Scene: my mother’s living room in Carlisle PA, a small town nestled near Harrisburg, a place somewhere near the middle of nowhere. Lunchtime

Mom: If we want to go see “Master and Commander” tonight, we should probably try first for the 7:00 because if it’s sold out we can rush on over to the other theater and try to make it to the 7:20 showing.

Me: Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll just preorder the tickets now.

Mom: You can do that?

Me: Yeah, you know, call Moviefone and order tickets that way…

Mom: I don’t know if they do that here

Me: Huh? No, they got to. It’s the best thing to happen to movies since George Lucas thought up the idea of Carrie Fisher wearing danishes on her head (note- well, I didn’t actually say that, but I said wasn’t nearly as clever).

Mom: I don’t know, I’ve never heard of it.

Me: Here, I’ll show you.

Calls 777-Film. Gets a message saying number doesn’t work and tries again. Same message.

Me: Hmm. That’s weird, I’ll just go and order them online on either Fandango.com or Moviefone.com

Mom: I don’t think you can do that here. I’ve never heard of that happening.

Me: No, it has to. You can do it anywhere.

Goes online and checks Fandango.com and Moviefone.com. No luck.

Me: That’s weird, I guess you can’t preorder tickets here.

Mom: Oh well, I guess we’ll just go for the 7 o’clock showing then.

Me (internally): What the hell is wrong with this place? How can you not preorder movie tickets? What the hell do people do?