Movies, Manners, and McClane

So, yeah, I know, it's been a long time since I last posted, which may mean no one is reading anymore. I'd love to say that I've been doing wild, crazy and exciting things, having adventures and escapades throughout Poland, and that this post will be a compelling account of travels and travails this past month.
But I can't.
I have no better excuse than sheer laziness.
Ok, the first week or so it was the end of the year rush, turning in books, writing evaluations, riding the bus between two cities and three jobs, etc. But then most of that finished, leaving me with only my summer job and a vastly reduced work schedule. LOTS of time to be creative and post something. All I can say is that it's summer, long days and warm nights, better for reading fluff fiction and hanging out on the patelnia than for blogging.
I've seen some movies, which I haven't done for a very long time (ever since my first job at a movie theater lo those many years ago, I kinda resent having to pay, though I do eat popcorn again now). The last one I saw was Die Hard 4.0, which is translated into Polish as The Glass Trap. I don't know if you've seen any or all of them, but the first one was set in a high-rise office building taken over by terrorists. For that one, the title made sense. But to stick with it for all the others? What about Die Harder, which takes place all over New York? Anyway, the strangest thing for me was not the titles, but the seating. In Polish theaters, when you buy your tickets, you are assigned seats, as if it was a play or opera or whatever. This does make a certain amount of sense when it's busy, and any American who's ever come late with three other people and tried to find four seats together in a dark, crowded theater will appreciate the system, but I saw Die Hard 4.0 on a Sunday matinee. Apparently, this is not a popular time to go see movies here (totally unlike the U.S.). When we came in, mere minutes before the start, there were only two other people there, in a fairly large theater. About two-thirds up from the screen, dead-center, great seats. As we looked for our own seats, it quickly became clear that we had been assigned the ones directly in front of the couple.
This is the point where our cultures clashed. My Polish friends went straight to their seats without pause or thought; these were the ones they got, no problem. In the U.S. however, if you were in this same situation, you would choose seats at least a row or two away, and the hell with what it said on your ticket. To give each other some space, a little distance, if for no other reason than so the other people can't hear the snide comments you're going to make about the movie. But this was evidently not something my friends noticed or minded, nor a consideration of the girl in the box office who gave us these seats, so, since no one else came in, there we sat, just the five of us, bunched together in the middle of a 300 seat theater.
And in any case, after the first explosion, approximately 90 seconds into the movie, I stopped thinking about it. I do love it when they blow stuff up.