Last evening we visited the Cinema. We have been there on several occasions through the last 12 years. A number of those sojourns were to the IMax Theatre. Yesterday was not…but it was still a big and empty movie emporium. I am accustomed to an extremely large crowd when I visit the Destin Commons…with kids and harried parents and excitement all around. I was alone in the stadium seating theatre until just before the start of the show…when 5 people came in.
Theatres have suffered financially during our 3 calendar year Pandemic. I am dismayed that many of them have been able to remain open. One of my primary retirement goals at the outset of the adventure was to attend the movies at least twice a week. This goal I kept for the first years of the adventure. Since our Pandemic I did not visit our local Theatre for over a year…and after that…2 or 3 times.
Nightmare Alley was a wonderful study in human nature and peoples subseptibillity to Con Men and Grifters. The story illustrated that there are individuals who work diligently at protecting themselves from real work as their study is how to separate their unsuspecting clients from the money that they have earned through their labor. Often what appears as miraculous or magnificent…is no more than a practiced and elaborate scam.
It is another chilly day at Miramar Beach…yet several degrees warmer than Carbondale, Illinois. I have succeded or exceeded my goal of 10 thousand steps per day…for the last 4 days. For me this is a fitness goal that I have worked on for over a year and 7 days a week. Retirement has been a pleasant experience and has thus far gone by rapidly. I was talking with Ira kaye and Ron regarding the key to my retirement contentment…having hobbie goals that I work on daily…
Cigar for the Old Man And The Sea…may be in order for today. I spied a Cigar Store yesterday evening on the way to the Theatre.
The Happy Traveler 
I too believe that movie theatres are under threat but not from the pandemic that has only hastened things along. since movies were being produced in a digital format it started the rot. at first it was multiplex – three movies in the one theatre kept them open and the home movie branch of the industry at bay. now with large flat screen televisions in every home that are now more or less a computer in their own right, we can download movies straight into our homes. the movie industry is still going strong, lots of ‘B’ movies (made for television) keep the pennies rolling in so that big budget movies can still be made. at first the industry believed that showing films on TV was bad for the industry, then they discovered that it was a godsend. The Magnificent Seven, we all saw in a cinema yet still hardly broke even. then it was bought and shown on television every Christmas and, if memory serves, made 80 million from that deal. this was in the days when BBC Christmas television, in the UK, was a bit special – not the same old rubbish with a sprig of holy in the corner of the screen. it is the same with shopping – the high street stores are closing at an alarming rate, why go trailing around from shop to shop looking for that present for gran, when you can with a couple of clicks have it sent to her door (next day) from Amazon? The times they are a changing.
So very true, my friend!