Thursday, March 11, 2004

I’ve figured it out, gentle reader. My glasses are my PhD–it’s like my prescription is professorial or something. While picking up some contact solution for the ol’ peepers at Target yesterday evening, I decided to wander over to the movie section to see what was new. I was daydreaming about getting LASIK surgery when a cute brunette materialized out of nowhere.

“Can I ask you a stupid question?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied, ready to impart my wisdom with a blue-light special flourish.

She wanted to know the merits of fullscreen and widescreen formats, and I held forth with relish.

“Ah, so it’s about the future,” she concluded, widescreen version of Schindler’s List in hand.

Indeed, with the increasing popularity of widescreen televisions, it seems that widescreen versions have more staying power. Besides, fullscreen editions usually feature more cropping than a beet combine in the Urals, and that’s like asking to have your movie experience circumcised. If you were sitting at a concert, would you want to listen to Elgar with a couple of sixteenth notes shaved off in every measure?

If only someone would express some curiosity in pop-up advertisements. Yep, anytime now.