Parking aplenty

There are some movie scenes that are a little tough to swallow. Perhaps the action is completely unbelievable. Maybe the dialogue is absurd. Or, in the worst case scenario, Katie Holmes’s boobs come flying out at a time when you can’t enjoy the visual because you know she’s about to get deleted.* All but the last of these things can be abided because the viewer is often willing to suspend disbelief in the interest of entertainment. Recently, however, I have become obsessed -- obsessed -- with the wholly intolerable way that parking is handled in movies.

Here’s the problem. No one in movieland spends any time looking for parking. It doesn’t matter if our protagonist is looking for a spot in Times Square on New Year’s Eve or outside Wrigley during a Cubs playoff game. A parking space materializes from the ether, and the charmed movie world spins on axis. And, while the director, actors, and most of the viewers move on, I’m left to stew about the injustice of the whole thing. No one -- NO ONE -- gets parking at 9:07 AM on a Tuesday in midtown Manhattan without saying the Rosary three times, sacrificing a virgin, and then taking no fewer than five hostages.

Before I go any further (and don’t worry, there’s not much more space to explore here), I want to emphasize that I don’t want footage of all 32 minutes of someone’s desperate search for parking in crowded urban areas. In fact, I emphatically don’t want that. Just don’t show me a character effortlessly, and absurdly, finding parking in a major city on a weekday. Alternatively, perhaps it wouldn’t kill the writers to acknowledge the parking problem by having a character bitch about how difficult it was to locate parking, or complain about far she had to walk from her car to the trendy flat where she’s going to have an orgy with the Affleck brothers, the Olsen twins, and Jack Black. Because, ultimately, while I don’t know how hard it is to arrange an orgy involving a bunch of b-listers, I do know how hard it is to find parking in Manhattan. Dear Hollywood, please don’t insult my intelligence on the latter count.**

* Oh, don't get upset with me because I went broken arrow and spoiled the ending of The Gift for you. You were never going to watch the movie, unless you happen to love Keanu Reeves in wife-beater roles. But -- and this is important -- if you like Keanu Reeves in wife-beater roles, you absolutely, positively must see this movie.

** One last thing: I should emphasize that cartoons are exempt from this complaint. I firmly believe that your average cartoon character should be permitted to park with tremendous ease in his or her cartoon world. Some days it’s the only thing I believe in.