Why I liked X-Men: The Last Stand

How long has it been, O reader?

Too long.

Nothing much has happened, really. We went to see X-Men. The film was good (as in fun, not as in a work of astonishing genius that will be remembered long after we're all living on lunar colonies in search of unpoluted soil in which to plant our crops. Sigh. Been watching too much news!) But the hilarious portion of our X-Men adventure was that L, after two years in SK, still hasn't learned that you can cross the city in ten minutes. Well, I'll tell you the story.

See, we had a coupon for a free movie at the theater on Pacific Ave. We had it for months, and for months we waited to use it on the X-Men movie. One day, we realized the movie was out and our fair coupon winked from its position on our fridge door and we were gone in a flash. Halfway across the Broadway bridge, L realized he'd forgotten his glasses. Rather than spend the movie interpreting details for L's blurry vision, I declared that we should turn around and get his glasses. But--here's the crux--it was ten minutes to the purported start time of the movie. L was adamant that we would not make it. I, on the other hand, was sure that this miniscule city could be traversed several times in ten minutes. So we went back. L ran up the stairs, fetched his lenses and returned.

He was more than a bit stressed out.

But I assured him that we'd be fine. "There's ten minutes of previews, don't worry!"

Still, he sped down the abandoned downtown streets, whipped into the mall parking lot (no meters were available), took his ticket from the machine, and practically J-turned into a spot. He grabbed the ticket and shoved it into the space between the dash and the vent, the usual place of honor for such things. But this time, the ticket went INTO the vent.

I laughed.


He ripped the vent out of the dash, recovered the ticket and then sprinted toward the theater...all the while muttering about how late we were.

The kids that sell the tickets saw us running, and since we don't do it that often we must have looked especially ridiculous. But we arrived at the ticket booth and asked how far into the movie we were:

"Umm, it's like still in previews," the minimum-wager replied.

And so it was. We sat through ten entire minutes of previews.

Needless to say, I gloated throughout the entire movie. Which is, maybe, just maybe, why I liked it so much.