Theater in Clarksville?!?!

It was astounding to me to find an actual professional theater in this tiny Middle Tennessee city.  And a theater with a fairly robust schedule at that!  The Roxy Regional Theater is a small former movie theater in downtown Clarksville that has been providing professional theater for twenty years.  We had the joy of seeing their recent production of Spamalot.

The quirkiness of the show was apparent before we even entered the theater.  While we walked towards the door, a knight offered samples of Spam from a silver platter.  As soon as the show began, the quirk just continued from silly bios in the program to songs like "He is Not Dead Yet" and "The Song that Goes Like This."   Being a fan of Monty Python's Holy Grail, I was delighted by the familiar jokes.  Seeing the familiar plot mapped out in song was a joy.

The cast was strong overall although some members' voices did not carry as well as others.  The production did not use live music and instead had recorded instrumental.  This is not as nice as having live music, but for such a small company, I can see why they have to make this choice.  In fact, I think it is probably more difficult to act/sing along with a recording since there is no conductor making up for singer mistakes.

While there are downsides to a small production, the upside is the intimate viewing experience provided by a small space.  I look forward to seeing some of the Roxy's other 2013-2014 productions.

Your Apocalypse Viewing Guide

I consider myself a slight aficionado (not an expert) of disaster movies.  From the overdone bravado, Independence Day, to the cheesy dialog, insert any made-for-tv disaster movie title here, nothing shows the ability of vastly different people to rise above natural human greed for the good of society like a disaster movie.  These cinema gems are really an anthem to socialism.

Therefore, in preparation for the impending end of the world, I offer this brief list of educational movies.  Some of these films are by no means what would be considered apocalyptic or post-apocalypitic cinema; however, they are all madly entertaining or informative for their own reasons.  While it may seem obvious to begin with Apocalypse Now, movies such as this one will only get you accustomed to the horror you may see in the post-apacalypic world, which is a good skill-set to have, but not completely useful in your early preparation for the apocalypse.  Instead, begin with WALL-E, the 2008 Disney feature about how humans destroyed the planet then went into space to get fat.  While a lazy obese human race does seem horrible, and at times horribly probable, the movie is light and will therefore give you a "toe in the water" entrance into your future doom.

Next, 2012 because it presents every possible natural disaster in the confines of 158 minutes and really shows you how the 1% will stick it to us all.  Similarly, The Day After Tomorrow is an epic natural disaster movie complete with terrible dialog but despite the sequence of events being rather compressed, the science seems quite probable.  These two movies won't really give you an idea of how to survive, unless you have billions of dollars to build some kind of crazy ark, but they will give you an idea of the signs of impending doom and how the unprepared will fall apart and most likely die in a fit of tears.  Most importantly, they will give you a taste of how to defy authority because most likely, see comment about the 1%, those in authority will not have your best interests at heart.

To be truly prepared, you can't only focus on typical catastrophic disasters be they natural or human encouraged; you must also look at those disasters that seem like nothing at all for as T.S. Eliot writes in The Hollow Men, "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."  For this preparation, we must look to Contagion and I am Legend both great movies about disease caused apocalypse.  In case the apocalypse has a more biblical foundation, you should also watch Shaun of the Dead, a 2004 gem about how to deal with a zombie attack.

Once you have grasped the actual ending of society as we know it, you now must prepare for how to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.  Forget about money and learn how to shoot a gun.  Start with The Book of Eli because while the violence and plot are a slight distraction from your goal of learning to survive, you will be able to pick up some good tidbits here and there.  The ultimate education will come from The Road.  While it may frustrate you to not know how the world ends in the movie, that is really secondary to what you will learn about topics such as avoiding cannibals, cooking can goods, and adapting shopping carts for long range travel.

And maybe the end is not near, but watching these movies will at least be entertaining and if the apocalypse does happen this year, consider yourself prepared!  In the meantime, stop wasting time.  Those famous attractions you have always wanted to see, they could be underwater next year!  That expensive fashionable item you have been eyeing, pretty soon we might all be wearing rags!  The extra piece of cheesecake you don't think you should have, you will wish you ate it if you are soon living off of canned beans!