phone calls

Note to self: the next time you have a headache in a movie theater and someone near you takes a call on his cell phone during the last five minutes of the movie and you feel the urge to ask him to take the call outside, LET IT GO.

Especially if he ignores you and then you decide to tell him to take it outside and stare him down until he turns off the phone. Because you end up looking like an asshole to the people who are trying to watch the last five minutes of the movie that you yourself were trying to watch until you foolishly decided, "Can't ... take it ... anymore!"

Not as much of an asshole as the guy who tries to pick a fight with you in front of his two kids because you've told him to take his phone call outside and who's shown up at the theater 45 minutes late even though the movie was starting in another theater when he showed up, SO WHY ARE YOU ONLY LETTING YOUR KIDS SEE THE LAST HALF OF THE MOVIE IN THIS PARTICULAR THEATER, YOU NEGLECTFUL FUCK?!?!?!

But still ... I admit I acted like an asshole.

And you already knew you should've let it go, Robert, but sometimes you can't help yourself, can you? Sure, blame it on the headache or the incident on the train last night where you didn't say anything to the guy who called a girl a "fuckin' bitch" after she got off the train because she wouldn't let him pick up her bike to see how heavy it was.

Sir, do you really think that's a normal request? And there you were in plain sight giving money to your jittery, skinny friend and telling him, "Do you understand the position you're putting me in?" making yourself out to be a drug dealer or something else similarly shady. You think she didn't see or hear any of that? And then you accuse her of being paranoid because she won't let you touch her bike? Was your reasoning along the lines of "I sell a lot of stolen merchandise on the street, lady, so I need to know how much a bike like that weighs next time I cut the lock off of one. Customers wanna know that kind of thing."

I'm not saying the women of the world needed me to defend them to this guy, who might've been high at the time. But his comment bothered me. A lot of things bother me about people and how they act in public places.

Oh, Robert, at least you control the urge to stand up for the dignity of your testicles when you're with a date or a friend. But they already know you're "that guy" who'd rather rent a movie than go to the theater and see one. A movie theater should be like church, only with overpriced junk food, but no one seems to get that these days.

Loud, angry, defeated sigh.

And here I was watching X-Men: The Last Stand, in which the supervillain Magneto starts a crusade to wipe out humans who want to cure the mutant population of their so-called illness. For the time being, Magneto, I'm 100 percent on your side.