Here we go. I am wiped from spending days and days (and nights) at work removing all traces of pirates from stories, so I may pass out before I finish this, but let's see how far I get.

THURSDAY

mr rampy had class until 9:00, and the theater is just down the street from his school, so I thought I would head over about 8:30 and get us places in line. The movie started at 10:15, so I thought that would be plenty of time.

As I drove up the street, I saw that a line had already gathered, stretching from the box office down the front of the theater all the way to the hotel next door. It had just reached the point where people (sorry, I mean CRAZED STAR WARS FANS) were beginning to block the turn-in to the hotel indoor parking lot and front circle. At which point I had three thoughts in quick succession:

1.) Ha ha, those crazy freaks are barely even stepping back to let my car through to park!

2.) And yet, in mere seconds I will be standing in this line with them.

3.) And it won't have grown much so I'll soon be standing right there helping these freaks block other people from the turn-in.

Which is exactly what happened.

It was an interesting mix of people, from your typical unkempt young male fans, to your clutches of young female high schoolers, to a group of frat boys who had brought several beers outside with them from the hotel bar, to the group of gleeful lightsaber-wielding yuppies behind me. The young high school girls conducted what amounted to an outdoor slumber party, right down to card games, playing with each other's hair, quoting The Princess Bride, and planning to crash some prom party.

Meanwhile the line grew and grew. Rather than leave a space empty so cars could turn in, we continued to stand in the turn-in, grudgingly compressing ourselves backwards and forwards whenever a car (or taxi) wanted to turn in. Then, abhoring a vacuum like all good Star Wars fans should, we would immediately crowd back together once the vehicle had passed. Many of the vehicles were crappy turners who ended up having groups of us (not me, mind you) chanting, "Turn your wheel! Turn your wheel!" at them while the yuppies flagged them in with lightsabers.

Eventually we made it into the theater. It was an absolutely perfect crowd to see the movie with. Lots of hyped-up fanboys with huge emotional investment in the action, and absolutely no kids. When the previews ran, the crowd as one cheered the Matrix preview and, after a moment of dead silence once the preview was over, loudly booed and informed Like Mike that it sucked ass. Which was so true, but how often do people speak aloud in public about their disenchantment with the state of modern cinema?

Once the movie started, the crowd went into gales of laughter at all the love scenes, but other than that all its noises were good ones.

FRIDAY

We took the El all the way to the end and met our friends to see the movie again at this fancy new theater in Evanston. It is so hoity-toity that it has a Wolfgang Puck cafe thing and an arty piano bar whose main decorative element was a wall of Italian language posters for American movies.

Security was tight and you could see that all the ushers had been overtrained for this moment and were on edge that something would go wrong. They sorted us into lines and herded each group to the correct theater. Our guide practically bit our tickets to make sure they were good, and then the usher at the door of the theater ran them under a black light.

Again the theater was jam-packed, but this was an earlier show and there was a larger child-to-adult ratio this time. And honestly an audience of adults (young ones, anyway) is much more fun.

This projection was regular film, not digital (as we had seen on Thursday), and I think you can tell a difference. Crisper picture, cleaner colors, blah blah parrot Roger Ebert.

After the movie was over we went to the fake piano bar for drinks and found that it had attracted a bit of ambience: a guy sitting at one of the tables, pensively reading a book, like the place was a real hangout rather than a manufactured illusion. So that was a little creepy.

THE MOVIE

Things I liked: