And ye verily... never was there a tale such as this.A little while ago, Tom happened to mention a trip to the Moonlight Cinema... and it got me to thinking...
Once upon a time in the land of myths and legends, there lived two Knights. There was the Pink Knight, who was said to have too much style for one gender, and verily it was so. And there was the Knight who went by many names. The most common of these was "He who searches for the Holy Grail and has found it to be shaped in the form of a redheaded damsel and verily is pleased with that". He was also know as "The Knight who's name most resembles a Meatloaf song" and "The Butch Knight".
And these two knights did often venture forth, slaying those of Tragic Fashion and rescuing Maids and Squires Fair to do unspeakable things to their naked forms with baby oil and chocolate topping.
And they had gone forth to the Sacred Glade in the Enchanted Gardens and had seen the Horror that was Rocky, and verily it was horrible, and they had seen the Fiction that had been Pulped.
But the people were not satisfied. A cry came forth for the two Knights to don their battle garb once more, take up the Holy Blanket and the Blessed Sofa Cushions, and go forth to the Land of the Danone Faeries and the List God and his Magic Rope Circle.
So the Knights did consult the official list, and there was much rejoicing. Yaaaaaaaaaaay.
There would come Breakfast and it would be at Tiffany's. And then lo, there would come to the night following Tiffany, the blonde virgin, and there would be offerings of cars and leather and fifties clothes.
And the Knights did pack up the Sacred Esky and they went forth from The Castle of the Yellow Laminex and verily did see Tiffany and Sandra Dee and all was right with the world once more.
The End.
That's when I dug up the little "story" above... you see, back in the good old days, Raury and I went to see quite a number of movies at Moonlight... it was where I saw Blair Witch for the first time, as well as, I think, Breakfast at Tiffany's (although I could be wrong about that one). And Raury had sent me a particular email asking what we were going to see next... and out of nowhere I just came up with this whole pseudo medieval riff...
However I'm not sure we ever got to see Grease... I think we tried both that year and the following year, and for any number of reasons we never managed it either time.
The whole adventure started out maybe eight or nine years ago with Rocky Horror if I remember correctly... it was actually a trip with me, Raury and Lownee (during the five and a half minutes that the two of them were dating) that started the whole thing.
I remember that we had no idea that first time how the system worked, so we actually had our picnic OUTSIDE, before the opened the gate... that never happened again, I can tell you.... not with the two plus hours to kill between the gates opening and it being dark enough for them to start the movie.
Then the following year, Raury and I went to a few sessions, including Rocky Horror again... and I think it was the following year that we got smart and actually bought season passes so it ended up costing slightly less (and I think that's the year that the story is from) to see about ten or so movies, but we also got to skip to the front of the line because we had them (that was the bit we liked best of all)... then the year after that we added Sheba to the line-up, and had the season passes again... and the following year the wheels had fallen off the whole deal and we never went back. I think we decided to do our own "Loungeroom Carpet Cinema" at Raury's house instead... at least for a while...
I do have some very specific memories of my time laying under the trees on the cushions from my old sofa, watching the crowd (or not, depending on the memory) and waiting for the damn sun to set so we could get started...
I remember, in that final year, the three of us laying on our backs eating Tiny Teddy biscuits... with me passing them to the other two, and we renamed them as we went... instead of Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Cheeky, Silly, and Hungry, we had Too Much Sex Bear, Not Enough Sex Bear, Smelly Fart Bear, Blowjob Bear, Buttfucking Bear... and there must have been one other one, but I can't remember what that one was called anymore. More than just naming them, I remember on one occasion after having eaten pretty much the whole packet between us, and me naming each bear as it came out of the packet, sitting up to see people in probably a three blanket radius from us kind of looking at us strangely...
I remember running into a group of fellow Homosexualists at one screening of Rocky Horror, and them choosing to sit much farther back from Raury and I, even though I was quasi-friendly with a couple of them... and in the same evening, when it got to the audience participation section where you throw toast, lobbing various bits of toast around, including one particular piece that fell by my feet right at the end of the lobbing orgy, which I just pitched straight back over my head... only to find out later that the new boyfriend (who I completely hated for various reasons) of the boy in the other group that I had a thing for had been hit squarely in the top of the head with a piece of toast that came flying from roughly our direction...
I remember on another Rocky Horror evening being very annoyed with a group of Year 10 drama students that were sitting a few blankets in front of us, particularly one of the boys in the group (if not the only boy), so when the point came for the water pistols to be brandished, I aimed mine squarely at the back of his head... the poor little love had his newspaper on his head, as you're supposed to, but he was still getting wet and he couldn't work out why...
I remember spending far too much money on goodies and nibbly things for our Moonlight Picnics... pretty much only during the time of Sheba... but then she and I did share a particular addition to food, whereas Raury, not so much.
I remember standing around making as many slices of toast as I could on warm Summer evenings so that later we could lob it around a darkened park (I'm sure the ducks made short work of it the following day).
I remember being told that we couldn't throw rice during Rocky because those same ducks would eat it, it would swell in their stomachs and kill them... but I always had this image in my head of exploding ducks for some reason.
I remember the List God and the Danone Faeries from the story... the List God occurred during a particular screening of something, I don't remember what, but there was an area "roped off" with a rope basically laying on the grass in a big circle off to one side, and this poor guy with a list (which we worked out later must have been for some workplace social event) had to make sure that people who weren't on the list didn't enter his circle... and since Raury and I had oodles and oodles and oodles of time to watch all these people choose to ignore the rope and this guy have to chase them off or consult his list if they were supposed to be there, it made for some entertaining commentary and our renaming him the List God. The Danone Faeries were part of the ongoing "free samples" that would happen on various nights... actually I think the Danone promotion happened more than once that year. On one occasion we were visited on our blanket by at least two, if not three of the girls giving away the Danone, and by the time the last one came around to us I think we ended up taking her last dozen containers off her hands (in addition to the five or six containers we'd already scored) just so that she could stop.
I remember the night I completely embarrassed myself before we'd really even gotten into the cinema area... I don't remember if that was a Danone night too, or if it was something else, but I was in the lead (complete with giant sofa cushion possibly under both arms if Raury was carrying the esky) and as we went through the little narrow walkway between the garden beds I noticed there were people giving away things and one of them was male and very, very pretty... and I said something vaguely inappropriate (although I can't remember what anymore)... and then Raury happened to catch sight of him around me... and greeted him by name... they knew each other... I've never wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole quite as much as I did at that moment...
I remember when Sheba and I attempted to go and see Grease (after the failure of Raury and I to do so the year before)... while Raury had to work late or something... and once we got there and were confronted by the huge crowd and just decided against it, so we packed up the car again and took our picnic down to the beach instead... while it wasn't an actual Moonlight Memory, it was a hell of a nice night, watching the sun go down and enjoying a picnic on the sand.
It wasn't all plain sailing though... I remember on more than one occasion being highly annoyed with both Sheba and Raury because they were late getting to my place, which in turn made us late getting to the Botanical Gardens, which sometimes meant we didn't get as good a spot as usual. What always made it worse was the fact they were never particularly apologetic about it.
But for the most part I remember the whole experience fondly.
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