Poppet Goes to See Coraline, Lollipop Theater and being Haunted by Neil Gaiman

Poppets like movies.

I like Poppets.

Lollipop Theater managed to achieve their goal of trending world wide, and I promised this story, which is about the first time the Most Adventurous Red went to the Movies, to see Coraline.

Which is funny because Neil Gaiman is sort of haunting me.

Of course he can't really haunt me. He's quite alive, hale, healthy and looks to be a perfectly nice human being all around. I suppose I'll explain some other time. Mr. Gaiman is most certainly not terribly aware of my existence, so the status of his haunting me is mostly irrelevant. Except that I wanted to see the movie initally, and then later found out that he had written it, so he was a surprise. "Boo."

Which is probably why I took all the pictures last year, saw the movie, enjoyed the company and played with the website for Coraline the Movie and never, ever wrote about it. Because there is silly, and well . . . there is slightly absurd.

And then there is the "no one will ever believe me." kind of thing.

Righto then . . . .

So back to the point. Last Year we went to see Coraline because it had a mouse circus in it and I love mice with a deep, deep childhood love, the way some little girls love horses. My mother did not share my love of mice or worms, or frogs. This led to my hiding them, and her eventually making me put away my own clothes and staying out of my dresser drawers.

But mice most of all - so when I saw the trailer or snippet with the Mouse Circus, I was going.

The Most Adventurous Red informed me that he was going too. Poppets love Neil Gaiman and sometimes pretend to be him. I wasn't sure that it was a good idea to bring a Poppet to a movie theater - things are very big and dark and sticky, but the Most Adventurous Red told me to quit being such a worry wart, after all I wouldn't want to deprive him of the Mouse Circus would I?

Well no. I'm not that mean.

So he picked out a jacket with a comfy pocket and settled himself in. He wouldn't really need a ticket since we were bringing his seat. At least that was the initial reasoning.

This is the Drinne's Eye View - I found I was very nervous about being transport.

Everything seemed normal and movieish at first, but then I had realized I hadn't been to the movies in an actual movie theater in a very, very long time. Possibly about 3 years. Some things had changed. Like the sizes.

Apparently, everyone who goes to movie theaters now is a giant. I had no idea. But we ordered 2 small popcorns and 3 small cokes and this is what we got!

This is not an acceptable version of "small". As a matter of fact they look suspiciously like what used to be called "large" for the popcorn not so long ago, and "Xtra Large" for the sodas.

There was also a new and baffling temple to Things Bready. The Most Adventurous Red wondered if perhaps it was a tribute to Indiana Jones.

On closer observation however he thought that maybe they were trying to make a face.

The Pretzel Bites looked like they might be good for carving into Poppety easy chairs. We though about it for a while - it might happen someday.

We went inside and saw the wonderful amazingness that was Coraline.



And I decided that at least if someone is haunting me, that I'm lucky it is a gentleman who makes really cool stuff and inspires other people to make really cool stuff too. I started reading more of Mr. Gaiman after meeting Lisa. He writes people like they really are, like they wish they were, and like they are afraid they might really be. I am developing a deep appreciation of that.

We saw it in 2-d that first time and soon after that saw it again in 3-d. I was glad that we did it that way. We used that system again for everything but Avatar. The world of Coraline was beautiful and the story (which I had not read yet) was wonderful and I liked it with the part of me that was like Coraline's mother and the part of me that was a little like Coraline.

We stayed until the very, very end. Because we always do. The Perfectly Normal Husband always claps for the Best Boy and Key Grip and Gaffers.

In Coraline they were all listed together as:

Engineering, Electrical & Grips
Richard Malinowski	Practical Lighting Engineer
Chris Steele (III)	Gaffer
James Wilderhancock	Gaffer
Nils Benson	Gaffer
Michael Gall	Gaffer
Dan Ackerman	Gaffer

And we were very happy that there was anyone like a Key Grip or Best Boy to clap for.

And we always applaud for for the accountant on the behalf of the Perfectly Normal Husband, because he's way to modest to point out how important accountants are. In Coraline the accountant was:

Accounting
Jamison Empey	Post-Production Sound Accountant

And then it was really, really over. When we left the theater to go out into the hallway where all the other theaters in the building discharge their audiences back into the tunnels that lead out to the real world the Most Adventurous Red saw a challenge he could not resist and so he climbed to the top!

At which point he found out that the whole top of Rascals Fruity Mountain was curved and promptly slid. Thus earning his second chip.

We think it makes him look rakish.

It is most certainly well earned.

So thanks to Mr. Gaiman, and Mr. Selick and hundreds of dedicated other people we started going to the movies again. We were actually seeing movies at the same time other people were again. It was very nice and felt very human.

Which is why this story is posted after the Tweetathon for Lollipop Theater that we mentioned in the last post.

Here is a link where you can make a direct donation.

http://www.trendlollipoptheater.com/

The Most Adventurous Red, thanks you for your support!