Note to Myself # 11

The smell of freshly popped popcorn

is one of my favorite smells.

I think God smiles when

S/He gets a good whiff

of buttered popcorn.

My theater-of-choice,

as you may already know,

is The Grand Cinema,

one of Tacoma's sparkling gems.

It's a non-profit movie theater

that shows mostly independent films.

You can count of having seen lots of nominees there

when Golden Globes and Oscars are handed out.

Right now

LaLa Land

Jackie

Manchester by the Sea

and

Lion are playing.

How's that for a line up?

(And there's Tuesday film series, too,

with films and documentaries that you'd never see

except at the Grand.)

If you're in the know,

you buy an annual membership at the Grand.

For that ($45 for an individual)

besides supporting independent film

you get a discounted admission,

free parking in a lot half a block away

(that's locked at 9 p.m. so go to an afternoon movie

if you can)

and 

a small-size bag of free popcorn

or credit of that cost towards a larger size.

They use Orville R popcorn

and real butter.

Not like the for-profit theaters

that put some kind of greasy yellow chemical

on top of kernels that come from who-knows-where.

I generally avoid that stuff,

both for health reasons and because you can buy

two giant jugs of unpopped Orville 

at Costco for what you'd pay for the medium size serving

at the for-profit concession stands

and most of it goes to waste anyway

because there's no way I could eat that much.

Give me a cup of fluffy kernels

and I'm satiated.

So that's my riff on popcorn.

It's that or the news.

I just saw a pop-up alert that says

DT is having a press conference.

I've heard enough about golden rain.

Enough, in fact, to lose my . . . .

well, you know.