Some life lessons are free. Some cost you $3.50

Wednesday Kegan and I escaped the morning heat by ducking into the Garland Theater for the 9:30 FREE showing of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs . I was bummed to miss this movie when it first hit theaters because, growing up, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was one of my most favorite books. (That’s right, it was a book first, folks.) And I force fed the story to Kegan often enough during his formative years that he learned to love it, too.

I’m fairly sure this book gave rise to my love of bad-for-me comfort food. But the movie almost scared me straight. (Yeah, almost. Did you notice Wednesday’s post about the all-you-can-eat spaghetti?) No, really, the movie carried an underlying message that the book seemed to skim over …

On the way home I asked Kegan what he thought about the subversive implications put forth by the magic food machine in the sky that eventually takes on a sinister, gluttonous stomach-like appearance. He flashed me that endearing “WTH?” teenage look.

I was like, “Seriously? You didn’t think the water-dropping mechanism resembled a uvula? And you didn’t think the sounds that rumbled through the machine when they were trying to kill it sounded like an irritated bowel?” He was like, “Yeah, I can see that. But I totally missed the whole ‘food churned from the bottom of the machine like gas with oily discharge’ thing.”

Thankfully the Garland is offering up a summer’s worth of life-lesson movies … Fantastic Mr. Fox, Tooth Fairy … but after our Meatball experience, I think I’ll be taking my almost-adult kid to the midnight movies. First up, a movie that was also a book … Fight Club … (no, Brad Pit is NOT in the book) … let’s see what he has to say about that.

MIDNIGHT MOVIES AT THE GARLAND

Shows start at … you guessed it … midnight

And the bottomless popcorn is always $4.75

July 9 & 10

Fight Club

July 16 & 17

Benny & Joon

July 23 & 24

Rocky Horror Picture Show

July 30 & 31

Pink Floyd The Wall

August 6 & 7

Team America World Police

August 13 & 14

The Wiz

August 20 & 21

Donnie Darko

August 27 & 28

Snatch

September 3 & 4

The Royal Tenanbaums