I’ve got a lot of great memories that center on Tampa’s Fun-Lan Drive-In.
Watching Independence Day on Independence Day with what seemed like a thousand other liquored-up American yay-hoos of all races, classes and philosophies.
Seeing Alien3 with just enough LSD in my system to make the whole thing seem like a masterful exercise in taut futuristic suspense. (Subsequent viewings have revealed the film to be … well, you know. *Sigh*)
Playing my all-time favorite pinball game, Creature from the Black Lagoon, before the feature or whenever something like Casper got boring.
Taking the woman who would inexplicably agree to spend her life with me somewhere other than a bar on our first “real” date to Walk the Line.
To be fair, none of those titles is exactly ripped from this summer’s list of top-grossing films; I haven’t been to Fun-Lan in more than half a decade. But that doesn’t mean the place isn’t special to me.
(There was also the night of Wild Irish Rose and Into the Mouth of Madness, which, I dunno, but Into the Mouth of Madness makes even less sense to me sober than it did in the throes of post-adolescent alcohol poisoning. Let’s discuss the validity of its Lovecraftian touchstones in the comments online, shall we?)