Year 2, Day 240: Saturday at the Movies

Okay, get your coffee. This is a long post.

From the gitgo it was such a rainy, dark, windy day (as forecasted) that I knew there would be few long trips in the offing. A plan quickly assembled itself— my next-door neighbor and her three kids plus Ruby at a nearby showing of "Open Season," one of many indistinguishable 'live' animated films that seem to be as cheap and easy to come by as root beer floats at Pop's Choklit Shop. A quick pizza lunch at our house (courtesy Papa Ginos) and we were off. My neighbor got the tickets and I took concession stand duty. Of course, there would be popcorn, but how much? How to divide it among four kids? The theatre has the answer: a 'small' popcorn and small drink for FIVE DOLLARS and TWENTY FIVE CENTS. That's more than some people spend on THEIR DINNER. But wait, there's more. What kids get is a cardboard container that needs to be folded by the concession staff (note to Showcase Cinemas: this should be done ahead of time) with a hole for a small drink and a hole for popcorn. Not a CONTAINER of popcorn, mind you, it's just like a square that is filled with popcorn. Yes, that's right, the popcorn is just 'poured' into the square hole in the fold-up 'box' container for $5.25.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I ordered three with Lemonade and one with water. The alarmed concession attendant replied "You can't get that with water." Her response was the same as if I had asked for the happy meal with a cheeseburger but asked to have a BIG MAC thrown in for FREE. Like it was a PREPOSTEROUS request that someone would want water for their kid. It isn't like they don't sell water. No, only FRUIT PUNCH (made with no fruit) and Lemonade (ditto lemons). Though I was shocked I just got all four with lemonade. It was easier that way, anyway because then I wouldn't have to sort them out. The woman asked me if I wanted butter on my popcorn. In my best "I'm 40 and I've lost my patience and you're just a damn kid who never lived without a remote control"-voice I asked "is it really butter?" With I thought a bit of remorse she answered "no." I thought, when did they (Movie Theatre Corps) stop the charade and actually just start LYING to people? It's no longer being sold as 'butter flavor' or 'golden topping' now it's just 'butter.' ONLY IT AIN'T.

Then, the woman 'assembling' the boxes put EVERY SINGLE CUP ON TOP OF A PIECE OF POPCORN, ensuring the cup's faulty equilibrium, and creating an unnecessary threat to my dryness. With a withering half-eyebrow raised in her direction (she had fled after 'completing' her job) I set about removing the errant loose popcorn so the cups would be straight. Deputizing the lone boy from my next-door-neighbor's house, I piled the combos on him and we both walked VERY slowly until we got to theatre, a trip that took nearly ten minutes and during which we lost precious few kernels. As it was, I got a backup large popcorn (which was called for by my neighbor) and two sets of chocolates—Raisinettes (Mother's request, I suppose the most nutritious of all candies except for Goobers, which I think they stopped selling because of its atrocious name) and a massive KitKat bar, that would have caused a spike in a the glycemic index of a right whale. It was kind of a weird day, and it wasn't that great from a SoBe perspective. I could have gotten the dark Raisinets (it claims "anti-oxidants" on the label) but that would have been selfish. As it was, I only ate four of them.

Breakfast
3 Eggs
2 small slices of Balthazar rye bread
2 oz 50% Jalapeno Cheddar

Snackz
4 oz of totally unhealthy, cooked in trans-fat oil popcorn
4 raisinets
3 oz. almonds/cashews

Lunch (leftovers)
Blue Ribbon pulled chicken
blue ribbon burnt ends
leeks

Dinner
Greek salad, feta, scallions, peppers, celery
balsamic vinegar
chicken breast

MINDLESS EATING: MY NEXT BOOK PURCHASE
I have often wrote here about "mindless eating" which I often mean to be thoughtless, you don't even know you're doing it-eating like finishing Ruby's peanut butter and jelly sandwich crusts or throwing a few bites of mac & cheese in your mouth instead of throwing it away. Now, several close friends have sent me the NY Times article about the doctor who has written a book called "Mindless Eating." This very relevant excerpt, below:


Seduced by Snacks? No, Not You By KIM SEVERSON, New York Times

“We don’t have any idea what the normal amount to eat is, so we look around for clues or signals,” Dr. Brian Wansink said. “When all you see is that big portions of food cost less than small ones, it can be confusing.”

Although people think they make 15 food decisions a day on average, his research shows the number is well over 200. Some are obvious, some are subtle. The bigger the plate, the larger the spoon, the deeper the bag, the more we eat. But sometimes we decide how much to eat based on how much the person next to us is eating, sometimes moderating our intake by more than 20 percent up or down to match our dining companion.

Much of his work is outlined in the book “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think” (Bantam). It is peppered with his goofy, appealing Midwestern humor and practical diet tips. But the most fascinating material is directly from his studies on university campuses and in test kitchens for institutions like the United States Army.

An appalling example of our mindless approach to eating involved an experiment with tubs of five-day-old popcorn. Moviegoers in a Chicago suburb were given free stale popcorn, some in medium-size buckets, some in large buckets. What was left in the buckets was weighed at the end of the movie. The people with larger buckets ate 53 percent more than people with smaller buckets. And people didn’t eat the popcorn because they liked it, he said. They were driven by hidden persuaders: the distraction of the movie, the sound of other people eating popcorn and the Pavlovian popcorn trigger that is activated when we step into a movie theater.

(And I dear readers, am no different. I would have fed at the stale popcorn fountain for days if I had been allowed...)