Movie Experiment I: Mall Rats

The first installment of the Movie Experiment was to have been the #10 movie on my list of top movies. However, due to a series of scheduling conflicts between the participants for Strange Brew, Mall Rats, #9 on the list, was the first of the series.

There were no explosions of drama or actual explosives during the movie, which is probably a good thing. In addition to my three cats, there were three attendees.

It was only appropriate that Flowers (originally known as Morpheus) was there. Many basic facts of how I met people and when we first started hanging out have been lost in the mists of time, but I remember that Flowers proved to be the primary factor in my current social circle.

In the old days (well, the old days of my current life) I'd sing karaoke alone. Not just not singing duets, but going to the karaoke bar alone, sitting alone, drinking Sprites or ice water alone. One night in January 2007, I had finished singing a song and a guy approached me. It was Flowers, and he really wanted me to sing Don't Look Back in Anger.

I was flattered, and told him I'd put it in next. He had already put it in for me, however, and he had tipped Krazy Karaoke Host $10 to ensure I could get in before close.

Wow.

Yes, he thought my name was "Neo," rather than "Ed O," but it didn't matter (and, indeed, it gave rise to his original name in my blog). Within a few days, I was in his MySpace top friends, and the rest is history. Or the present. Or the future. Or some combination thereof.

F-Bomb watched Mall Rats with us, too. F-Bomb knew Flowers previous to meeting me, and he has been a recent karaoke/drinking buddy. Prominent F-Bomb adventures include our trip to Mexico in April 2008 and our recent Whistler excursion.

The third member of the Movie Experiment team was Stix. I met Stix at her place of employment in late 2008. She made her first appearance in my blog was when she attended the Killers Seattle show with me last year. One interesting thing about Stix is that she is more willing than any of my other friends to fight. Not, like, argue. I mean take a swing at another person. Just this month, we were at a bar and she looked at a woman and muttered, "Oh, she did NOT just give me that look!"

Fortunately, I've never seen her actually fight, and it was even more fortunate that fisticuffs were unlikely during Mall Rats.

Part of the basis for the Movie Experiment was to intermingle my different friends: take people that I knew from different parts of my life and throw them into the same room, watching a movie they'd never seen.

Last night we had the "movie they'd never seen" part covered, but all three participants already knew one another, so it was a failure on that front.

But that was the only failure. I ordered Chinese food and it was delicious. The three of them all seemed to like the movie, which was a relief.

I felt a bit of pressure, after all, in terms of them liking it... which is sort of weird, given my general lack of involvement with creating the film (and by "general" I mean "total"). I still, though, didn't want to waste their time or have them think less of me due to, say, Jeremy London's bad acting (and, trust me, he has some terrible acting moments).

About 15 minutes (and, in my case, about two potstickers and a pound of mongolian beef) into the movie, the question of when the movie was made came up. "Mid-90's," I said, "maybe 1995?"

It didn't elicit the "I was three years old" response that I seem to get so often when I cite dates for movies, songs, or my degrees, but Stix looked at me and said, "No wonder I don't know this movie."

After it was defined as a movie from 1995, it was fun to watch how many people wore flannel (short answer: a lot). It almost made me forget that it was 15 years ago.

The movie ends with the protagonists getting the girls and Jay and Silent Bob walking off into the distance with an orangutan (a non-sequitur that lead into a brief discussion of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). Our movie ended with smiles and discussions of whether they would be participating in any more Movie Experiment nights.

It also ended with one twist: someone put a $20 bill on my kitchen counter. I did not expect anyone to help pay for dinner, but I am put in the odd position of trying to return it without asking the wrong person whether they left me money (implying, perhaps, that they should have, too). I am, instead, going to punt from doing the responsible thing and post it here, in this blog: I don't want your money. I just want you to laugh at the right spots of the movie I make you watch.