Boys Night Out, Plus One

One would think that for any woman or - for the sake of being liberal - any gay man, it would be a good night to have 300 chiseled and bare-chested Spartans clad only in leather briefs on a GINORMOUS screen before you. And, all the while, they're flexing their goods.

As if that wasn’t enough testosterone for me, I was the only girl in a group of seven which included Hubby, Lil’ Bro and four of his friends.

But the truth is four days after seeing "300" I’m still paying for it.

The IMAX slogan might be “think big” but this is one experience where I’ll have to say bigger just ain’t better.

Days before the release of this no-doubt guy flick, we bought tickets for Saturday night’s show online and then made sure we arrived at the theater 30 minutes before it started. We figured that was plenty of time since we already had the tickets and all we had to do was stick our credit cards in a self-serve machine and the passes would spit out. The extra dough we paid, I was assured, would be worth the "IMAX experience."

So we handed our tickets to the pimply-faced ticket checker and he promptly ordered us to line up with all the other “early” arrivals until it was time to be seated.

I had time to pee which entailed, of course being a woman and all, waiting for a stall. And when I returned to the line I had plenty of time to wait and complain.

Finally, with only a few minutes to spare before show time, we were slowly led through rope gates in an orderly fashion. We swore there was a ride at the end. Nope, just a dark and now almost full theater. To say our seats were less than ideal is like saying these so-called Spartans were in average shape. We were three rows back from the screen, a screen which is something like four or five stories tall.

For two hours I sat with my neck craned, body constantly shifting. To top that off, evidently, the air conditioning was on the fritz. In addition to the visual extravagances and the better-than-life sound, with all those people crammed into a Florida theater without A/C it was as if you could actually smell the Spartans as they did battle. That's one sensory stimulant I could've done without.

It took only moments outside in the chilly Tampa Bay air to cool down. My proximity to the big ass screen, however, is still very much with me. I’ve got a kink in my neck that just won’t give.

By Monday afternoon, it was so bad a co-worker took pity on me and kept giving me remedy after remedy. A vibrating neck pillow. A microwavable gym sock filled with rice (OK, it's not really a sock but has a remarkable resemblance). Finally, she just walked over and pretended she was my personal masseuse and kneaded my neck. OK, some people might find that a bit odd but you’d understand if you saw the desperation on my face as my neck pain ran north and my head started aching. And the whining. Oh, the constant whining. No wonder said co-worker did everything to fix me up.

To get the full picture of my situation that day, the first thing boss lady said to me when she came in was: “You don’t look good today!” This even with the cute outfit.

So the moral of this story is if you feel the need to see building sized men nearly in the buff, get there early. Wicked early and sit in the back, relax and enjoy the view.