Yap Yap, Bang Bang

I'm trying to decide whether James Joseph Cialella is a crusader with a poorly developed sense of scope or a complete criminal idiot. It may be a bit of both.

Cialella was attending a Christmas day showing of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" when the family in front of him started talking. He argued with them, threw popcorn (much further than I would ever go, in reality) and then, after a period of escalation, approached the father of the family and shot him in the arm.

I'm of two minds on this. Part of me figures it was just a matter of time before the casual, psychic violence of the movie theater turned into actually puncture wounds. I've been involved in a few altercations where that peculiar sort of unreasonable rage takes over, and the punishment you want dolled out really does not fit the crime of being obnoxious in a movie theater. I've wanted folks to burn alive for throwing candy at me, in other words.

But the other part accepts the fact that when you go to a movie, you are there for a communal experience and every community has its fair share of idiots, loudmouths and young people who couldn't sit still if you dangled free college tuition in front of them. I've come to sort of accept this because it no longer depends on the subject matter of the movie. I've had to tell people to calm down during Oscar bait, been scolded for cheering Sam Jackson during "Snakes on a Plain," had to tell adults to quit kicking my seat during animated children's fare and had candy thrown at me during "Singing in the Rain." People are rude everywhere you go and if you go to a movie theater, you must, MUST expect rude behavior. A movie theater is not a santuary, it's a place where people congregate. It's why I haven't been to a movie in two months and when go, gravitate toward the screenings when no one will be around.

Still, there's a sick sort of schadenfreudeistic thrill out of reading a story when a theater goer actually capped a motherfucker for talking during a movie. That's why the story (as of 1:44 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 27) sits on the top of CNN.com. It's the story they find the most imporant out of all the things happening in the world right now.

I don't find it odd that CNN gave it this much weight, as it seems most people have their awful movie theater experiences list. That's sort of sad, but if the violence keeps escalating, I'm either going to have to go to more movies or fewer of them, depending on what sort of thing I want to see.