Mutant Summit 3.5: Mutants Without Cameras

If you have been following the site for a while, you may remember previous “Mutant Summits” (you don’t? the most frequent one was last week...how bad a memory do you have?), wherein Poolman and Justin feel the need to travel hundreds of miles to bond with each other. Reading the most recent one, I was inspired to do the same. So I contacted Kyle, my closest fellow mutant, mapped out a plan and took the plunge. I filled up my gas tank and drove hundreds of ... feet to my local theatre to meet up with Kyle. Turns out Kyle and I live approximately 7 miles from each other in So Cal. Quite the summit huh?

So Kyle picks “Freddy vs. Jason” and I pick the time. I mention I am no longer a blonde and he mentions that he will be the nerdy guy in the sunglasses with a brown shirt with colorful lateral stripes. So there I am checking out all the nerdy guys in the theatre lobby (lucky them). The line is moving inside and I haven’t found him yet. This could possibly be because of a lack of understanding of the word lateral (sounds like vertical, but means horizontal. I was blond for a few years, cut me some slack). Then, in walks an incredibly cute guy (no, he didn’t pay me to say that, and if he did, that’s between us) in a purplish shirt with the stripes. Luckily he was wearing the sunglasses, and I remembered his eyebrows from his Bio pictures so I chased him down. We did the “Hi are you Kyle/Clarissa?” thing, and headed for our seats (towards the back, right side). While waiting for the movie, Kyle offers me a candy bar. See, he has 3. Why, you may ask (I did). Because Kyle can’t stand to have change in his pocket, and he had 75 cents left over from lunch. So he stops by a store to buy a candy bar, which turns out to only be 25 cents, so he buys three. So instead of carrying around 3 quarters (which fit comfortably in a pocket by the way) he decides it’s more reasonable to carry around 3 candy bars in a sack.

I was worried there would be some awkward pauses, but turns out we are both talkers and enjoy being the center of attention, so no worries. We discussed a bit of anything and everything before the movie started. For example:

Kyle: “What’s with old people?”
Bobby: “Huh?”
Kyle: “I mean, they don’t do anything, they’re slow, kind of annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I love my grandparents and stuff, but can’t they be useful? Maybe put them all on stationary bikes and make them generate electricity or something.”

Bobby: ‘You know sometime you just want to watch a “deep” movie.”
Kyle: “Deep?”
Bobby: “You know like deep...not like Clueless or something.”
Kyle: “But Clueless IS deep.”
Bobby: “I’m quoting you on that”

Kyle: “So I read your review of The Convent”
Bobby: “Really? Did you like it?”
Kyle: “Yeah, I’ll probably rent it this weekend. Hey, if you ever need any writing tips let me know.”
Bobby: “Are you saying there’s something wrong with my writing?!?!”
Kyle: “Oh look, I think the movie is starting.”

We both can quote all the preview movie commercials and tell which dog is real and which one is animated (you may not get that - before all our movies there is this short about animation and making a computer dog look lifelike. Then at the end they show them both and tell us which one is the real dog and which one is the animated dog). We make it through the movie, (see both our upcoming reviews) and Kyle asks if I want to pick up a milkshake or something (yes, that’s how he keeps up his boyish figure). We compromise on a nearby coffee house and walk on over. For all you females with a “Kyle Shrine” he ordered a “Turbo” Coke (Coke with 2 shots of espresso, rather nasty but guaranteed to keep you up all night - hey, get your mind out of the gutter!). And we proceeded to conduct an interview sort of session. Since I was one the one with the notebook (and behind on my features), I got to be the interviewer.

Kyle pulls out his wallet to play show and tell. A credit card, drivers license, student ID, bank card from a bank in Colorado (where he hasn’t lived in 3 years), a membership to the Long Beach Aquarium, and his pride and joy - a “License to Kill.” I’m not kidding here. Kyle’s hero is James Bond (specifically the Pierce Brosnan James Bond) (which you would know if you ever read his reviews). and he carries around a James Bond “License to Kill” (the resemblance of Kyle to Pierce is mainly in his own mind, but who I am to burst his bubble?).

Bobby: “Yeah Kyle. You are right, I can totally see the resemblance between you two, and how um... suave to carry it around and show it to girls the first time you meet them. I bet that James Bond does that too.”
Kyle: “It was a gift! and I don’t show it to girls the first time I meet them.”
Bobby: “You showed it to me.”
Kyle: “Um....yeah, guess I did. Do you think it would work to pick up chicks?”
Bobby: “No.”

Bobby: “So did you like the movie?”
Kyle: “Yeah! Freddy was great in...um...those tight white jeans and little tank top...I mean the movie.”
Bobby looking over her shoulder :“Yeah, she’s cute.”
Kyle: “I don’t know what you are talking about. And the blonde in the corner is much better looking.”
Bobby: “Just so you know, I’m going to have to put this in my feature.”
Kyle: “I’m okay with that.”
Bobby: “If I run out of stuff to say, I might start making stuff up.”
Kyle: “I’m okay with that too.”

Kyle mentioned that he frequently uses the women’s restrooms. He claims he has a good reason (the men’s is broken or just in use, and he doesn’t like to wait) and since I shudder to come up with another reason, I am willing to accept that one, but I did think I should pass it on. In between all the looking at women (“That one was like 12 years old Kyle!”) we discussed movies,local attractions (no pun intended), car mechanics, Seinfeld, Friends and well....let me just include some excerpts of our conversation.

Kyle: “I used to have a fuller wallet, but I was afraid it would throw me off.”
Bobby: “Like George and the big wallet.”
Kyle: “Yeah, you don’t know how many times I’ve tried to reference that and people didn’t get it.”

Bobby: “I have always wanted a tattoo, I’ve just never gotten up the guts to do it, I mean the pain, the picking something to have on my body for the REST OF MY LIFE.”
Kyle: “You should do it, it would be cool. I wanted a tat of a scorpion at the end of my spine but I was told it wasn’t 'masculine' to have a tattoo there and I need all the help I can get.”

Bobby: “Wow, she’s tan!”
Kyle: “What’s with all the new people to come out to Cali and get such bad tan lines”
Bobby: “What do you want them to do? Tan naked?”
Kyle: “Well, sure!”
Bobby: “I walked into that one.”

Kyle: “What’s with girls wearing those big shoes?”
Bobby: “Makes their butts look good.”
Kyle: “Really?”
Bobby: “Yeah, next time you see two girls together and one is wearing those shoes and the other isn’t, check out their butts.”
Kyle: “I would have done that anyway”
Bobby: “Um...”
Kyle: “If I wear those shoes will it make my butt look good?”
Bobby: “Um...”
Kyle: “Cause I don’t really have a butt.”
Bobby: “Um...”

As the night wore on, we started sharing bad dating experiences, which led to a round or two of “I can top that.”

Kyle: “I know, I took this class just ‘cause there was a cute girl in it.”
Bobby: “I once dated a guy who loved football, so I learned all about and had to watch it every weekend.”
Kyle: “I once dated a girl who loved classical music, so I learned how to play the piano.”
Bobby: “I once dated a guy with only one arm, so I cut one of mine off.”
Kyle: “Um....”
Bobby: “I sewed it back on.”
Kyle: “You win.”

Bobby: “I got this scar having a mole removed.”
Kyle: “I got this scar when they put a metal rod in my arm.”
Bobby: “I got this scar putting my hand through a window, almost hit a vein.”
Kyle: “See this scar... I got it bungee jumping.”
Bobby: “Yeah, well see this scar? I got it saving babies from a burning building.”
Kyle: “This scar is from a shark attack while I was surfing 12 foot waves.”
Bobby, not finding any more scars: “You win”.

Kyle: “I am missing some tendons and can do this” (proceeds to do icky thing wherein his elbows do weird things behind his back).
Bobby: “I’m double jointed and can do this” (proceeds to do icky things wherein her fingers do weird bending things).
Kyle: “That’s it for me”
Bobby: “Me too. Tie?”
Kyle: “Tie.”

Two hours later, we call it an evening. I head out to see La Boheme (ohh... we have private jokes now!) and Kyle to do whatever it is that Kyle does on Friday evenings. All joking aside, Kyle is very interesting, polite (he called me the next day to thank me for going), witty and cute (and he will of course agree that I am too) and we had fun. Not that I doubted it, after all, we are both Mutant Reviewers from Hell -- and that’s a very selective group to belong to.