Double Feature!

I LOVE MOVIES. It's a fact. I love going to movies. I love watching movies. I love being in the theater. I love the stupid factoids you see before the previews start. I love the atmosphere. I love putting my feet on the seat in front of me and kicking back. I love the previews. I really love the previews.

I'm pretty sure this can all be traced back to how much fun I had going to the movies with my family when I was younger, but especially when I went to the movies with my dad, just him and me. When I was younger, 11 years old to be exact, they built the Century 16 theater in Salt Lake City, and it was magnificent. Back then, pretty much all theaters had a few screens (most less than 10) and were very small in scale, but Century 16 blew that open. It was like Disneyland for the moviegoer. There were tons of screens and the concession stand was bigger and more vast than most third-world countries; to an 11-year-old, it was cinematic Mecca.

I distinctly remember one Saturday, my dad took me to see a movie in the morning. I don't remember what we saw, but it must have been something really awesome because, being really awesome ourselves, we only saw really awesome movies. I digress. We loaded up on our concessions and took in a movie. The best part of Century 16 was that the armrests went up, so during the movie, my dad would rub my neck and back and the experience would become exponentially better.

As we were leaving the theater, my dad looked at his phone and saw that my mom had called. He listened to her voicemail and his face dropped. She informed him that she had a "to-do list" waiting for us at home. Now, it's important to note that this is around the time my mom was in charge of Primary during church - where the kids aging from 2 to 12 went during Sunday School, i.e. hell on earth - because her "to-do" lists were actually disguised "I'm-gonna-want-to-punch-myself-in-the-neck-by-the-end-of-this" lists that included a myriad of projects ranging from setting up hundreds of chairs to crafts to gluing crap to just about everything you don't want to do on a Saturday.

So, after listening to the voicemail, my dad looked at me in the lobby of the theater and asked if I wanted to see another movie. Of course, upon hearing of the unfortunate fate awaiting me at home, I kindly obliged his request. We got our tickets, went to concessions for Round #2, and went and saw "The Siege" with Denzel Washington. I remember not understanding a whole lot - it was about terrorist cells, but the whole time I thought they were talking about literal prison cells, so it didn't make sense when they talked about the insurgents moving their cells - but I do remember that it was the BEST.MOVIE.EVER. To this day, it's the only double-feature I've ever experienced in a regular theater - the drive-in shows two movies together, but the environment's completely different - but I might have to encore it pretty soon.

The last movie I ever saw with my dad was on Christmas Eve in 2010. We went to Century 16 for old times' sake, but the movie was sold out, so we hustled to another theater to make the show time. We saw the re-make of "True Grit" and it was awesome. The movie was alright, but it was like I was 12 again, just hanging out with dad.