On Saturday, I went out to see “The Incredibles”…
time for a patented Aside™: I loved that movie! Not only was it great, witty fun, but the look of it was amazing — the set design was wonderful, and the merging of spy movie conventions with the superhero genre was fantastic and fun. Music, dialogue, design, plot — great! I give it two thumbs up. One joke that seemingly only I got: toward the end there are two old men sitting on a bench, commenting on the action, giving it “old school” kudos. The two old men were voiced by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two of Walt Disney’s “nine old men,” the core group of animators in the heyday of Disney… which has now shut down their feature animation department completely. Sad. Anyway…
… Two admissions to the film cost $18.00. A package of generic Twizzlers and a large Cherry Coke was $8.50. That was a $26.50 movie. I could buy the DVD and watch it at home on a better screen with better sound. The theatre, at Potomac Yard, is of the “stadium” type, which means a nosebleed-inducing grade to the seating. Since I was with my friend Eric, we needed to sit where his wheelchair could be accomodated — which meant at the bottom of the mountain of seats, and we had to lean our heads back about 45° to watch the screen, which was mounted about 20 feet off the floor.
Anyway, there was one plus to the cost: refills are free with a large soda. What I didn’t expect was the interpretation of “large”. I figured that large would be about 20 oz. or so. How naive I was.
That’s the large there, beside a terrified Diego, who probably realizes he’d be crushed under it’s weight were it to fall over. The thing almost underwent gravitational collapse. How in the world could anyone possibly manage to get a free refill on this? I could have passed it around the entire audience and still not emptied it. In fact, I took it home, and continued to drink it the next day. Today, on the third day, I gave up and tossed the last third out.
It’s interesting how adjectives like small, medium, and large have little meaning anymore. Did you know that McDonald’s no longer sells small fries? They start at “regular”. Dominos doesn’t sell small pizzas any more. And for those that thought a Big Gulp was just an appetizer, they’ve got two larger sizes.
No wonder we are all becoming larger ourselves.
