Well, last night I took myself (and three whacko friends!) to see Shrek 2. It was fun, but the most newsworthy part of the trip is more like an observation of the place we viewed the movie in. Although, before I start, I gotta say I really enjoyed it, and laughed my ass off. The references were great, the music was funny, the story was awesome, and the jokes were bang on! Yes! Money well spent!

Anyways, before I start I should talk about Yarmouth a little. It used to be a thriving ship importation area, then it was almost ghost town, then it started to pick up a little bit and that leads us to the present day. So Yarmouth is a tad on the poor side. Not a lot goes on, the tourists probably keep the place afloat and we don’t even get all that many. Seriously, half the people in the States don’t even know where Nova Scotia IS! It may be a tiny peninsula off the east coast of Canada, but we’s still here!

So, hole in the wall town that most overlook, but still has its degree of charm. I mean, walk along the waterfront, and you can easily picture yourself in a Cape Cod-esque movie, or Dawson’s Creek episode. Walk along main street with all the cutesy stores, or order fish in the local restaurants. It’s home. It’s where I was born, and where I’ve lived 30 minutes from my whole life.

But some things about it need some changing, and that includes the cinemas. Three screens, old movies, and dingy interior, overworked cashiers and broken arcade games. Sounds like a winner, eh? They usually have one buddy on ticket sales, which goes super slow with three movies at once. Seriously, who devised this system? They should have automated ticket sales if they can’t afford at least two ticket people. And the debit! They should NOT accept debit! Just throw a machine outside the theatre! It’s not like they don’t have room, it’s in a semi-deserted mall! There’s maybe 4 stores in there! FOUR! IN A MALL!

Anyways.

So if you can handle the looooong lineup, then you have the food. Overpriced everything, and besides the expense, there’s Coke. UGH! Seriously, I refuse to pay $3 for a Coke. I refuse to pay $3 for bottled water! I refuse to pay $5 for a box of Junior Mints! Dude, you can get them for less than $2 at the drugstore. The same huge box, too.

So while waiting around for the movie to start, we poked around looking at the arcade games they brought in within the past year or so to try and get more money from us after upping the ticket prices 4 bucks since I was in high school. Most of them were out of order and looked as old as Yarmouth itself.

So we skipped out on losing our quarters that way, and kind of wandered around, looking at the coming attractions posters and cardboard cutouts. The dodgeball movie scares me. I didn’t even notice that the skeevy looking guy was Ben Stiller. Sarah had to point it out to me. But that’s besides the point. We sit on the semi-clean stairs, looking at this free magazine they give out. It was a month old and pretty much one big advertisement, because of course they want you to come back and spend another $7.25, and possibly waste money on snacks and arcade games. We pretty much made fun of everything, and I swear the month-old horoscopes had more of our interest then the rest of the magazine combined.

So after that, we had to wait an additional 15 minutes for them to clean up the kids’ mess after the first showing. Let me tell you, they didn’t do very much backbreaking work to clean the place. It was still a filthy mess when we went and sat down. And the seats! They must still be the original ones that were in the very first theatre. Ever. So yeah, they’re fairly uncomfortable and very stained. The theatre is the biggest one, but the other ones, the two smaller ones, seem a lot nicer. Honestly, can’t they just refurnish the place? The ceiling looks like it’s about to fall, it’s so old and full of that brown water stain look.

It’s a gross theatre. Just no two ways about that. And the thing that gets my goat the worst is the first second the credits start, everyone gets up and leaves! Don’t they know there’s something else coming up when it’s 3D animated?!?! Although I’m a loser and I like to read the credits….