CAGAYAN de Oro has only two malls whose cinemas have remained open. The other malls have simply given up, perhaps with no thanks to Netflix.
The first mall of the two has cinemas whose chairs smell like sweat.
The second mall has cinemas that are always clean, and each movie watcher gets freebies: bottled water and even popcorn.
The Cagayanon who still goes to these cinemas doesn’t have to make a wild guess on the malls I’m referring to.
Guess where I watched “The Naked Gun”? At the second mall’s cinema, of course, where I got free bottled water.
So, was “The Naked Gun” worth all the trouble of rushing from uptown to downtown? Let’s just say I was smiling while watching it, and it kept me awake. That’s kind of my three-star rating since I usually fall asleep now while watching movies. Let’s just say all the ado about its stars Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson dating somehow piqued my curiosity. Let’s just say “Freakier Friday” is way much funnier. Let’s just say wait for it on Netflix. Or HBO. Whatever.
My one big wish is for SM City CDO Uptown to include its cinemas in the renovation, preferably with a Director’s Club. So, I don’t have to waste an hour traveling from uptown to downtown and vice versa, a total of two hours, to watch a movie whose jokes are not making me laugh like a hyena.
Yes, SM Uptown is finally leveling up. I’m sure the uptowner who works in the downtown area will also prefer to drop by SM Uptown instead of the downtown malls once the former has the shops and cinemas that he likes.
Watching movies is part of my weekly Artist’s Date which, per Julia Cameron’s advice, should be done alone. Thus, watching movies alone. And it’s now possible to be literally alone inside the cinema if no one else is there. Eating at restos and cafes alone. Shopping alone. Weekending alone. Traveling alone. There’s so much freedom in that. I wait for no one. I simply go.
There was a time during the Covid pandemic when I stopped writing this column for six months because I got tired writing about the pandemic. It so happened that I already had Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way,” bought years ago but remained unread since I had many other books to read.
Staying home during the pandemic finally gave me the chance to read, and when I started having writer’s block, I remembered Cameron’s book. So, I read it, and — voila! — was able to resume writing, thanks to the daily Morning Pages that I began to write as part of Cameron’s unblocking-the-writer’s-block tips. The pandemic lockdowns made the weekly Artist’s Date impossible then. Good thing writing daily was enough to make me write again.
I did panic when I couldn’t write anymore. Writing has always been one of my coping mechanisms. Not writing was so strange to me, it almost felt like I wasn’t me anymore. It didn’t affect my reading habit, though, I was still able to continue reading books.
And that’s what I do on Sundays, the only day I’m home nowadays. Reading new books, re-reading old books, to help me decide which to keep.
