So I go into town today to attend this relatively early, super-embargoed screening of an upcoming picture, in a relatively swank corporate room. The joint doesn’t even seat fifty, I think, and yet everyone was asked to surrender their cel phones beforehand. It’s insulting, sure, but I assume it’s happening on account of something some asshole in a situation similar to my own did, so why take it personally. I do wonder what the people who work for the security firm that took care of checking the phones. “So what was on your security detail today, honey?” “Oh, I checked cel phones for a screening of [redacted].” “Whew. Sounds dangerous.” Etc.
So, cel-phone-less, I go into the screening room, thinking, well, I’m not gonna be able to tweet now, thank you very much, so I guess I’ll finish the Times’ crossword. Except the lights in the room are really dim and I’m working from the photocopied Times “digest” I picked up at my gym, the type of which is a couple point sizes smaller than what you get in the actual paper, and, well, you get the idea. So I’m thinking, well, wonder if I’ve got time to get in a couple pages of Bleak House, and if the type is big enough. Except there’s this guy standing several rows behind me, and he’s talking, really loud, in this very shrill voice, sounding like one of Martin Short’s feyer, brasher characters from the SCTV days. He’s talking to these two somewhat younger people about…how rude everybody is these days, how he was at the opera the other night, and there was this person in front of him who was texting through the whole thing, and how at the theater another other night there was this other person in front of him with an i‑something, and you know, it has that panel that’s as bright as a flashlight, and he asked the person in front of him when he would be through with using it, and he was so rude he just said he would stop using it when he was good and ready, and how there’s just nothing you can do about it because people are just so…
And I’m thinking, wow, how long am I gonna have to listen to this whining I’m-not-even-going-to-try-to-think-of-the-word, really, and then I remember I don’t have to; I may not have my phone, but I still have my iPod—with the panel as bright as a flashlight!—and it has a lot of loud tunes on it, so, yes, thank you Steve Jobs, Diamond Dogs it is, at least until the lights start to dim and this nimrod goes and sits down and hopefully shuts up. And as I try, once again, to suss out just what it is that Bowie’s singing right before the phrase “handful of ‘ludes” (yeah, I know I could look it up, but that’s cheating!), I think of all the trite complaints of the would-be social scientists who bemoan how electronics and media cut us off from genuine personal interaction and the “real” world, and how, conversely, sometimes genuine personal interaction or whatever is in fact fully worth avoiding. I know that given the choice between having to sit through, say, a Jeffrey Lyons soliloquy on how these kids today know the names of all the rap people but couldn’t tell you who Humphrey Bogart was, and zoning out to “The Chant of the Ever-Circling Skelatal Family,” I’ll take the latter every time. (And, for the record, I was once indirectly subjected to the former, and it was an object lesson in professional graciousness to watch Lyons’ actual “conversational” target—a person who has a very high level job of the sort I’ll never land for a reason not unrelated to the here-pertinent quality—react with perfect equanimity and diffidence to the very silly man’s silly rantings.)
TRUE GRIT. I’m sorry, I don’t expect you to confirm or deny that, and I know you won’t anyway, regardless of what I expect, but that’s what we’re all thinking out here.
@ Bill: I WISH. No, I will absolutely deny it, because it wasn’t the film I saw. By “relatively early” I meant, well, relatively. Like a little bit before most print reviewers. It’s a November release. I’ll tell you when it comes out. Wasn’t bad.
Ah, well, okay. Jealousy fading…
So anyway, that guy behind you. What a prick.
I cheated and looked it up: “you got your cue line and a handful of ‘ludes,” say the internet lyrics sites. I always thought it was “your got your fuel line” etc., which had a nice automotive ring to it.
I’ve been noticing lately in theaters, in the semi-darkness before the movie comes on, how the light from people’s cell phones can make them look quite beautiful. Almost a Rembrandt effect.
After twenty years of listening to Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, I have just been informed that the first line on the intro to Burn it Down is “We went down to Montreux…” But I have never been a Deep Purple fan anyway, so, like, who cares.
Still, my gf’s friend who thought that the lyric of I Will Survive started with “First I saw your face, I was petrified…”, she wins this game every time.
@ Paul: Yeah, I had been leaning toward “fuel line” myself. Makes about as much sense as “cue line.” Or “queue line.” Maybe even more sense. The image of a whole HANDFUL of ‘ludes remains scary-attractive/repellent; good thing for all involved that ‘ludes don’t even really EXIST anymore. Although they might have worked even better for some cases than an iPod and strong ear buds…
My 31-year-old wife was once the recipient of a drunken soliloquy from a 48-year-old friend about how we missed the glory days of Quaaludes, and how kids our age just don’t know the joys… We countered that she had never gotten to do ecstasy at a club, so we were even.
Just wanted to say how much I love these anecdotal posts. You’re so good at capturing these little slices of funny/strange/offbeat, and I love the way they don’t so much bump up against your cinephilic review posts, as extend that style into the real world. Good, good stuff.
I worked in a record store (quaint phrase) for several years back in the day, and my favorite misheard lyric came courtesy of the woman who wanted to know if we carried that song “Cheese Tray.” I drew a blank until she sang a snippet for me. What she had in mind was the J. Geils Band’s “Freeze Frame.”
Hey, why HASN’T there ever been a rock ’n’ roll song about a cheese tray anyway?
True story. I was at a morning press screening for 127 HOURS. Halfway through the movie, a lady representing the studio came up to where I was sitting and asked for my name and who I wrote for. When I told her I was a freelancer, she asked for which outlets I wrote for. She then told me to make sure I talked to her afterwards because the studio likes to get a comment from the attending press. This took me out of the movie for 2–3 minutes. AND IT WAS DURING A CRUCIAL CHARACTER MOMENT. UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE.
@Glenn: Was it a movie bucking for Oscrs or just a commercial release? I’m guessing it was either the new Tony Scott or Ed Zwick. Personally, I love me some Tony (“Make It Glow”) Scott.
Good God. It’s as if you people actively WANT ME TO BREAK EMBARGO or something.
Sorry. Won’t do it. Call it my “print mentality.” I’ll tell ya when I tell ya.
@ jbryant: That “Cheese Tray” story is priceless. But the misheard lyric story I will never get over is the one of a friend’s sister who believed that the last line of the first verse of the Dave Clark Five’s “Catch Us If You Can” was “Wee-wee all over my mind.” I still sing along to it that way.
I thought for years that the opening line of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” was “Is this real life, or is this just Battersea?” and Kenny Rogers’ “Lucille” was misheard by me as “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille / Four hundred children and a crop that won’t yield.” No wonder she left him.
I was amazed and amused to discover that, in recent years, a specific word – “mondegreen” – has been coined to describe the mishearing/misremembering of a text, such as song lyrics.
“I have a little stil-o-etto on a sideboard for meeeeee.…!”
*Cue Wayne’s World headbanging moment*
Oh, and the film MUST have been ‘Marmaduke 2: Marmaduke Harder/With A Vengeance’
Getting song lyrics is a fascinating subject that has both a Swedish web site and a book dedicated to it. Not sure how easy this site http://www.saltmannen.se/ is to navigate for non Swedish speakers, but two examples are the lyric “It’s too late to apologize. It’s to late.” Becoming “It’s Tor-Leif, the poltergeist. It’s Tor-Leif.” and “Got a license to kill” becoming “Got a wife and two kids”.
I meant to say “Getting song lyrics wrong”.
Funny I always thought the opening to “Hungry Heart” was “Got a license kill…”
Well, this may be the same way Reagan misundestood “Born in the U. S. A. – or mybe not.
My drama teacher in high school thought it was “I want to rock n’ roll all night, and part of every day.” A friend once full-on belted “I ain’t no Harlem black girl” when she meant “ain’t no holla-back girl.”
But the one that still makes me laugh is when “Draggin’ the Line” by Tommy James and the Shondells came on and my mom, confident as ever, sang “Hangin’ around…” when it came time for the chorus.
Back in college, we used to have drawn-out discussions about whether or not the line went “Wrapped up like a douche another runner in the night.” Ah, good times.
It really is a great idea.I will have a trial of this idea as soon as I got the pattern.Thank you for constantly posting of so many useful tips.They are such a great help to me.Thank you very much!