Text meme from IG describing the apathy of minimum wage staff for unnecessary time restrictions on event admissions. Tl;dr "time is a meaningless human construct" because sometimes it really is.

Back in the day there was an experiment in interactive presentations we were testing called 'Interfilm'. This was at the old AMC Burbank. Maybe half the seats - 75? - were outfitted with joysticks and at key points the audience would vote with buttons for story choices. 🧵 #vh1storytellers #filmsky

In my staff days we used to joke about how we wanted to make our exits. Finish out the last closing shift with leaving all the mustard in the freezer. "Any manager, there's a man with a gun at the office door" when the armored transport came by for a pickup. #minimumwage #vh1storytellers #thuglife

#ToriAmos #DavidBowie #VH1Storytellers #ScrapyardRadio #KRFF959 #RadioFreeFargo

VH1, Storytellers. Bowie, Stevie Nicks, Counting Crows, Jewel and many more. This album is pretty cool but the liner notes with the meaning of the songs it is even betterer. 2000 Interscope Records, USA first edition CD. #vh1storytellers #interscoperecords #aurender #cdcollection #storytellers

#blueskyartshow #openhouse When I went back to school I stuck with classes I knew would be easy, one was a computer science gig with an early assignment to build a binary calculator in Excel. I had some fun with it and dressed it up like an old Tandy. Prof thought I'd cheated. #vh1storytellers 🧵 1/4

And a monkey you can't imagine climbed off my back.

My neighbor is a @*^+&# and I'm stuck swallowing having been punked, but #todaywasagoodday. 6/6

And thanks, mom.

#vh1storytellers #playingintraffic #trafficcourt #luck #resist #everywaylikemj #justdoit

Poster for the 2013 film 'Oblivion', released during the events of this thread.

I was going to poke at the carcass of #pacifictheatres a few more times but instead there's a couple of GOOD stories.

I was GM'ing at the Winnetka 21 through fall '12, until the company found some favored veteran to step in. #filmsky #35mm #vh1storytellers #oblivion

The poster from the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie, with Johnny Depp standing alone in the fog, sword in hand.

Pirates was a victory lap. Turning the booth at Pasadena had taken time and work, and presented some fun challenges. But there were no walkouts, our seniors all stayed, and we got a whole new pipeline of talent going. Most of that work was them anyway #filmsky #35mm #vh1storytellers #projection

At Santa Anita, Pasadena, Culver, it would take 8hrs to write show schedules. Glendale/Winnetka scheduled staff support, but even with a pair of helpers it was a day's (24hrs) work.
At Arclight Sherman Oaks it took a whole team almost 3 days to do it. #filmsky #35mm #vh1storytellers #avatar

Movie poster for Transformers (07),with a blue robot eye looking out over the curvature of the Earth.

#pacifictheatres back then had 2 sites in Pasadena, Paseo and the older Hastings. I worked Paseo. *Worst* Pacific day was at Hastings. I closed July 3, I remember making a joke to the sold-out midnight about a GI-Joe movie (then they went and made a GI Joe)... #filmsky #35mm #vh1storytellers

Movie poster for the film 'Minority Report'. Tom Cruise looking very serious.

An ebay pic of the befuddling Cinemeccanica V5. Pretty much everything below the gate (bottom third, roughly) was completely unlike any of AMC's hardware.

After AMC bought General Cinemas, those sites were seeded with AMC mgrs to ease transitions. This was my intro to the Sherman Oaks twin. I was to open the 5-Plex one day & they confirmed first I knew projection because their opening mgrs ran 1st shows. #filmsky #35mm #projection #vh1storytellers

I spent a few months in the booth at the Grove before moving into management with #pacifictheatres. Before Decurion's culture stomped the booths at Pasadena or Sherman Oaks, they inspired a near-total mutiny at the Grove. Most of their booth just walked. #35mm #filmsky #vh1storytellers

I absolutely judge movies based on the audiences they bring in. Was forever soured on the Scream films by all the tools I had to kick out that first weekend.

Musicals aren't my thing but #MoulinRouge is an all-time favorite thanks to an AC breakdown #filmsky #35mm #vh1storytellers

The poster for the 1996 film 'Executive Decision'. The silhouette of a stealth fighter in the foreground frames the image, with Kurt Russell's face between the tail fins, the title above the wing, and the credits underneath.

Weekend midnights were de rigueur, but Thursday night midnights were new then. Mgrs didn't like them because it meant another late night, we didn't like it in booth because it meant putting unscreened prints in front of audiences. #ExecutiveDecision #filmsky #35mm #vh1storytellers

We got 4 prints of #GoldenEye, each with different trailer assignments, so we used different titles on the tails to distinguish between them. Goldeneye, The Man with the Goldeneye Gun, For Goldeneyes Only, and Goldeneyefinger. We were such dorks... #filmsky #35mm #vh1storytellers

Part of the reputation in booth just came from finding my own mistakes before anybody else did. Once, I goofed.

#EscapeFromLA was a scope print that we started with flat trailers. One Tuesday night, the projector missed its lens change. #filmsky #35mm #projection #vh1storytellers #callmesnake

AMC & Pacific were each a mix, but both a net positive.

My goal is to make things work. In any situation, I'm either going to pick up different things to try, or things to avoid.

Contributions made by #BestBuy were exclusively to the "Don't do this" list. #vh1storytellers #backtowork

Installation-in-progress of a suite of display fixtures for LG televisions. Contractors handled flooring and electrical, all other wiring and setup was us.

A tech is working on an extended lift during a remodel-in-progress of a Best Buy store.

Nearing completion of a Best Buy remodel. Our team has built all the new black fixtures, installed all displays and demos (Sonos underway in the corner), and set all product. In the back we're building cabinets and installing kitchens.

While I was at #PCC, I picked up an hourly gig with #bestbuy in Pasadena. Started in merch, moved into the store's inventory spot.

With the move to #CSUCI I joined an overnight regional facilities group. Installations, repairs & support, remodels. Real fun stuff. #vh1storytellers #backtowork

The movie poster from Iron Man 2, with Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man standing angled towards the viewer, back-to-back with Don Cheadle's War Machine

"Ladies & gentlemen welcome to Arclight Sherman Oaks and our midnight opening of Iron Man 2. With Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, and Don Cheadle as Terrence Howard- "

Got the biggest laugh I'm ever going to get in my life. #filmsky #vh1storytellers

View of campus from the rain-flooded entryway of the school library. A big blue reflection under a big blue sky.

#CSUCI was a mix. Got the degree I'd been working towards, but was left with a lower sense than ever of its value.

From the outside looking in, degrees were overrated. The world is being destroyed by people with degrees, there's no inherent greatness there. #vh1storytellers #backtoschool #bluesky

Photo of the reflection pool and Main Hall at the entrance to Pasadena City College

Photo of the Shatford Library at Pasadena City College. In front of the library stands a bronze statue of a man. A shirt and pants have been painted onto the statue, which gets sillier the more time you spend looking at it...

From a panel on activism re: racial incarceration. There were many more of these than the few I went to.

Associate diplomas in Business, Behavioral Science, Political Science. Honors I won't list because this is showboating enough already. Really, nothing more than what I'd been doing for a paycheck and a hobby. Might as well have the paper to show for it.

Pasadena City College was... easy.

Seriously, you want to do well in college? Skip it, go live for 20yrs, find what interests you and pursue it, then come back and coast thru a degree to validate what you know.

#backtoschool #vh1storytellers #pasadenacitycollege #pcc

He was faking.

There was no last straw with #pacifictheatres as there had been with #amctheatres, we'd just grown apart.

Two tenured runs across two chains. I was still only getting better but nowhere to go at either. Hadn't even watched a movie in months. #filmsky #35mm #vh1storytellers

The average ~2hr movie is just over two miles of film start to finish. Except in reel-to-reel shows, those miles of film are assembled from component reels into one single contiguous length of film, wrapped around a structural ring. #filmsky #projection #vh1storytellers #mulhollandfalls

The inside of a film projector's lamphouse, which is filled with the shards of an exploded xenon bulb.

The lens of a digital projector while a presentation is underway. An optical effect of the lens makes the light appears to flare in brightness in midair between the lens and the port glass window.

Pacific Theaters was a challenge. Much less political/cutthroat than AMC. But also very poor at cultivating technical skills.

My Pacific years started in the Grove's booth after their entire projection staff walked out. Whole team just bounced. #filmsky #vh1storytellers

Winnetka was one of the buildings that Pacific was trying to sell, so if you got transferred there it meant Pacific wanted to sell you too.
They'd been for sale for years though, so the designation was really more about funneling money to the Grove or the Arclights. #filmsky #vh1storytellers

Print moves were insane. There were safety clamps but we never used them. We would take a big tapered acrylic pizza board, wedge it under the film, swing it off the platter with the board as backing and let Jesus and/or gravity take the wheel. #filmsky #35mm #projection #vh1storytellers

ALSO: @paramountplus.com has posted a ton of #VH1Storytellers episodes as well, skeeps!!

cc: @willhodge.bsky.social

Listening to #Bowie #VH1Storytellers on the train home….boring journey made fun 👍🏻🎶