Date: 12/09/04
TO: Moviegoers
Subject: Movie update: I have torn the fabric of spacetime

Interested parties:

For those of you who are still considering joining us for tomorrow night’s showing of Ocean’s Twelve, I come offering information and a cautionary tale. If you attempt to purchase advance tickets for the discussed 7:10 showing, you may be surprised to learn that it does not, strictly speaking, exist.

If this confuses you, imagine how I must feel. I have tickets for the 7:10 show.

The important information: we are actually seeing the 7:00 showing at AMC Creve Coeur 12, which I have been assured by a reasonable facsimile of a human being is not a trick, mirage, or cruel joke at anyone’s expense. If you told anyone about our plans, please tell them anew.

The cautionary tale: I have learned today that just because a showtime is accessibly, publicly posted online and tickets are freely available for purchase, that does not mean the showtime is real or the tickets you buy will be at all useful. It seems that AMC managers decide the weekend’s schedule “at some point early in the week” and, until they have finalized said schedule, they throw a bunch of s*** into the computer at random to amuse themselves and/or look busy.

I have spent a charming half hour of the afternoon on the phone with movietickets.com, where the customer service gent helpfully explained sellout shows to me, got the problem explained to him again, and spent our remaining time together typing and saying, “Huh? How the–? That’s–! Wha?” before giving me the theater’s office number. Because God loves me, I did then have the unbelievable luck to get on the phone with the actual person who actually caused my problem, so at least satisfaction is mine. I may have to go to the box office tomorrow and explain the whole thing again with a copy of my credit card and a valid passport, but at least I have tickets to a movie that exists.

And the convenience. That’s really what I like best about advance tickets, is the convenience. You can have incompetent people f*** up your day without ever leaving your house. Truly, this is an age of wonder.

If you have bought tickets already, check up on them. The movietickets.com guy did research my problem enough to tell me that Holly and I are the only two people in the city that this happened to, possibly ever, but look at all the other stuff he was wrong about. In hindsight, maybe I should have kept the tickets to The Movie That Never Was, just to see what sort of Being John Malkovich adventure I might have had in theater 13 1/2 if I had presented them to at the theater and demanded admission.