hunger and games

When the stores are full of cardboard cutouts of grinning turkeys in Pilgrim hats and shoppers are flinging coupons for free birds at haggard cashiers, you will know it is time for my birthday. This year my birthday falls on Turkey Day itself (appropriate), and so the annual birthday beer-and-a-movie date with husbandface was shoved up to Monday. The rule is that we have to lunch at a place within staggering distance of the theater, so this year we found ourselves at a place called BUFFALO WILD WINGS. Which sounded like a chicken wing place, but turned out to be a sports arena with sad-eyed teenagers dressed as referees guiding us along dotted yellow lines to a table surrounded by enormous blaring televisions tuned to sports channels. The effect was that of being seated in a Colosseum and not knowing from which direction the gladiators would be set upon you with short swords. As we tried to work out the scoring system on the menu, a group of military guys leaped up, cheering.

"Someone scored a goal," Mike said, goggling around at all the different games on the walls. 

"It was that one," I said, pointing over his shoulder. 

"That is Nascar."

"Yes, but while you were turned around, I took your beer."

"Ahhh, you scored the goal."

"Ten points to Griffindor!"

He took his beer back.

Consoled self with a Kona Longboard.

We gnawed chicken and talked trash and skipped to the theater afterwards. I took a picture in the bathroom, because I always do. And because it is always empty, which is kind of weird.

The last Hunger Games movie was just fine - maybe because I read the book 5 years ago and couldn't remember the damn thing at all. There was no blood, which is fine, because book-gore and movie-gore don't sit in the psyche the same way and I am a bit of a weenie.

We ran into Walmart on the way home, and plunged into a crowd of holiday shoppers yelling, "PATTI. WHERE THE PIES, PATTI?" There were no pies. There were only desperate mothers with visiting relatives trailing after them, shoving baking ingredients into their carts and sneaking pre-made mixes in while their mothers-in-law examined bags of Kona coffee. We did likewise, got in a fight with the self-checkout machine, and made it home in time to pick up the kids. VICTORY.

And that's that for another year. After four years of watching Jennifer Lawrence shoot things with flaming arrows on my birthday, I'll be adrift in a sea of cinematic woe next year. Throwing my vote in for an adaptation of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series. GET FILMING, HOLLYWOOD.