The Happiness Challenge: Day 18

This past weekend in Birmingham was incredibly warm and springlike, giving a taste of the hot, humid summer that's hurtling toward us. I'm not really a season hater—I really, really like cold weather and the near-perfect days of spring and fall are wonderful, but I like the summer months too. The beach, flip-flops and sundresses, my birthday, cold movie theaters.

Going to the movies in the summertime is the best. The theater is such a cool relief from the blazing heat outside, and I love suspension of disbelief. The perfect vacation from my mind. None of you are inside my head, but it's pretty exhausting up in here. Gateway to Narnia? Flying monkeys? Fairytale endings? Sign me up.

I'm not super picky about which films I see. I love smart, artsy films—Le Divorce, Once, Midnight in Paris. I enjoy chick flicks (I always cry), comedies, actions, dramas, trilogies (except that Twilight nonsense). I'm a big fan of thrillers too—just no scary/horror movies in the theater.

Tangent: I made that mistake in 1996, my freshman year of college. I went with a group of friends to see Scream at the Georgia Theatre, a pretty famous bar/music venue housed in an old cinema in downtown Athens. After the bathroom scene in the high school, I don't think my roommate April and I ever went to the bathroom alone in our dorm again. I'm an easy scare, so if I'm going to watch something terrifying, I'd like to do it at home, not alone, with all the lights on, the TV on mute, and a blanket over my head.


(Confession: My roommate isn't home tonight, and I couldn't bring myself to watch this clip. I actually closed my eyes while I was copying the embed code.)

Sunday night at the movies is pretty great, and there isn't usually a big crowd. I drive right past the theater on my home from 6 p.m. church and a lot of times, I wind up eating dinner with friends somewhere at the Summit. Sometimes we'll go to the movies afterward. Sure, it's a late show, but Monday's coming either way. Wheeee, look at me! Living on the edge, baby. Footloose and fancy-free.

Stimulus Tuesday at Carmike Cinemas is marketing genius. Even though I'm still paying roughly $1,475 for a ticket, small drinks and popcorn are just $1 each—that's practically free! I know we have fancy Rave Theaters in Birmingham, but I'm really a Carmike girl. It's a Columbus-based company, and Carmike is all we have back home. Sentimental about a theater chain? You didn't think I could get any weirder, did you?


(I'd also like to take this opportunity to say that I big puffy heart love previews and the Fandango paper-bag puppets.)

There's a Carmike dollar theater in Hoover, and the good movies will absolutely sell out on Tuesday nights. Six dollars for a solid date night excites a lot of folks around here. It's like I told Amy one night last year: Dating in the summer is sweaty. Movie theaters are cold. Summer movie dates equal awesome.

Speaking of summer movie dates, who's free July 20? If you pick up this trailer about 1:20 in, you'll see at once why I'm particularly excited about The Dark Knight Rises.