Borat Sneak Preview

So last night I went to the New Yorker Festival's midnight sneak preview of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Accompanying me was a score of my most Borat-loving friends (and friends of friends). A few days earlier I had, in a rather ill-advised moment of social delusion, decided to serve as a sort-of ticket agent, a conduit. I bought four tickets, convinced my roommate to buy four more, then called another friend to do the same, giving us a total of twelve tickets. The way I figured it, it was simple: I had three roommates, all of whom had agreed to go, and we would each have one extra to bring along. My other friend was left to find his own crew. 8+4=12. Simple, right? Well then I remembered the Murphy’s Law of Social Gatherings:

Murphy’s Law of Social Gatherings: The Larger the Group, the Harder It Is to Get Them Together

Sure enough, within a day, two of my roommates backed out. I was left scrambling to find four people to fill their spots. Countless people gave me maybes, I’m not sures, and the like. It was beginning to wear on me. Saturday afternoon was the worst as I was left putting together a list and then proceeding to call all potentials to find out whether they were coming or not. By 10pm or so, the final count of attendees numbered eleven. We had one extra ticket.

I asked several people standing in line next to us but found no success. Then I came across a curly-haired kid standing near the front door talking to a girl.

"What's up you guys? Extra ticket for cost," I said.

"I've got twenty bucks," said the kid.

"Sold."

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this."

"Likewise." Going to a movie by yourself without a guaranteed ticket—that takes balls. It was so worth the fifty cent profit—I would have taken a loss for the kid.

And then came the movie. Sitting in a row of eleven of us, we waited patiently, feeling really cool. And we weren’t disappointed. I’m not going to give it away, but there were multiple, multiple laugh-out-loud moments, and the movie overall was quite hilarious. We exited an hour and half or so later, cheeks hurting and satisfied.

The moment of the night came while several of us were waiting outside the theater and the kid I had sold the ticket to came out. He didn’t see me and I kept on watching. A gray-haired lady put her hand on his shoulder and he smiled. His mother. And as they walked off together, 2am in the city, I had to admit: the whole thing dripped of a sentimentality that was almost sickening.

Almost sickening and great.