The Sad Fate of the World's Greatest Invention

Everyone loves seeing movies in the theater, because the screen is so freakin' huge. Plus when you throw shit at the screen at home, usually you're the one who has to clean it up later, unless you're smart enough to throw something the dog's not too proud to eat off the floor, like steak. But regardless, Omar Bricks has always had one major problem with seeing movies in the theater, and it's not the rule about discharging firearms during the exciting parts or the mandatory frisking for fireworks. No, the real pain in my remarkably-tolerant ass is the way they keep the movie playing like fascists even when you've really got to piss but don't want to miss the best part of the movie, which filmmakers strategically place right at the optimal time for a piss break to ensure repeat business.

Normally I just end up pissing in a trash can in the back of the theater, where I can still see the screen, but that's not a perfect solution either. Sometimes the trash is really full and you get splashback like from a cheap Korean urinal, and other times some 90-year old woman chooses that moment to pop into the theater to check and see if this movie has that delightful Kevin Costner in it, only to grab a stroke-inducing eyeful of your man-monster. So this was clearly a national problem worthy of serious scientific inquiry.

That put me at a slight disadvantage, since the only thing I know about science is that you can't freeze gasoline. But God never slams a door without kicking out a window, and my lack of technical know-how has always been made up for with ingenuity, which is another word for balls. And that's about as good an explanation as any for how I came up with the Movie Theater Remote Control®.

Because when I started thinking about it, not being able to pause a movie in the theater was only one of a number of problems with our antiquated movie-projecting systems. You also couldn't rewind to see cool parts of movies again, or fast-forward through the lame parts to get to something good. And the lack of a volume control was a ridiculous oversight. Only an idiot would try to sell you a TV without a volume knob, but we've been buying that same bullshit from the theaters for years. It was time to wise up and kick the man in the pants.

Most of the tech for the MTRC® came from plans I found in a dumpster outside of NASA. Did you know NASA locks their dumpsters? True as shit. And did you know you can pick a dumpster lock with a Bic pen and a Zippo lighter? That's one to grow on, kids.

The early prototypes didn't work exactly as planned, in fact the first one ended up blacking out most of Flatbush during a screening of The Country Bears. Not that you heard anyone complaining. Version 2.0 was far more effective, only too much so, if such a thing is possible. The problem was that while I was fast-forwarding through one of the many lame parts of Hidalgo, the MTRC® was actually controlling all the projectors in the multiplex at once, so although at least half the people there were being saved from lame bullshit, the other half were missing the best part of Starsky & Hutch, or at least seeing it at twice its intended speed. That's when I learned that as cool as a car battery can be for ultimate juice, sometimes AAs get the job done more appropriately. Plus you don't have to design a special harness to sneak a couple of AA batteries into a movie theater under your jacket.

Version 3.0 was actually a step backward, but for some reason it ran the Icee machine in the lobby just fine, so I kept that one for future experimentation. Version 4.01 was the real winner, and came in a sweet lime-green finish as well. I was set.

And for a few months, I was in movie-going heaven. Even with the rewinding for cool parts, and pausing for a couple of piss breaks, most movies only ended up taking about 45 minutes, since you didn't have to sit through any of the trailers or bullshit "character development" parts of movies. Sure, there were always a couple of whiners in the audience who wanted to see Barbara Streisand crying in her soup, but those knobs were in the minority and they didn't know who to whine to anyway since it wasn't like I was advertising my role as the dude with the remote. But eventually, I have to admit I got a little cocky and people started to catch on since I was the guy yelling "Bo-ring!" whenever Michelle Pfeiffer came on the screen and suddenly the movie would zap forward to a ninja fight or whatever.

I guess word got out, since things really came to a head last year when I paused The Bourne Supremacy so I could take a leak and when I came back, those fuckers were looking at me like I just ate the baby Jesus with Vidalia onions. I swear, these pious motherfuckers don't piss? Am I watching a movie with the cast of Waterworld again? Well excuse me, you inconsiderate dicks, but not everyone here can recycle their whiz and drink it again. Some of us have to pay eight bucks for a Mr. Pibb that's at least three times the size of our own bladder, and some of us are too modest to piss it down the aisle like Southern royalty. Next thing you know they're going to tell me these egomaniacs have never intentionally thrown up in the sink of the men's room at a fast food restaurant to make room for seconds.

Even getting banned for life from that theater wasn't a huge deal, since disguises are half the fun of going to the movies anyway. But what really sunk my battleship was that after the word got out, everybody wanted me to make them a MTRC®. First my neighbor Mitch, then Red Bagel, and then Roland McShyster. I don't even know what that guy wanted with one; I don't think he's ever been in a movie theater in his life. I asked him if he wanted to go see Star Wars last week and he thought I was talking about a reality show cross between Star Search and The Running Man.

At first things were going great, and I was making some nice coin to dick around in my garage, which has always been a dream of mine. But before I knew it, everybody had a MTRC® (or Griswald Dreck's knock-off version, the JapZapper®) and going to the theater, even in a fun disguise, became a total nightmare. Nobody could agree on what were the cool or lame parts of movies, and with 300 people in the theater there were so many piss breaks that watching a movie was like trying to play Quake on a Commodore 64.

Hence the sad but valuable lesson I've lived and learned to pass on to you, commune flock: If you ever find yourself in a position of absolute power, don't fuck it up by assuming that everybody's got good taste in movies. Bricks out.

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