Category Archives: pop culture

Drive-in movies turn 80, but their days may be numbered

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CIMG0121The world’s first drive-in movie theater opened 80 years ago on Thursday. According to History.com, Park-In Theaters opened on June 6, 1933, in Camden, New Jersey.

Drive-in theaters boomed after World War II, and by the late 1950s, there were about 5,000 of them across the country.

Two years ago, the last time the National Association of Theatre Owners counted, there were 366. This summer, there are surely fewer.

Our closest drive-in, the Hi-Way 50 Drive-In in Lewisburg, Tenn., closed after last season. We found out when we went online a couple of weeks ago to see what was playing. The website was gone, but we found a message from the owners on the theater’s Facebook page. It says they’ve retired but they’re hoping someone will buy it and reopen it.

I hope so, too, but I know it’s unlikely.

Drive-in theaters are a risky business. They’re at the mercy of the weather. No one goes to the drive-in when it’s raining, and no one goes if it’s sticky hot, either, but the owners have to pay a fee to the movie studios either way.

Hard-top theaters make money by overcharging for popcorn and Cokes, but it’s easy to bring snacks and pizzas and a cooler to the drive-in, so they don’t make a lot of money on concessions.

Drive-ins used to make money by showing second-run movies (which don’t cost nearly as much to rent as new movies on opening weekend), but VCRs and then DVDs, Blu-Ray and streaming services such as Netflix have pretty much killed the demand for second-run movies. The movies in theaters today will probably be at Redbox by the time school starts in the fall.

The latest threat to the drive-in, according to a story in The Los Angeles Times, is the shift toward digital projection. This may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The paper says Hollywood may stop distributing 35-millimeter film prints by year’s end. Hard-top theaters have already converted, but a lot of drive-in theaters probably can’t afford the cost of a new projector. The Times puts the cost of conversion at about $70,000 per screen.

So, this summer, find the closest drive-in theater and go, and take the kids. Take a Frisbee or a ball and play in the field between the screen and the first row of cars while you wait for it to get dark enough for the movie to start. Walk to the concession stand and listen to the sound of the movie echoing from car radios and boom boxes. Take pictures.

Because this might be the last summer you have the chance.

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Some weird things people believe

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Landing

What a fake moon landing might look like (photo: Rhubarble, via Flickr).

This is too weird not to pass along:

It turns out that about 7 percent of registered voters believe the moon landing was a hoax and that 9 percent are convinced that the government puts fluoride in our drinking water for unspecified ”sinister purposes.”

So says a survey I just stumbled across by a firm called Public Policy Polling, which asked 1,247 registered voters about a host of conspiracy theories. 

For example:

  • 29% believe in space aliens
  • 28% believe “a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government”
  • 25% believe Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a conspiracy
  • 21% believe a UFO crashed at Roswell, N.M.
  • 14% believe in Bigfoot
  • 11% believe the U.S. government allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen
  • 6% believe Osama bin Laden is alive
  • 5% believe Paul McCartney is dead — literally, I mean, not creatively (the story goes that “he blew his mind out in a car” and would have been “28 IF” he’d lived to see the release of “Abbey Road”)
  • 4% believe “shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies”

Now, you might want to write off that last one because a) it’s so obviously tin-foil-hat crazy and b) it’s only 4%, but remember this: There are roughly 180 million registered voters in this country, and 4 percent of 180 million is 720,000.

That means 720,000 of our fellow Americans say they believe shape-shifting reptilian people are trying to take over the world.

Seven hundred-twenty thousand. That’s more people than there are in Detroit!

Of course, most of those people were probably just kidding … or, maybe that’s what the government wants us to think!

Happy birthday, Mr. Rogers

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I don’t have a lot of heroes, but Mr. Rogers is one of them. I watched him when I was a kid, and I watched him again decades later with my children. He’s been criticized over the years by people who didn’t understand him, who thought that his talk about feelings and being special gave several generations of children an inflated sense of self-worth. In truth, he was trying to teach children how to understand themselves, to take responsibility for their actions and treat others with respect. In honor what would have been Fred Rogers’ 85th birthday, here’s something I posted on Oct. 11, 2010:

Channeling my inner Mr. Rogers

Sunday was Mama’s night off. She went to a movie (“Easy A”), and I took Thing 1 and Thing 2 to Moe’s.

While I was paying, Thing 2 (the 4-year-old) ran to get a drink and find a table. I sent Thing 1 (the 10-year-old) to keep an eye on Thing 2.

Soon as I caught up with them, Thing 1 tattled on her brother. “Thing 2 found a Lego man,” she said, trying to sound helpful.

I turned to Thing 2. “You found a Lego man?”

He had a bad feeling about this. “Uh-huh.” He wasn’t making eye contact. He knew where this was heading.

“Where’d you find him?”

“Over there,” he said, pointing to the pop machine.

“Well,” I said, “I think we need to find out if he belongs to somebody.”

Thing 2 nearly burst into tears (he’s learned that being cute and pathetic and really loud helps him get his way, especially in public).

“I want to keep him,” he whined.

“But he’s not yours,” I said, trying my best to channel my inner Mr. Rogers. 

Because of his sweaters and puppets and slow way of speaking, a lot of people made fun of Mr. Rogers, but Mr. Rogers had it figured out.

He understood that kids are just trying to make sense of their feelings and what’s happening in the world around them. He treated them with kindness and love and respect.

Plenty of times over the past 10 years, when Thing 1 and Thing 2 have tried my patience and I haven’t been sure what to do, I’ve asked myself, “What would Mr. Rogers do?” 

“Imagine if you lost a Hot Wheel,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic yet authoritative. ”Wouldn’t you want someone to give him back?”

“No,” he lied.

“Really?”

“No. I’d want him to keep it.”

“Really.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d want him to keep it. It would be like he found a present!”

“Really.”

“Uh-huh.”

I have no idea how Mr. Rogers would have responded to that.

I responded by taking Thing 2 around the restaurant to the three tables with children. The first two said it wasn’t theirs. Thing 2 perked up. Doing the right thing might not be so bad after all!

A boy at the last table, though, said it the Lego man was his.

Thing 2 was crushed. He shuffled back to our table, his head hung low, your basic Charlie Brown walk of depression.

When we sat down, I said, “I’m proud of you. That boy was really glad to get his Lego man back. Aren’t you glad we helped him find it?”

He put his head down on the table and stared out the window. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he sighed.