01/24/2001

By / The Dallas Morning News

Good morning, citizens and spectators. Today begins the year 4699, according to the Chinese lunar calendar. It is the "Year of the Snake." Y4snaKe?

This is also, according to the Dallas school district's This Week newsletter, National School Nurse Day. How much celebrating can school nurses do in the middle of the cold and flu season? Now, spectating ahead:

What good is an inaugural address if you cannot apply it directly to your life? President Bush said, "I ask you to be citizens. Citizens, not spectators."

A noble thought. And, at current prices, who can afford to be a spectator?

For example: Been to a movie lately? My cinemaspouse Martha and I took in a film Friday night, violating two rules of film fans: (1) Never go to a night movie and (2) never go to a movie on date night. When the sun goes down, movie tickets go up. On date night, chatterboxes forsake the art of the film for the thrill of the hunt.

We saw Cast Away, with Tom Hanks and a volleyball. Tickets were $7 each. It was a pretty good film – worth maybe five bucks a ticket. If a movie costs more than $5, it ought to have a texture that inspires you to contemplate your life or at least have a spaceship that saves Earth or a boat that takes three hours to sink.

Because it was date night, I bought Martha's dinner (the frugal hubby special, I mistakenly thought): medium drink, a hot dog and a bag of M&M's. Yours truly had a medium drink, and, when it came time to order popcorn, I panicked at the counter and upgraded from the $4.50 medium bag to the $5 large bag. The "large" bag of today is similar to the "small" bag of five or six years ago. What a rip-off. When you buy $5 worth of movie popcorn, you ought to have to lease a big rig to hold it. Or at least borrow a pillowcase.

And, old-timers, when you buy movie popcorn, you hope in your heart that it is as magnificent as that first bag of movie popcorn you bought for two dimes decades ago. We are such dreamers. Ah, but dreams, like popcorn, go stale.

If gasoline or coffee aped popcorn prices, we'd have Federal Trade Commission gouging investigations all over the place. If there were truth in advertising, theater signs would read "Popcorn Emporium – Movies shown today."

How people with kids can afford to go to movies is a mystery. You almost need to book a trip to the movies like you'd book a trip to the Bahamas – get an agent to find the best deal. Can priceline.com help?

So, we paid $14 for tickets and $17 for traditional movie treats – an astounding $31 for two people to go to a movie. No wonder some theater lobbies have automatic teller machines.

Someone should hire kids to "scalp" popcorn for half the price theaters charge. Consumers will get a good deal and in two or three weekends, at half the theater's price, the kids still will have made enough money to attend college out of state.

So, prices are turning some of us into sit-at-home citizens, not spectators. We're sending a message with our VCRs. Some of us take only very special trips to theaters to see very special movies.

Of course, by the time the next "very special movie" arrives (perhaps a documentary called The Great Popcorn Scandal of the New Millennium), banks will have loan offices in theater lobbies. That way, with a little paperwork and a co-signer, a family of four can see a film and share a $200 bag of popcorn big enough to last through the coming attractions.

Surely, concessions are not worth more to our souls than the movies. Hey! Stop! Don't raise the ticket prices – they're already higher than popcorn in Dallas.

Larry Powell can be reached at 214-977-8487; P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, TX 75265, fax 214-977-8319 or at .

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