At What Cost Recreation?

As has become my wont, today I write another multi-part account of a night on the town which so exceeded normal parameters that it must be shared. As always, it was the birthday of a friend. One begins to suspect that not all of them are entirely legitimate. I recall at summer camp one time that we requested from the dining hall kitchen staff a huge sheet cake under false pretenses, and then embarrassed a visiting guest from the state Game and Fish department by pretending it was for her. That seems like a good way of introducing this story.

The substance of the birthday celebration was a movie. This was not any movie. We were to see John Carpenter's "The Thing", and not at just any venue, but at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. To explain, this is a somewhat dilapidated facility, and they raise money for restoration by showing movies, which are projected against the wall of the mausoleum. Patrons sit on a wide, uninterrupted expanse of grass, and not on graves, as one friend feared. This enterprise is wildly popular, filling up each screening regardless of what is being shown. Getting within a half mile of the cemetery in Hollywood from North Hollywood takes about as long as traversing the final half mile and entering the place.

You can pretty much bring in whatever you want- food, alcohol and perhaps more. There were certain smells in the air that the proprietors didn't exactly stop the show in order to investigate. I brought a bulk-sized bag of tortilla chips with salsa, as well as some cut-rate soda. Others had wine, cheese, hard liquor, bread, cake and more. It was really a delightful experience- picnic and drive-in combined, in a sense. We got there a bit after 7, just eating and carrying on until dark when the movie began.

The movie was an awful lot of fun to watch again with such a big crowd that included numerous friends who hadn't seen it. It wasn't really a good way of seeing it for the first time. The screen was distant, the sound could have been better, and the ground being as level as it was, one's view was terribly susceptible to being obscured by the numerous people getting up and milling around periodically. For all of that, though, it was an experience I would not give up for anything. Anyone with the opportunity to do such a thing should not pass it up.

When the movie finished, we set to the task of cleaning up and getting our things together in the dark. A smartphone stylus was lost, but that would seem to be the only casualty. Of course, I need not say that the night was far from over at this time. Tomorrow, I shall reveal what transpired when we went off to the bar!