the problem resided with the characters and not the home so they couldn’t just leave, it was incredibly effective as a horror film. I didn’t scream (I’m not a screamer) but there were moments when I was genuinely terrified, when I froze in my seat while adrenaline surged through my body, when my eyes went wide as dinner plates.

I felt unsettled on my walk back to the car, and only someone shouting ‘EVERYONE SUCKS’ out their car window snapped me out of my thoughts–when I looked over, the girl shouted at me ‘EXCEPT FOR YOU, GIRLFRIEND, YOU SHAKE THAT THING!’ which keeps up the tradition of a stranger shouting something (usually something flattering, which is extra perplexing) at me every single time I’ve gone to the U-District.

On the drive up, I’d listened to Art Bell’s Ghost to Ghost AM programs, but I had no taste for it on the drive home. The movie had gotten to me; it didn’t help that when I got home, my upstairs neighbor started stomping around–that plus normal settling noises had me quaking in fear. I didn’t end up falling asleep until around six am, and that was on the couch, with the TV on, the dog sleeping on my chest, and all the lights blazing. Honestly, the next few nights were uneasy for me as well. A few images have stuck with me and I have a feeling noises around my home will make me jump for a while to come.

It was SUCH a good movie. Worth every shiver of adrenaline for the three days afterward.