Back in the glory days of my job at the video store, it was pretty much understood that if a theater was screening a midnight show, we went.
There are plenty of things from those days I get nostalgic over, but short of "Scene It?" game nights, midnight movies top the list. Even if the movie we saw ended up being godawful, the wait was always more than a concession.
When I tell people that I'm one of those nuts who sits camped out for hours waiting for these things I get a lot of weird looks (mostly the "Are you crazy?" kind). But frankly, the waiting is sometimes the best part.
Think about it: you get to hang out with some of your closest friends and actually sit and talk, without the interruptions of a bar or some other outing. In the case of my video store crew, it was a chance to hang out with awesome, like-minded people and talk about movies for literally hours.
Tonight I'll be embarking on a midnight showing of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" with a different group of usual suspects. We've done this for "Half-Blood Prince" (when I was half looped on meds from a recent tonsillectomy) and for "Deathly Hallows: Part 1" (in insane winter cold), plus countless other non-Potter-related cinematic jaunts.
I'm no die-hard Harry Potter fan. I never read any of the books. But I love the atmosphere of midnight shows and I always have a great time going when it's for a movie I have some interest in.
The original video store group doesn't get together much anymore, which is always something that makes me a little sad. But it's nice to know I'm still smart enough to surround myself with friends who find as much entertainment in the waiting as they do in the movie itself.
Contrary to her natural state of being, Renee Lorenz is a total optimist when it comes to Milwaukee. Since beginning her career with OnMilwaukee.com, her occasional forays into the awesomeness that is the Brew City have turned into an overwhelming desire to discover anything and everything that's new, fun or just ... "different."
Expect her random musings to cover both the new and "new-to-her" aspects of Miltown goings-on, in addition to periodically straying completely off-topic, which usually manifests itself in the form of an obscure movie reference.
