Diego Basch

I’m in bed. My laptop is next to me, on the blanket. I have a bookcase on the other side of the room. I see the book “A mathematician reads the newspaper” on a shelf. I can’t see the author’s name since there are other objects in the way. I walk up to the bookcase and pick up the book. Instead, I look it up on Google. The author is John Allen Paulos.

That is what I call convenience (to put it elegantly). Or, as the slogan for the Yellow Pages used to say, letting your fingers do the walking.

On Friday I went to see The Matrix Reloaded at the Sony Metreon complex in San Francisco. I’m not going to talk about the movie but about an incident that took place that evening at the theatre. If you are familiar with the Matrix, you will see the irony.

My girlfriend and I met with a few friends at the food court inside the complex about an hour before the movie. We were a little late and they were almost done eating so we decided to pick up some food for the movie and go stand (sit, actually) in line so we could get some half-decent seats. After about 30 minutes the line started to move. When we got to the guy who cuts the tickets, he noticed my girlfriend’s burrito and told her that no OUTSIDE food was allowed in the theatre so she had to eat the burrito right there or discard it.

“What do you mean, OUTSIDE food? We bought this at the Metreon!”
“I’m sorry, the Metreon and Loews theatres are separate companies. Please drop the burrito in the trash.”

At this point I panicked since the rest of the line was moving and our chances or sitting in the front row were increasing by the second. I took the burrito and started walking towards the theatre. Behind my, ticket-cutter-man screamed “UNAUTHORIZED FOOD!” and I noticed a bouncer-sized individual with a security t-shirt who started following me as I walked. I started getting nervous and pretended to ignore the guy. We entered the theatre and sat down. The security guy came up to me and explained the situation to in a civilized way. As of very recently (a couple of weeks?), the building and the theatres are owned by two separate companies. Food from downstairs used to be ok, but now all food bought before having your tickets cut is considered outside food and not allowed. This rule is obviously enforced when possible in order to maximize profits (he did not say this, of course). This time he let it go, but I should know better for the next time.

I was quite upset for a while after that, but it didn’t completely ruin my evening. The movie was slightly disappointing but enjoyable. Along the lines of corporate greed, artistic considerations in the making of the movie were clearly less important than maximizing profits. A duller plot line than the first one, lots of explosions, dance and action sequences that happen for no good reason but fun to watch nonetheless.

By the way, if you go to the men’s restrooms at the Metreon, you may notice the absence of mirrors. I asked about the reason for this. I was told that when the Metreon opened four years ago, the mirrors were spray-painted by vandals so the management decided to remove them forever.

I saw this at a train station in Germany: