Currently, at the very best of times, I will see 1 movie a week at the theatre. But that is because I only go on Tues, and only to matinee showings. Where I live, Tuesdays are the only day when ticket prices are cheaper (half price). Matinees on any other day are the same as evening prices, so Tues is the lone day to pay a lower price.

I only go to matinees because I hate most other moviegoers. I hate it when people in the row behind me have their feet up on the seat backs (they don’t have to be directly behind me, the whole row of seats is connected, remember!). I hate it when people in front of me have their cell phones open with the light from the screens causing a distraction. I hate the people who talk or make noise. I just find the whole experience unpleasant, but I still love movies, so I go when there are as few people as possible!

So I’d have to think long and hard about whether the $50 per month, unlimited movie deal would hold enough value for me. But I actually think that it would.

I work a compressed (4 day) work week, so I could potentially have three days a week to take in a matinee. With an unlimited movie pass in hand, I might take in more than one movie a week and I would very likely see certain movies more than once. With the money already spent, there’s no reason to avoid all days other than Tues. So I’d be going to movies on Wednesdays and Thursdays as well. Maybe even venture out to the odd weekend showing with friends, comfortable in the knowledge that if I actually want to enjoy the movie itself, I’ll just see it at a matinee during the week 🙂

So yeah, I could see myself going for the $50 unlimited pass. I AM a 30 year old, single, half white guy, though :p And if they threw in (upgradeable) popcorn and a drink, like Tom suggested, I’d be in for sure!

I quite enjoyed the 2 hour talk with Tom about Bob Moore 2. I have no idea if anyone would ever want to listen to it, but I’ve always been a fan of hearing writers and artists openly talk about the creative process. I can respect the creators who just want to put their work out there and let the audience find their own meanings and significance. But I am also sometimes frustrated by the creators who flatly refuse to ever discuss what they were thinking while they made their creations.

To me, with any art form, there is still no “right” or “wrong” way to experience and interpret the final product. But I absolutely love to hear what the creator was thinking during the process, and to hear their reactions to the connections and meanings that other people find in their work.

I did “high school English teacher it” as Liz quipped. That’s funny :p But that’s how I happen to read things and I still think it’s a legitimate way to interpret writing. I’ll often get frustrated by books and movies because I’ll see what – to me at least – are some interesting potential symbols or metaphors, but they are very often not fleshed out or explored in any satisfying way, and I’m left feeling that something is lacking on a certain level, or more frequently, that the final work could have been much improved if the creators had paid more attention to the symbolism and metaphors.

There are so many arcs within any story. And I just like to see every arc get it’s full appreciation and be consistent and complete within the work.

I don’t know if any of Tom’s other Beta readers would consider recording a conversation as well, but I, for one, would love to hear them! I just always find it so interesting to hear how other people will read the exact same words as me, but pull entirely different meanings out of it or focus on things that I completely overlooked.

So I just hope that some other folks out there will feel the same way and will be interested to hear what Tom and I had to say about my particular experience with his book 🙂

I own very little if any DRM music because I always thought it made more sense to buy a CD that you can keep forever and from which you can rip digital files with higher quality than what you get through downloading. The only time I ever download music is if the song is a novelty of some kind and I want to hear it impulsively. And I typically download from Amazon because I do not own any Apple products and never became enamored of iTunes.

I am enjoying the Janszen series – thanks for setting it up Tom.