Well, okay, I'm going to take it, mostly because I'm just one man and one man can't really fight the system outside of a John Woo movie. But I'm sure as heck gonna complain about it, because sharing miserable experiences is what being a human is all about.

I speak of the increasingly barbaric torture sessions known as the Pre-Movie Game Show. You see, I used to love going to see movies in the movie theater. Love, love, love. I was the Care Bear who had a film reel on his chest, going "Shine!" and spreading the love of movie theater magic around.

But this has changed, hasn't it? Oh, now I'd much rather sit at home and watch a rented DVD than expose myself to the gauntlet that the film industry has set up at my local googleplex. Let me share with you one of my recent visits to see a movie, and we shall compare and contrast with your experiences over brunch. Crumpet anyone?

I get my seat -- front row, dead center, feet propped up on the bars they have to guard people from falling off from a deadly height of four inches -- and suffer the stupidity of the Coca Cola slide show. This is all well and good, but I'm pumped to see the movie I paid fairly good money to see ($6.50... and that's a matinee price), so when the lights go down and the screen starts movin', it makes me happy.

But not for long.

I can say it verbatim with the film projector: "NCN presents the PRE-SHOW COUNTDOWN!" My theater, by the way, is an AMC theater. And this concept of calling it a "pre-show countdown" is a stroke of marketing genius, because it makes it seem something akin to launching the space shuttle, instead of what it really is: commercials.

Do you remember a time when movie theaters didn't run commercials before the movies? I... vaguely... do. Those were good times. But then the evil marketing gnomes slipped one in there at the beginning of a movie, and we more or less ignored it. It went by too quickly to notice; "Hey, was that a commercial?" "Shh! The movie's starting!" That was a long time ago, however. Now we get the NCN Pre-Show Countdown, in all its whale carcass-bloated glory. Check out the NCN website and note how they say on their front page: "Reach up to 54 million captive viewers monthly..." That's reassuring. People, this is evil incarnate.

Keep in mind that the "pre-show countdown" actually starts when the real show should've begun; that is, the time that the movie theater, Mr. Movie Phone, the newspaper and the internet all set in stone. Every minute past this starting time just adds on to the total running time of the Movie Watching Experience (tm) and subtracting from my non-movie life. Who am I kidding? It's all movies, baby!

The commercials... began. And kept going. And going. One commercial I can stomach; maybe two. But when we reached the NINTH FREAKIN' COMMERCIAL IN A ROW, I've reached my breaking point. I swear, nine. One was for the Army; yes, I am an Army of One -- one pissed-off moviegoer, that is! TWO were for buying gift certificates. I think they had two in there because there were too many commercials and your impressionable teenage movie watcher might get confused. "Dude, did they want me to buy the Army?" "No, man, a gift card!"

One commercial consisted of us watching a red car -- and no, I don't really care what make or model it was -- drive around without commentary for about three minutes. This was supposed to impress us about the speed and handling of such a car, but all I could think of was that he's out there, getting to drive in freedom, and I'm trapped in the slave pits of consumer agony.

One commercial was a Coca Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award thing, where Coca Cola apparently drinks a filmmaker, declares him or her "refreshing," then forces them to make an incredibly patronizing one-minute film that features (1) Coca-Cola and (2) movies. Drink Coke, folks!

All told, the 9 commercials ran from around 20 seconds to 3 minutes apiece. Total, around 15 minutes of me counting down to watching the movie that I'm actually there to see. Maybe they got confused; maybe the ticket clerk heard me say, "One for A Long String Of Ads, please!"

After that -- you know what's coming up -- the Pre-Show Countdown ends and the Movie Preview time begins! I used to love movie trailers, maybe not as much as my Care Bear love for movie theater watching, but the affection was there. But now that I have TV and the Internet, I've pretty much seen every trailer that they're going to show. So simply put, I've got to wade through five to seven more commercials, some of which might be interesting, but the rest are for movies that I wouldn't pay anything to see (and in some estrogen-laced cases, pay money NOT to see) in the first case, so why do I have to sit through three minutes of romantic misunderstandings?

When PoolMan was here, we timed how long the movie previews took. One day it was 17 minutes, the other it was 19. Tack on the 15 minutes for "other" commercials, and I'm staring at over a HALF HOUR of pre-movie crap that I have to wade through each and every time I go see a film. That is, people, quite insane. Now if the movie theater was like the internet, and I was trying to see a movie without paying actual money, I'd think that it'd be a fair trade-off to endure some ads to get a freebie. But here I've already PAID. I'm IN. I am a consumer, I gave them money, I want my product and/or service without having to pay MORE in terms of time!

Studios got the foul end of a consumer stick back when they tried to force viewers to sit through movie trailers at the beginning of a DVD, instead of just having the menu pop up. People were irate that they were trying to force them to watch ads for something they already bought. Not having actual consciences per se, studios still flinched from the onslaught of hate mail and stopped doing that. So how come we're still taking it in the movie theater? How come we don't rise up and find someone responsible, and tell them to CUT IT OUT, and do it NOW, before we go all Frankenstein villagers on them and break out the torches?

I understand that movie theaters make money through advertising, but I simply don't care. This is stupid and this is driving me away from ever wanting to go back to their theater again. Sure, I could just try to go a half hour later and waltz in when the movie more or less starts, but why should I have to do that?

I don't know what we can do. Maybe complain, complain a lot, and hope that our voices are heard by someone upstairs. Maybe each theater makes the decisions, and by appealing to the managers we can enact change in our local branches. But let me tell you what... I'm absolutely through wasting my time watching commercials so studios and movie theaters can make more money. This is why I bought a TiVo, and this is why I wrote this article.