Unless It’s a Lioness

   I’ve always loved going to the movies.

   Movies have constantly been a part of my life. 

   Never more so than when I was a lad of fourteen newly arrived in New Zealand. I was a tall, gawky kind of kid who couldn't seem to fit in, especially at school. The long week would drag by, waiting for Friday night when I could take the #10 bus from Avondale into downtown Auckland and see a movie.

   “Go to the cinema and see a film,” as New Zealanders said.

   My favorite theater was the giant Civic Theatre on the corner of Queen and Wellesley Streets. It was easily the biggest cinema in Auckland, holding over two-and-a-half-thousand people. Built in the 1920s as a spectacular cinema palace, it was extremely ornate with deluxe red and gold plush decor. Even the ruby colored carpet under your feet felt rich and luxurious. Crystal chandeliers hung gracefully here and there. Within the vast auditorium the stars of the heavens, rendered in tiny electric lights, twinkled high above in the deep blue ceiling, while colossal Romanesque statues of crouching lions with menacing lighted eyes proudly flanked the stage. Rows of red velvet seats stretched as far as the eye could see. Long, curving rows that stacked up and up and up, so close to the deep blue dome of heaven that they nearly touched the electric stars.  

   I used to arrive early and luxuriate in these otherworldly surroundings while I watched the other patrons find their seats. 

   New Zealanders were still strange creatures whose language and customs I had yet to learn. 

   Before each show ‘God Save the Queen’ was played, during which everyone arose and stood to respectful attention. As the anthem ended and all were reseated, an imitation night befell us as the huge room slowly darkened. The stars above and the eyes of the lions below would fade out as the houselights slowly dimmed. The heavy red velvet curtains parted, revealing the pure white, virginal screen. 

   A wonderful moment of anticipation and silence followed. 

   Then came the fantastic flickering shadows that would transport me to another world.

   I went to the movies as often as I could, usually on a Friday night when the shops on Queen Street stayed open late. I always went by myself. Only having schoolboy means at my disposal, I couldn’t afford it any more often than that. To me, money spent at the movies was never wasted. Like books, there wasn’t really a bad one, just some that weren’t very good. Movies opened a window to the past, grappled with the present and pondered the future. They were endlessly fascinating. They were alive with hope. They were art. They were humor and beauty and magic and funny and sad and, well, I’m sure you get my point. 

   Movies were important to me. They still are. 

   Maybe they are to you, too.  

   Back in those days (I’m speaking of 1968) they often showed a newsreel and a cartoon before the main attraction. 

   The newsreels were a mix of local and international items. Short pieces meant to inform and entertain. A baby born to someone famous, the happy couple with swaddled infant standing outside their home waving to the cameras. A government official opening a stretch of highway somewhere in the South Island. Or perhaps the splashdown of a Nasa space mission, American astronauts grinning as their shiny helmets are removed.

  Then came the cartoon. Ha! Ha! I love cartoons! And it’s fun to laugh with an audience! Ho! Ho! Who wouldn’t laugh, when that wily old coyote is proved a fool yet again by the speedy little roadrunner? He! He! The look of utter failure on the coyote’s face as a 10-ton safe falls from a great height upon his head!

   I sat in the dark and laughed with strangers, and for a moment I forgot I was lonely at school and unhappy at home.

   At the Interval, as the Intermission was called, young attendants would lope down the aisle and begin to sell ice-cream cones from trays held at their waists by straps round their necks. These ice-cream cones had been previously frozen solid, so that by now they were as hard as a rock. One needed the entire feature to lap their way through one. These ice-cream cones came in Vanilla only, by the way, although theoretically there was the option of chocolate dipped, which they ran out of immediately so it always came back to Vanilla only.

   Then the houselights slowly dimmed.

   The feature was about to start.  

   Ah, the movies I saw at the beautiful Civic Theatre! 

   

   That was many years ago.

   I am now a writer and a blogger. 

   One of the things I’ve learned as a writer is that each story one writes requires a set of rules. This is to anchor the story in some sort of reality, help insure a smooth flow and avoid reader confusion. 

   Ironically enough, this is true of the movies too.

   One of the rules I made for my blogging was that I wouldn’t bore my readers, if I collected any, with talk about specific movies and what I thought of them or what they meant to me. We all have our opinions on movies, just check your Facebook timeline for proof of that. And movie critics of one kind or another are not in short supply in this world, either. They’re probably pretty numerous in the next world too, I should think. 

   Regarding movies, there’s nothing new for me to add. 

   So I don’t see any point in my discussing movies, unless I actually worked on one (which I will have occasion to do when I write now and then of my career as a film animator) or something of interest happened while I was watching one. 

   Like the time at the Amanzimtoti Star drive-in theater near Durban, South Africa in 1976.

   I’d been living in South Africa a few years by then with Suzie, my second wife. She was from South Africa, although we had met in New Zealand. Her mum and stepfather and two grown brothers with girlfriends lived in the Durban area and we all used to gather to eat Jean’s (Suzie’s mum) curried chicken and go to the “bioscope,” as South Africans call the movies, or the cinema, or the flicks or whatever you call it wherever you are.

   Anyway, one night at the drive-in, as dusk was falling, a lioness and her cubs calmly walked through the playground area, dragging what was left of a zebra carcass behind them in the red African dust. It was just before showtime and children where frolicking in the playground beneath the giant outdoor screen. Ha! Ha!! You should have seen the children scatter! Ho! Ho! You should have heard the shrieking of the parents as they collected their offspring! He! He! You should have smelled the curried chicken as it flew from the paper plates of Suzie’s excited brothers!

   Uh-oh! I should have avoided spilling my beer in my lap!

   Only mildly disturbed by all the excitement they’d aroused, the lioness trotted off with her cubs into the gathering darkness of the nearby veld, not forgetting to take the dusty zebra carcass with them. 

   “Ach man, no problem,” as they say in South Africa. 

   The movie started right on time.

   We saw a double feature that night. 

   Jaws and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

   I couldn’t swim in the ocean, nor don a scarlet red silk corset, for weeks afterwards.

   So you see there are good reasons for these little writer’s rules. 

Magic Words

   “Knock knock!”

   “Who’s there?”

   “Godfrey.”

   “Godfrey who?”

   “Godfrey hairs on me chest!”

   One of the reasons I decided to write this blog was to be able to get a few things off my chest from time to time.   

   Which is a funny thing, now that I think about it, because there’s nothing on my chest except a little hair and a couple of nipples.

   No rings or tattoos. No piercings. Nothing like that.

   No, the things that I want to get off my chest are really in my mind.

   My friend John suggested it, after I’d bored him silly over a beer one day with all the complaining I did about something, my boss, my wife, my sports team, I can’t even remember what.

   "You're a writer," he said. "Well, why don't you write about it?" 

   So I put my impossible-to-finish second novel aside and started blogging, mostly as a way to explore new ideas and keep limber as a writer, and of course to try to understand and make fun of life and it’s impossible moments. 

   

   With that said; 

   You know what’s been bothering me lately? 

   Who knows? Maybe it’s been bothering you, too.

   The lack of “Pleases” and “Thank Yous” that I do not hear all around me anymore.

   That's what's been bothering me lately. 

   Everywhere you go, nobody is saying it.

   It came to me last night as I was having a beer at my local. It’s a friendly place with a good crowd and cold beer, but guess what? Nobody there says please or thank you either. 

   I noticed this as I sat there, sipping my beer, listening for once to the voices in the tavern instead of the voices in my head.

   “Gimme a Bud!” demanded a guy at the bar.

   I turned and looked. He sported a magnificently large spare tire type belly. A Dunlop, as my wife calls it, not because it’s a spare tire, but because it's ‘done lopped over’ his belt. His nervous foot tapping made his flip-flops flap loudly against the bottoms of his feet.

   He was handed a Bud. He took a sip.

   “Got a menu?” he demanded instead of saying thank you.

   He was handed a menu.

   Nothing from Dunlop, who immediately started scanning the menu. 

   The server turned to another patron. 

   “I’ll take a dozen chicken wings," ordered a young man with a tattoo of Huckleberry Hound on his forearm. Huckleberry Hound. Of all the images in all the world to permanently apply to yourself, why Huckleberry Hound, I wondered? Oh well, at least it was well drawn. I should know, I used to be in the drawing end of the cartoon business. Ye Gods, how many so-called Stitches have I seen tattooed on someone’s shoulder or ankle that broke my heart! On his other arm is a tattoo of his mother, I think. It’s either his mother or Chewbacca from the Star Wars movies, it’s difficult to tell from where I’m sitting. 

   But judging by the family resemblance, it’s his mother.

  “Not too spicy!” interrupts his girlfriend, sitting next to him. You can tell she's his girlfriend, she's been sharing his drink through the same straw. You don't do that with your sister or a coworker. Not if you're over six-years-old. “And some twirly fries!” she adds with delight.

   Delight, but no “please.”

   She’s no Princess Leia, I notice.

   But then these days, who is?

   To my left I hear, “Gimme a burger. No, a cheeseburger. Uh, make it a double.” 

   I turn to see another patron straight out of Star Wars, who really does look like Chewbacca, at least he does from the neck up. Must be the long blonde hair and beard, I figure. And something about the dark, somewhat canine nose. But that's all. 

   From the neck down, he more closely resembles Jabba the Hutt. 

   He adds, shouting at the server who has turned to go, “Put some bacon on that burger! And a diet Coke too!”

   “Okay hon!” the server answers over her shoulder.

   “Could I please have another Yuengling?” I ask as she passes.

   “Sure, sweetie!” she responds. “Anything else?”

   “No thank you. Just a beer.”

   I know she doesn’t mean it, she’s just being friendly, but I’m nobody’s sweetie. 

   It occurs to me now to mention, seeing as I started it, that I look more like the evil, hooded Palpatine from The Emperor Strikes Back than anyone else I can think of from Star Wars. 

   You know. The bitterly angry guy who shot electricity out of his hands.

   Him, or a tall, skinny Yoda with a greying goatee. 

   When I was young, younger than I can even remember, my parents taught me to say “Please” and “Thank You” and to say them in a pleasant tone of voice when the time was appropriate.

   And oh boy, watch out if you didn’t say them or otherwise forgot your manners in any way!

   I don’t want a return to those more restrictive times when children were seen and not heard. I delight in children and welcome their presence. I was one myself, once. And I don’t mean to imply that I’m perfect. 

   Just that I try, as I was taught, to remember my manners.

   Especially in public, when social niceties are appreciated the most.

   I suppose that please and thank you are among the first words one ever learns. In whatever country you reside and whatever language you speak, these words are the currency of good manners. 

   My mother called them the Magic Words. Because like magic they make things happen, and like magic they are everywhere all around us all the time, if we just remember to look for it.

   Just like The Force.