Here's Andrew Petrarca with a description of Derek's moviegoing exploits.

Well Gosh...

OK, so I don't even remember when this was, but it's easily dated by the
release of _Tank Girl_, whenever that was.  A large group of gweeps (15-20,
I'd guess) went down to the Showcase Cinema in downtown Worcester to see
_Tank Girl_ for the first time.  It was playing in the nice room upstairs,
with a good big screen, and the seats on a steep slope so that no one has
their view obstructed, even if someone Derek's size sits in front of them. 
We were taking up a segment of the theater that started at the left side of
the front row center area, and was about 5-6 seats wide and 4-5 rows deep. 
Derek was sitting in the front row.

For the benefit of anyone who hasn't seen the movie, it's set in a post-
apocalyptic world where the utility companies from Monopoly have taken over
the whole board, and anyone who doesn't pay their water and electric bills
is summarily executed.  The heroes are all freaks and weirdoes who spend
most of their time misreable, because pretty much any time one of them
starts to feel happy, someone gets shot.  The movie is funny, but most of
the comedy is very dark.

So we were all enjoying the movie when suddenly, in the midst of a very
tense scene in which our heroes are in imminent danger of losing their
lives, all the chacacters in the scene break out into an impossibly (for the
characters, anyway) well choreographed rendition of Cole Porter's _Let's Do
It_.  Derek was a goner.  He laughed so hard that the seat he was in snapped
right off its support and fell to the floor.  Derek was now sitting on the
floor amidst the remains of his movie seat, and was now laughing harder than
ever, the ridiculousness of his own situation having been added to the one
in the movie.

Well, this was too much for the rest of us to bear, and all the other gweeps
also broke down laughing for the remainder of the scene, and the first
couple of minutes of the next scene, too.  Even in the dark, it was easy to
tell who was with our group, as there was a very clear border between those
who knew Derek and were laughing out loud, and the people a seat or two over
who were steadfastly continuing to watch the movie, because the movie was
the only thing in the room that was in any way interesting enough to be
worth watching, and why would anyone ever take their eyes off of the screen
for even a fraction of a second while in a theater watching a movie which
they'd had to pay to see?  I MEAN, THEY WOULDN'T, RIGHT?  BESIDES, THERE WAS
NOTHING HAPPENING NEXT TO THEM, THEY WERE JUST IN A QUIET THEATER WATCHING A
MOVIE, SO OF COURSE THEY HAD THEIR EYES ON THE SCREEN!

Ahem.

Anyway, suffice it to say that even in a room full of people who had paid $7
each to see _Tank Girl_, we managed to "freak the mundanes".

After the movie some of the gweeps stopped by and presented Derek with the
seat that he'd broken off of its hinges.  I don't know what they were
expecting him to do with it, since it seems to be completely useless, but
it's still around as a reminder of the time when Derek accidentally broke
the Showcase Cinema.

-- 
Bitwise, android.                                         &

I'm trying to round up a photo of the actual seat fragment.