Bagdad Memories

One thing I want to do with this blog is just write about crap - like little vignettes. So you'll see these here and there.

"Come on, let's go see a movie."
My friend, Camille, and I used to go to a lot of movies. We liked all the movie houses, the multi-plexes, the drive-ins - didn't matter. We liked movies and went a lot. Somehow, though, most of my best memories, our funniest times (she's argue with this because most of these are at her
expense) were at the Bagdad Theater. The Bagdad was an older movie theater in the Hawthorne neighborhood of Portland. It's now been re-furbished by a theater/bar/restaurant local conglomerate so it's not the same as it was years ago when it was privately owned and a bit dowdy and tired. But it always had at least second-run moves, and sometimes first-run, so the fare was current, even if the theater itself was not.

Here's what I mean: In its heyday the theater's chairs were probably the latest thing in seating, with lovely, brown, leather-clad seats and backs. I presume the seats were padded originally; by the time my butt got to sit in them decades later, they were pretty thin and flat, the leather was worn, and some of the seats were broken. You had to arrive early for your movie so you had time to try out the seats to find good ones that either wouldn't pinch your bottom, or propel you backwards into the knees of the poor person sitting behind you if it turned out your seat back was broken.

The floor was usually sticky, and it had lost its carpet eons ago. This provided good traction, which'll come in handy later. You'll see.

The bathrooms were downstairs which was awkward if you waited too long to pee. Who wants to get up in the middle of a good movie to pee until you absolutely have to wet your pants? So I'd always wait, and then run downstairs and down the hallway as fast as I could. But that's not even the worse. Half of the stalls didn't work. So, you a) had to allow enough time to get downstairs and to the toilet, and b) desperately pray all the way down there that nobody else was in the bathroom ("please be empty, please be empty, please be empty"), and c) find a working empty stall. Another person making the same dash could throw this schedule off completely.

That was the Bagdad. It was beautiful in his prime, but by the time we arrived it was just past middle age and was starting to show gray hair, sagging chins, and faded velvet.

Now back to Camille. Camille is one of those people that funny things happen to. You know them - the people who are always involved in a dramatic or comedic moment. The person you call on the phone and ask "what's up?" and there are actually several interesting things happening,
usually all at once. As opposed to people like me, who respond "oh, nothing."

The Seat That Farted
Camille, our friend Bob, and I went to the Bagdad one Saturday afternoon to see a movie.
Remember that the seats are leather? It seems that one of the properties of leather seats is that they trap air in them if there's any space available, like worn down and flattened foam. Camille, Bob and I stopped at the snackbar on our way in to get the absolutely essential soda and popcorn (large-size, of course, in the case of each). We trooped into the half full theater, with our hands full, went to our favorite spot (towards the front, middle of the row), and sat down. Or, at least Bob and I sat down. Camille, on the other hand, fell into her seat with a great big "PHHOOFF!!" The sound reverberated throughout the theater. And, unfortunately, it sounded exactly like a huge explosive fart. The theater went silent. Then, out of the stunned silence, I could hear faint giggles coming from my side where Camille was sitting. Well, that was too much for Bob and me. We both started giggling - giggles which soon grew to muffled laughter. The three of us were shaking in our seats and laughing like loons. I don't know if the other people ever figured out what the noise was, but I know without a doubt what they all THOUGHT it was. It still makes us laugh whenever we think about the farting seat.

Sticky Floor
The carpet had obviously been removed years before because there was a sticky buildup of spilled soda and popcorn grease in the aisles that Mr. Clean couldn't have budged. Camillee and I had made our snack bar stop, and were headed down the aisle to the seats we'd scoped out from the top of the room. I confidently walked in front, no problem. Camille was right behind me. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of someone hitting the ground, accompanied by the sounds of spilling pop and dropped popcorn. I looked back and she was sprawled all over the aisle behind me. She had popcorn all over her but luckily the Coke had run off to the side so she wasn't sitting in it. I ran back to her and helped her up - fortunately she wasn't hurt. I asked her what happened and she said her tennis shoe had stuck in the aisle muck and she was thrown off her feet. Then she started giggling, thenI did, and we struggled to our seats. When she pulled herself together she, of course, went back to the snack bar to replenish her supplies.

Butt Sticker

Camille liked to sit in her seat with her legs over or against the seat in front of her. This worked well if the seat was empty, not so well if it was occupied because you'd end up accidently kicking someone in the head.

On this occasion, Camille, Bob and I were watching a movie as usual. Camille was in the middle, Bob was sitting on the aisle. She put her feet up and happily munched away on her popcorn. Towards the end of the movie she needed to change position and started to draw her legs back to extricate them from the seat in front. She must not have been paying enough attention because the next thing I knew she had slid forward, but her legs were still up. I looked over at her and here's what I saw - she had slid too far forward on her seat and her butt had slipped down into the aisle. Her feet were sticking straight up in the air…and she was wearing waffle-stompers, which I hadn't even noticed until they were waving at me at face-level. She was completely stuck in that little aisle space. Between the three of us we were laughing so hard and she was just getting wedged in tighter with every movement. All you could see of Camille were two legs sticking straight up in the air, feet topped with waffle-stompers, and the very top of her head. As the movie ended, and the credits started to roll she came to her senses enough to realize that two things were going to happen: 1) the lights were coming on, and 2) other people in our aisle would need to get out. So, she did the only thing she could possibly do in that situation - she threw her coat over her head.

Which made Bob and me just laugh all the harder. It was obviously apparent to the others in our aisle that, whether they could see her or not through her coat of invisibility, they were not going to be able to get past Bob and me, so they all went the other way. Camille wouldn't come out of her shelter to let us help her extricate herself, and wouldn't even acknowledge us until the theater was completely empty. I don't know how much help we'd of been anyway right then because every time we looked at her we'd burst into laughter. Eventually the manager came down to see what the hell was going on in his theater, and between the three of us, we got poor Camille unwedged from between the seats. She kept her coat flung over her head as we left the theater, just in case someone from the movie was still in the lobby.

Watching "Alien"

I've probably ratted on Camille enough by now, but here's one last short one. She hates scary movies. They always give her nightmares and she's learned to just avoid scary, horror-filled, or gory movies altogether. I think she must have not had a clue what the movie "Alien" was all about, because she wanted to go. This was one of the Bagdad's first run movies - the theater was packed and we were wedged in the middle of a row with people on all sides of us. In other words, we were stuck for the duration.

I loved the movie. For Camille, it was a total waste of money because she missed almost the entire thing. And she wanted to leave but we were trapped and she didn't want to make a scene. So, what did she do instead? At the onset of the first scary scene she flung her coat over her head. The coat stayed securely perched on head for the rest of the movie, except for a very few times when, listening to the dialogue, she felt she could watch the scene. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't. She still tells people that she "watched" Alien in the theater, but I would have to beg to differ.