All three, very irritating

[X-ray]

In another thread recently I made a list of things that cause altercations in public and coincidentally the first item on that list was:

"...1) A patron at a cinema wouldn't stop talking/ answered their mobile phone/ ate their popcorn noisily..."

Well I was at the cinema tonight and I got all three! Just my luck. A woman a few seats across from me was eating her popcorn like it was the last popcorn she was ever going to have. You know, in that irritating "let's see if the popcorn in the bottom of the box tastes different from the popcorn on top" manner: scrabble scrabble rummage rummage, then highly specialized sound effects similar to a million dry twigs being crushed in a burlap sack.
Thankfully the popcorn sound had a time limit, dictated by the woman's (mercifully) large appetite. It was soon finished.

But then there was the young couple who had been out for a few drinks and decided to 'chill' at the cinema. He was quiet, but she was one of those people who wnats to know in advance why a certain character has just done something, and what do we all suppose is going to happen next. So there would be the constant mumbling in the background '...why did he shoot them?' and '...where is he going now?' sort of thing. Thankfully that also became background noise and I could ignore that after the first half hour.

But the worst was saved for the final action sequence in which the hero was making his final bid for freedom. A bloody phone went off somewhere in front, followed by hyena-like giggling. I could see the lights on the phone as it was passed from one teenager to the next so they could hear how cool the ringtone was. Then it stopped. A minute later, back on, followed by more giggling, then a conversation on the phone. Of course, polite 'Shhhhhs' from the other patrons were ignored. The phone then rang a third time. Fortunately a guy in front of me shouted out '..turn it off, prick...' and that was the end of the phone. But it spoiled the film, you know.

I think they should punish people like that by surgically implanting a tiny speaker in their inner ear that blares out their own ringtone at random intervals for a period of 5 years. Maybe we could mix in the Wind*ws start jingle for good measure.

[Roj]

I know exactly what you're talking about. I had a "fun" moviegoing experience not too long ago. For the first half of the movie, a kid next to us was hollering and crying, making a general fuss over what mom wouldn't buy him at the candy counter. While that was going on:

Three spilled beverages, one of which had my foot stuck to the floor at the end of the show

Two spilled packages of something hard, round, and noisy as they rolled from the back of the theater down to the front

The couple in front, who weren't too awful bad, but could've been a little quiter while discussing the gripping dialogue

And the highlight: the non-English speaking family directly behind me. Mother was translating the entire movie into a language I've never heard before.

After later buying the movie on DVD, I saw that I'd missed most of a pretty good movie. :-(

[Vincent]

Roj wrote:
And the highlight: the non-English speaking family directly behind me. Mother was translating the entire movie into a language I've never heard before.

I've had that experience too.  I think they were Spanish or French (it was a few years ago now).  Bloody annoying.

The cinema was quite empty and they could've sat somewhere else so not to disturb others, but oh no, where do they sit 2 rows right behind you so you can just hear them enough to be annoying.

[Hyperspeed]

And that Intel jingle that cheap-ass companies get paid to put on their PC commercials...

:-D

Next time a phone goes off in the cinema, instead of the polite "Please keep it down over there" you should take the Dom Jolly approach:

"HELLO! HELLO!", then maybe stick the phone in their mouths and hold their nose.

Honestly though, fancy ringtones appeal to those people who need to express themselves but mother never gave them enough encouragement. They tend to be the graffiti artists, the kids who have spiky bleached hair or those trashy girls with gypsy hoop earrings and mini-skirts.

I thought the GameBoy was the outlet for all the nicely packaged crap that talentless companies sold to ignoramouses...   mobile phones take the biscuit.

Polyphonic ringtones? Wallpaper? You could swear they had PDAs and not some 40x40 pixel, 0.01watt-speaker walkie talkie with a leopard skin cover.

[X-ray]

@ Roj:

I must say these things are really irritating. By the way, I like the 'translator,' that has to be at least equal to the phone ringing in terms of annoyance.

I remember when a friend and I went to see Passenger 57. We went during the week, in the morning so we wouldn't have all the schoolkids there making a noise. Well we had the cinema to ourselves and everything was just great, when about a quarter of the way through three kids who were 'bunking' school, in uniform came in. They were quiet at first but then one of the kids finished his Coke (in a bottle) and the other two kids wanted the empty bottle (what for, I do not know.)
The bottle ended up rolling down the stairs and there was a furious scramble with much knocking of seatbacks and heated cursing as these kids crawled and wrestled under the seats, trying to get the bottle.
This went on for at least two minutes before we lost it and gave them what-for.
To make matters worse, we found out afterwards that they didn't have tickets and they were 12 to 13, in a no under 16 cinema.
 

[X-ray]

@ Hyperspeed:

You're spot-on about the big hooped earrings: these girls had hoops that could be used as a macaw perch

[that_punk_guy]

I don't go to the cinema anyway. They smell like bus rides, and the food is all corporate licensed bullcrap.

[Karlos]

X-ray wrote:
@ Hyperspeed:

You're spot-on about the big hooped earrings: these girls had hoops that could be used as a macaw perch

Were any hair "scrunchies" evident? Sound's like chav(ettes) have reached your part of the world.

Be annoyed. Be very annoyed. :lol:

[Speelgoedmannetje]

X-ray wrote:
I think they should punish people like that by surgically implanting a tiny speaker in their inner ear that blares out their own ringtone at random intervals for a period of 5 years.

Well, one of the unofficial "torturing" methods of the Americans are that they force their captives to listen to an endlessly repeated Sesame street tune, for interrogation purposes.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Btw. if you want to avoid all this in the cinema, don't go to Hollywood movies (most of them, if not all, suck anyway)

[Cyberus]

I heard that during interrogation, Metallica was played at captives of Guantanamo bay.
Seriously!

[Cyberus]

@ X-ray

I had three kids sitting behind me talking throughout the whole of 'Return of the King'.
The thing is, the mother of one of the litte sh!ts was sitting right at the other end of the row, with a couple of younger girls, as if she didn't want anything to do with them. My mother would have come and given me a clip round the ear if I behaved like those kids. And if I put up a fuss, she would've dragged me out of the cinema by my collar, apologising profusely to the people nearby for my terrible behaviour, and then taken me home - I wouldn't have been very popular for the rest of that day, or even that week. "I spent a lot of money so you could go out" she would have said - and you know what, she would've been right.
But oh, some bleeding-heart, knit your own yoghurt, tie-die wearing, lentil eating mofo without kids of their own would say that the experience would've traumatised me. Bollocks - incidents like that taught me manners, and to have consideration for other people.

What's bad is that I, like many decent people start off being tolerant - but there's only so much I can take. Then I snap and get rude, and people look at you as if you're the villain.

I try and have consideration for others, as I'm sure many other people do. It seems there are some on this earth who think they are the centre of the universe :-P, and couldn't give a flying fcuk about anyone else. Not even when you ask them politely...

[X-ray]

@ Cyberus

You're absolutely right about the discipline. I would never have even thought of pulling some of the stunts that the teenagers today pull.

A guy at work summed it up nicely: "...when I was young, if a kid was brought home by the local bobby for causing a disturbance, the kid might already have had his ear pulled by the bobby, but he would still get another one from his father...but these days the bobby's hands are tied and if he escorts a kid home, he is greeted by a scornful, aggressive parent who sees the policeman as the problem, not their child's behaviour..."

And the ankle-biters are getting cheeky a lot earlier too.
I cringe every time I see programs like 'Super Nanny' and 'Little Angels' where a four or five year old is terrorising the family and the mother smiles benevolently and says little Jimmy can be a handful at times. They go into all this psychoanalysis of the kid, trying to find out what other 'ailment' they can label it (other than plain old naughtiness of course) and then come up with these ridiculous techniques of making him sit in a corner for X seconds, or taking one toy away. This 'treatment' can last weeks.
With me it was simple. Like all kids of that age, I was not treated as an adult, and I couldn't be reasoned with like an adult, and it was a simple smack that restored order when I got too naughty and refused to listen (as all kids do from time to time).

[KennyR]

@X-Ray & Cyberus

I understand what you're saying about badly behaved kids, but my experience is very different. I've known parents who bawl at their children at the top of their lungs and smack them for misbehavior. Those kids tend to be the worst behaved as all. Kids behaviour tends to adapt to whatever group of friends they have, not their parents, and some of them have a dual existence - nice with their parents, annoying, disrespectful little assholes with their friends. My next door neighbour is the nicest woman. Her sons are all well known by the police, and one is inside. Not her fault, for sure.

[redrumloa]

Cyberus wrote:
I heard that during interrogation, Metallica was played at captives of Guantanamo bay.
Seriously!

Metallica? OMG! That's inhuman torture! I'm serious! Metallica sucks!! :-o