Date Night

In our former life, ie before we moved to Tinytown, it was easy, common even, for David and me to have a date night. Hire a babysitter - or better yet drop the kids at Gaga's house - for a couple of hours, have dinner at one of a zillion restaurants, go see one of the 20 or so different movies being shown in our town, and that was that.

It's a little more trouble here.

David's parents came for Thanksgiving, so we decided to take advantage of having sitters in the house last night and have ourselves a bona fide dinner and a movie date.

Except the only thing showing in our town right now is Astroboy.

The simple and obvious solution in my book would be to go see New Moon since it was showing in a town about 20 minutes from here. Unfortunately, my non-teenage-vampire-loving husband disagreed, so we set off for the hour drive to Olean to see The Blind Side, which we both actually wanted to see anyway.

Knowing the earlier show had sold out, we decided to swing by the theater and buy our tickets on the way to dinner. Too late. Already sold out.

Since New Moon was still not an option David would consider, we had to settle on a different movie. Our options? 2012, Planet 51, Old Dogs, and something about a Fantastic Fox. We decided the lesser of four evils was 2012.

Sadly, it started a half-hour earlier than Blind Side, so we no longer had time to go to dinner. But really, who wants an oriental chicken salad and a martini from Applebee's when you can have popcorn and coke?

Since I'm such a great person, I will save you the eight or ten bucks you may have spent so see 2012 if you found yourself in a similar situation. Here's the plot synopsis.

Begin the film with a young scientist in some obscure place discovering a geologic abnormality that will lead to the end of the world. Introduce a few minor characters, most of whom will die. Show the US president and other world leaders agonizing over what to do, all the while being prodded by some unscrupulous politician to make immoral choices. Make sure movie's hero is a divorced dad who is spending the weekend with his estranged kids who don't like him. This way when he saves the world they can reconcile and realize they really do love him. And, whatever you do, don't kill the dog.

What you've seen it already? No, that was Deep Impact. Or Armageddon. Maybe Dante's Peak. Day After Tomorrow? Outbreak?

I'm pretty sure the point of these movies is to make us feel like maybe the end of the world wouldn't really be such a bad thing. While watching 2012, I found myself thinking, "Really, a tidal wave is going to destroy us all? Can it PLEASE happen NOW??!!"

I have to say that eating greasy popcorn while watching the world brace for impending doom would really not be all that bad of a date night . . . if we didn't have to drive an hour even to do that.

Sadly, the most entertaining part of the evening came when David dropped me off to buy the tickets for Blind Side. But, like the good scriptwriter that whoever wrote 2012 was not, I'll leave you hanging until tomorrow for that. As long as the world doesn't end before then.