I used to go to the theater a lot. When I was growing up, I never got to go to the movies. My folks always said it was too expensive, but mostly I think they just hated the experience.

I successfully begged my Dad to take me to two movies growing up. One was The Power Rangers movie in 1995 'cause that was all the fuckin' rage. The other was the special edition of Star Wars: A New Hope in 1997 when I first started my Star Wars fandom, which would last all the way until The Rise of Skywalker. May it rest in peace.

In high school I started going to the movies with my girlfriend, my Dad being a believer in the occasional movie date. I saw all three Lord of the Rings movies with her, as well as Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Star Wars prequels of course.

OSU it turns out has a pretty good independent movie theater in its vicinity that I ended up spending a lot of time at when a very dear friend of mine started her movie addiction journey around 2017. At some points I was there almost every day of the week watching something new, or maybe rewatching something. I think I saw IT: Chapter One three times there. I saw Chapter Two once. Let's leave it at that.

They used to do this amazing event once a quarter or so called the Sci-Fi Sleepover. They'd start showing old scifi horror movies late at night and just go all the way to morning. I did it twice and both times were amazing physically miserable experiences.

I loved going to the theater so much that I'd often just go by myself, especially when nobody else had any interest in a dumb superhero flick I wanted to judge.

My friends and I managed to see Cats and Sonic the Hedgehog before the Covid Lockdowns. It was a fairly lackluster final hurrah, I would say. When things opened up again, I started coming back to the theater with my aforementioned dear friend starting with the Green Knight, which I was very drunk for.

Actually, for a while I couldn't be in the theater sober. I mean, I couldn't be many places sober but I was especially drunk often at the theater.

I started going by myself again recently. My latest foray was Predator: Badlands, which I had low expectations of but was very happy with, it being very similar to the Dark Horse comics I grew up with.

I do so miss my theater days, but a lot has changed. I check the Tuesday all-day matinee lineup every week, though right about now there isn't much that grabs my attention.

Most of my friends aren't into the big group excursions to the movies anymore. Though we do manage most of us for the Sonic the Hedgehog movies for some reason. I couldn't stop laughing when they previewed a movie about the difficulties of raising an autistic child before Sonic 3.

These days it often feels like a lot of the pomp and circumstance is missing from going out to the movies. Though I've heard that complaint before when was growing up. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Still, I am looking forward to seeing some movies in the theater this year. Hoping I can get a decent mix of friends and alone time at a few.

A small single screen theater not too far from my house is doing an all night horror movie marathon at the end of this month. My dear friend isn't up for all-nighters at her age and circumstances. I guess we're not undergrads anymore, but all the exercise I've given myself recently has made it feel like I can basically be up for anything. Someone at my job asked me if I still partied hard and I replied that I partied medium.

I guess what I miss is not having anything to worry about the next day. For the most part I don't have too much, just my low effort job and my Mom and whatever random hobby I've got going on at any given time. In a lot of ways, I've been able to continue tooling around long after most folks have had to lock in, as the kids are saying these days.

I like to think I'm pretty good at time management though. Routines get a bad rap among the attention deficit crowd but they really are imperative for sustaining my relatively irresponsible lifestyle. Novelty requires a lot of work, I think.

Well I'm not sure where I was going with this. Just missing the theater today, I guess. Hope I can find some time to disconnect, soon.