“You should have fandangoed,” I was told, when I got to the movie theater and found the show had already sold out.  Are you kidding me?  It was 11:00 on a Saturday morning.

Fandangoed!  Where’s the spontaneity in that?  Call me old school, but if I have to plan that far ahead, pick a particular date, and specific time to go see a performance, it better well be a Broadway play or a rock concert.

Recently, I tried out this new high-tech multiplex where I was required to choose my seat by viewing a touch screen.  Then I was handed a tablet with a pre-loaded menu that ranged from burgers to steak, and bottled water to designer martinis.  All I really wanted was popcorn.  Or a box of snow caps.

Whatever happened to the movie magic?  The kind I felt every time I stepped into a movie house with an art deco lobby, velvet curtains, and a balcony.  They had names like The Paris, The Cheri, The Paramount.  Maybe the bar was set too high for me, because the first time I ever went to the movies I saw Mary Poppins at Radio City Music Hall.  I was three-years-old.  And everything about it was magic.

When I mentioned all this to my mom she not only agreed with me, she reminisced about her teenage hangout.  “We called our neighborhood movie The Itch,” she smiled nostalgically.  The Granada – fondly nicknamed The Itch – was rundown, with dirty, sticky floors from all the soda the kids spilled, and it was not uncommon to see a critter skittle by every so often.  The place sounded like it just oozed movie magic, and I’d take it over some soulless cookie cutter multiplex any day.