My scam to sneak into the movies as a senior has backfired. (See post of February 7, 2007.) I had been itching to see the Bill Maher movie, “Religulous”—it sounded right up my alley. There was a huge crowd outside the theatre, waiting to see “Quarantine, ” but no one in line at the box office. The lady there was older than your usual apathetic twenty-something: she could have been selling tickets part time while collecting Social Security. So I decided not to try to get in as a senior. She might look up.
“One for ‘Religulous.’”
“Are you a senior?” she asked, looking at me.
“Yes,” I said, looking back. I was astounded, but if she was going to offer, I would go along with it.
“Do you have I.D.?”
“I don’t have it with me,” I said. I was carrying an enormous bag, the bag I bought to carry “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” in, and she must have thought it odd that there was no I.D. in there. What was in there was two bottles of imported beer and an opener. I shrugged and said I’d pay the full price.
“How old are you?” she persisted.
I was beginning to feel like a bug under a magnifying glass in the sun. “Sixty-four,” I said. (I forgot that the minimum age for old is sixty-two. Maybe this added verisimilitude.)
She looked at me searchingly—I have let my hair grow out, but I still prefer to think of it as brown with platinum highlights—and said, “Next time, you’ll have to show I.D.”
I walked toward the escalator with my $7.50 ticket, wondering if it was worth four dollars to be humiliated, and trying to calculate my year of birth, if she had asked. (1944? Incredible!) I bought popcorn and Whoppers, like a six-year-old, and found a seat in the back row. A young couple came and plopped themselves down right next to me, and after a while I picked up everything—coat, bag, popcorn, beer—and moved down a few seats to have elbow room. You see, I am ageless: child, adolescent, and crank, all rolled into one. Behaviorally speaking, all that is lacking is my true biological age.
“Religulous” had some good things in it, like a shot of Mormon underwear (it has pockets) and an interview with Father Reginald Foster, the famous Latin teacher in Rome and Latin Secretary to the Pope, who was fired by Gregorian University for letting people audit his class without paying. He’s wonderfully irreverent. There was also an interview with an actor who plays Jesus at a Biblical theme park, and apparently has trouble breaking character, and a visit to a service in a truck-stop chapel. But after I had drained my beers and munched my way through the popcorn and masticated the Whoppers (which were gooey instead of crisp; a true crank would have mailed in the unused portion and demanded her money back), I felt myself dozing off. The next thing I knew, the credits were running.
Maybe I was tired. Maybe the film, a documentary, lacked narrative thrust, or was a bit too much like the Stations of the Cross. Or maybe I was just trying to live the lie. Anyway, I hope I didn't snore. And I wonder what I missed.
Showing posts with label age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label age. Show all posts
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Scam
I ran into some friends outside a movie theatre a few months ago, and decided to go in with them to see “Dixie Chicks.” They had already bought tickets, and as I got in line at the box office, one of them—let’s call him Kenny—started hissing at me, “Get a senior, get a senior.” Who, me? Pass for sixty-two? I still get carded when I buy liquor. (That’s a lie.)
Twice now I have been taken for a senior. The first time was at the movies one afternoon, and I decided it was (one) because it was the afternoon, and what was I doing at the movies in the middle of the day unless I was retired? And (two) because I was on my way home from the doctor’s and I was carrying an X-ray of my spine in a huge plastic shopping bag labelled “East River Medical Imaging.” (The doctor’s office made me take the X-ray; they didn’t want it. I didn’t want it either, but just to leave an X-ray of your backbone in a litter box on the street didn’t seem right.) So here I am at the movies, deeply offended, trying to keep a grip on my spinal X-ray while negotiating the purchase of a large popcorn (no butter) through gritted teeth.
The other time I was in my car, buying a round-trip ticket for a ferry crossing. “Just you and the car?” the girl said. I looked around and didn’t notice any passengers, so I said yes. “You a senior?” What? Did she mean a senior in high school? Or possibly in college? No-oh, I said. She shrugged and charged me thirty-two dollars. Much later it occurred to me that maybe she was just trying to save me a few bucks, but still ... I was deeply offended.
That night, at Kenny’s insistence, I bought a senior ticket, for seven dollars, and had money left over for Raisinets. It felt pretty good. As Kenny explained, “They’ve got kids working in the box office. Those kids don’t know. You could be anywhere between thirty and seventy, and they wouldn’t know the difference.” He has a point. Hardly anyone spends a whole career at the Loew’s box office, learning how to size up patrons. It’s probably not even part of their training. And even if one of them did look up and think, “She don’t look like no senior,” isn’t that a better problem than being taken for a senior when you’re not? Why not preempt them by a few (dozen) years?
Kenny’s wife, we’ll call her Joanne, said that sometimes he rumples his hair a little so he’ll look craggy and older. (“As if,” she adds, lovingly.) When I recently went to the movies with G., the glamorous diva who helped me pick out my new winter coat, I thought she’d be delighted with the scam, as she is extremely reluctant to plunk down ten dollars and fifty cents, of the last five hundred euro she has to her name, in order to see a movie. “But I don’t have my I.D.,” she yelped, her eyes bugging out behind her gigantic tortoiseshell glasses.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. Nobody was going to ask us for an I.D., and if they did, so what? You say you don’t have one and add incredulously, “Would I lie about my age in reverse?”
G. hung back at the box office as I bought the tickets. I could see the ingénue and the miser warring it out on her face. But after the movie she had three dollars left to buy a beer at the bar down the street. She chuckled, fondly reliving the scene at the box office: “You’re buying senior tickets and here I am in these glamorous eyeglasses …” She really felt she had gotten away with something.
So this is the scam: the baby boomers get revenge at the cineplex. If we’re going to be written off as geezers anyway, why not get in cheap? When I've revealed this scam to friends, I’ve had them say, “But I don’t think you look like a senior.” I should hope not! Really, that’s not the point. The point is: how old is the kid in the box office?
“Dixie Chicks” sucked, by the way, and though I agree with her politics, that girl has a big mouth. G. and I saw “Pan’s Labyrinth,” and I liked it, although I recommend sitting behind a tall guy so that you can line up his head with the middle of the screen during the scenes of violence and torture. I don’t remember what I saw the day I was carrying my back X-rays ... probably some lame comedy.
The reason this age scam is on my mind, and the reason I’m writing today even though I don’t have to go out and sit in the car, or even stay inside and think about sitting in the car, is that it’s my birthday, my double-nickels birthday. Happy Birthday to me. Popcorn and Raisinets forever!
Twice now I have been taken for a senior. The first time was at the movies one afternoon, and I decided it was (one) because it was the afternoon, and what was I doing at the movies in the middle of the day unless I was retired? And (two) because I was on my way home from the doctor’s and I was carrying an X-ray of my spine in a huge plastic shopping bag labelled “East River Medical Imaging.” (The doctor’s office made me take the X-ray; they didn’t want it. I didn’t want it either, but just to leave an X-ray of your backbone in a litter box on the street didn’t seem right.) So here I am at the movies, deeply offended, trying to keep a grip on my spinal X-ray while negotiating the purchase of a large popcorn (no butter) through gritted teeth.
The other time I was in my car, buying a round-trip ticket for a ferry crossing. “Just you and the car?” the girl said. I looked around and didn’t notice any passengers, so I said yes. “You a senior?” What? Did she mean a senior in high school? Or possibly in college? No-oh, I said. She shrugged and charged me thirty-two dollars. Much later it occurred to me that maybe she was just trying to save me a few bucks, but still ... I was deeply offended.
That night, at Kenny’s insistence, I bought a senior ticket, for seven dollars, and had money left over for Raisinets. It felt pretty good. As Kenny explained, “They’ve got kids working in the box office. Those kids don’t know. You could be anywhere between thirty and seventy, and they wouldn’t know the difference.” He has a point. Hardly anyone spends a whole career at the Loew’s box office, learning how to size up patrons. It’s probably not even part of their training. And even if one of them did look up and think, “She don’t look like no senior,” isn’t that a better problem than being taken for a senior when you’re not? Why not preempt them by a few (dozen) years?
Kenny’s wife, we’ll call her Joanne, said that sometimes he rumples his hair a little so he’ll look craggy and older. (“As if,” she adds, lovingly.) When I recently went to the movies with G., the glamorous diva who helped me pick out my new winter coat, I thought she’d be delighted with the scam, as she is extremely reluctant to plunk down ten dollars and fifty cents, of the last five hundred euro she has to her name, in order to see a movie. “But I don’t have my I.D.,” she yelped, her eyes bugging out behind her gigantic tortoiseshell glasses.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. Nobody was going to ask us for an I.D., and if they did, so what? You say you don’t have one and add incredulously, “Would I lie about my age in reverse?”
G. hung back at the box office as I bought the tickets. I could see the ingénue and the miser warring it out on her face. But after the movie she had three dollars left to buy a beer at the bar down the street. She chuckled, fondly reliving the scene at the box office: “You’re buying senior tickets and here I am in these glamorous eyeglasses …” She really felt she had gotten away with something.
So this is the scam: the baby boomers get revenge at the cineplex. If we’re going to be written off as geezers anyway, why not get in cheap? When I've revealed this scam to friends, I’ve had them say, “But I don’t think you look like a senior.” I should hope not! Really, that’s not the point. The point is: how old is the kid in the box office?
“Dixie Chicks” sucked, by the way, and though I agree with her politics, that girl has a big mouth. G. and I saw “Pan’s Labyrinth,” and I liked it, although I recommend sitting behind a tall guy so that you can line up his head with the middle of the screen during the scenes of violence and torture. I don’t remember what I saw the day I was carrying my back X-rays ... probably some lame comedy.
The reason this age scam is on my mind, and the reason I’m writing today even though I don’t have to go out and sit in the car, or even stay inside and think about sitting in the car, is that it’s my birthday, my double-nickels birthday. Happy Birthday to me. Popcorn and Raisinets forever!
Thursday, February 1, 2007
On Ukuleles
I expected to lose my spot over the weekend, because I had plans to go away, but they were cancelled. So on Saturday night I went to the ukulele cabaret.
Somehow I have fallen in with a group of ukulele enthusiasts. Lucky me. I have been to the first annual New York ukulele festival, to several ukulele cabarets, and twice to the uke drop, a highly risible New Year’s Eve event involving the lowering of a ukulele wrapped in Christmas lights down the façade of a brownstone in Greenwich Village at midnight, while a duo called Sonic Uke play Auld Lang Syne on the fire escape. It beats the hell out of Times Square.
Three things have struck me about people who play the ukulele. One is that they are partial to hats. The uke diva favors an orange baseball cap with “OM” printed on it in summer, and in inclement weather one of those huge hats with a fur brim and fur ear flaps that stick out. Or she tucks her hair under a blue crocheted skullcap. It seems to be part of the uke aesthetic. If you don’t wear a bowler, skimmer, toque, or turban, you will never be a ukulele virtuoso. They also favor leis and feather boas.
The second thing is: the bigger the guy, the tinier the instrument. At first I thought this was an optical illusion, but no. Some ukuleles are bigger than others—there are sopranos and basses and everything in between, even ukuleles shaped like pineapples—but chances are that if a man shops at Big & Tall Casual Male, he has a sopranino.
Third: they write really dirty songs. An act called Hot-Time Harve’s Roller Coaster of Kicks, out of New Jersey, do a number with the line “Lesbians don’t like my songs.” Over the weekend, I heard a nice man named Tom Harker, from Circleville, Ohio, possibly one of the most innocent places in the nation, sing an ode to a sex-education teacher by the name of Bonnie Beaver. This was at the most recent edition of the ukulele cabaret (I went because my friend K., on whose street I park, and the uke diva, my house guest, would be there, and if I sound defensive about falling in with this uke crowd, it is because I feel defensive; remember Arthur Godfrey? Don Ho?). There a gnomelike little lady proudly took the stage, in a geometric-print sweater (“She’s not gay,” murmured a woman near me in the crowd). She introduced her ukulele, saying it was fifty-nine years old. She herself was D’Yan Forest, and she was seventy-two. She launched into her own version of the Maurice Chevalier hit, “Thank Heaven for Senior Sex.” She had also reconstrued some old American favorites, including “Homo, Homo on the Range.” I don’t even want to think about the punch line to her interpretation of “She’ll Be Comin’ Around the Mountain When She Comes.” D’Yan had a snappy between-song patter that amounted to a stand-up act: she joked about having a boob job (“They were calling me One Hung Low”) as if it were routine auto maintenance (“So I had them realigned”).
She was followed by two young men, on ukulele and keyboard, who performed a tender love song that began, “I wanna fuck you.” That’s when I relinquished my barstool, even though I hadn’t quite finished my pint of stout. I should have known that it would be all downhill after the dirty-minded seventy-two-year-old lesbian.
Somehow I have fallen in with a group of ukulele enthusiasts. Lucky me. I have been to the first annual New York ukulele festival, to several ukulele cabarets, and twice to the uke drop, a highly risible New Year’s Eve event involving the lowering of a ukulele wrapped in Christmas lights down the façade of a brownstone in Greenwich Village at midnight, while a duo called Sonic Uke play Auld Lang Syne on the fire escape. It beats the hell out of Times Square.
Three things have struck me about people who play the ukulele. One is that they are partial to hats. The uke diva favors an orange baseball cap with “OM” printed on it in summer, and in inclement weather one of those huge hats with a fur brim and fur ear flaps that stick out. Or she tucks her hair under a blue crocheted skullcap. It seems to be part of the uke aesthetic. If you don’t wear a bowler, skimmer, toque, or turban, you will never be a ukulele virtuoso. They also favor leis and feather boas.
The second thing is: the bigger the guy, the tinier the instrument. At first I thought this was an optical illusion, but no. Some ukuleles are bigger than others—there are sopranos and basses and everything in between, even ukuleles shaped like pineapples—but chances are that if a man shops at Big & Tall Casual Male, he has a sopranino.
Third: they write really dirty songs. An act called Hot-Time Harve’s Roller Coaster of Kicks, out of New Jersey, do a number with the line “Lesbians don’t like my songs.” Over the weekend, I heard a nice man named Tom Harker, from Circleville, Ohio, possibly one of the most innocent places in the nation, sing an ode to a sex-education teacher by the name of Bonnie Beaver. This was at the most recent edition of the ukulele cabaret (I went because my friend K., on whose street I park, and the uke diva, my house guest, would be there, and if I sound defensive about falling in with this uke crowd, it is because I feel defensive; remember Arthur Godfrey? Don Ho?). There a gnomelike little lady proudly took the stage, in a geometric-print sweater (“She’s not gay,” murmured a woman near me in the crowd). She introduced her ukulele, saying it was fifty-nine years old. She herself was D’Yan Forest, and she was seventy-two. She launched into her own version of the Maurice Chevalier hit, “Thank Heaven for Senior Sex.” She had also reconstrued some old American favorites, including “Homo, Homo on the Range.” I don’t even want to think about the punch line to her interpretation of “She’ll Be Comin’ Around the Mountain When She Comes.” D’Yan had a snappy between-song patter that amounted to a stand-up act: she joked about having a boob job (“They were calling me One Hung Low”) as if it were routine auto maintenance (“So I had them realigned”).
She was followed by two young men, on ukulele and keyboard, who performed a tender love song that began, “I wanna fuck you.” That’s when I relinquished my barstool, even though I hadn’t quite finished my pint of stout. I should have known that it would be all downhill after the dirty-minded seventy-two-year-old lesbian.
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