SardonicAsshole

So in continuation of Operation: Fuck All Of You, I’ll Just Go By Myself, I went to the Fathom Events presentation of the This American Life Live behind the scenes, one night only extravaganza at my local participating theater, Century City 15. It was like paying 21 bucks to watch a television show, in a theater, surrounded by like minded strangers. It was alright.

A few things…

I got into This American Life one summer during college while I spent most of my days working in the basement of a museum, helping old people and faculty with their computers. I stumbled onto it after following up on an appearance by Sarah Vowell or David Sedaris on Late Nite with Conan O’Brien. I pretty much went through their entire archive that summer, so whenever pledge time rolls around and they talk about how hard it is to keep the streaming (now podcasts) free, I get especially guilty.

So I knew that This American Life was popular, but for some reason I had envisioned the target audience (myself included) to be a bunch of hermits who wouldn’t show up for these screenings. Even I pulled the trigger on a ticket at the last moment. But as it turns out, 2 of the 3 theaters in my area were sold out, and the theater that I went to was about 70 percent full. The Public Radio crowd is diverse, alive, and well. They also like to applaud at people who cannot hear them, which I find kind of annoying.

I always thought that broadcasting these events at theaters was a brilliant idea. It’s like the next step in Pay Per View, though I don’t feel as ripped off regular Pay Per View since I’m sitting in a theater where I already pay inflated prices to watch movies in. And at 20 bucks a screening, I’m sure it makes more money than the 56th consecutive showing of whatever Lindsey Lohan movie is playing nowadays.

The Westfields in Century City has a really fucked up parking system. Ever since the renovation a few years ago, the parking garage has been nothing but a cluster fuck of angry and confused people. They basically removed the human operated booths at the exits and replaced them with an automated ticket taking slot, much like the ones of which you get your ticket out from. You have the option of paying here or at one of the few payment machines scattered near the escalators that go from the mall into the garage. The problem with these payment machines are that they are located right at the foot of each escalator, so during the rush out of the 8PM movie screenings, the lines at these payment machines get backed up to the foot of the escalator, so if you aren’t careful, you’ll find yourself escalating towards the ass end of an impatient crowd.

What’s worse is if you choose to pay at the exit, since it’s just a slot, you only have the option of paying by credit card. The problem here is that it takes forever for the person in the car to realize that they need to pay extra to get out of the garage, which backs up the line of cars waiting to get out, most of whom have already been escalated into the ass end of an impatient mob, and who then have had people escalated in their asses as they were a part of said impatient mob, and who are now waiting even longer to exit the garage. This has become such a problem that they now have people manning the automated ticket taking machine in order to ensure that transactions take place in a timely manner and that no fist fights break out over people clogging up the exits. This pretty much negates the whole automated idea to begin with.

It doesn’t take an architect or parking system engineer to realize how backwards the system is. It makes me not even want to go there anymore.

This is all.