spider-man, spider-man, does whatever a spider can...

Right, so I’ve been talking about writing this post for what, two weeks now? Three?  Dave bas posted his memory of the events of that night on his blog, and I urge you to read it as he is a far more eloquent writer than I.  It all started on a business trip to Dulles in May of 2002 (I cheated and checked here). We were due to fly home on the Friday morning after a fairly intensive week of doing something or other that I have long since forgotten.  It was around the time when work wasn’t as enjoyable for me as it used to be, as I had been forcibly moved to a different department from the one I had started in. This new department was one with a different culture from the one I had come from.  Different culture, and a very different atmosphere.  Not the fun one that I came to love.  Anyway, we (Dave, John and I) were in Dulles, and along with working hard, we were playing hard too.

On this particular Thursday, it’s fair to say that I was moderately drunk.  Okay then, I was more than moderately drunk.  I was completely pissed.  If I remember correctly, we had started for dinner somewhere in Reston Town Center (should be Centre, I know, but that’s America for you), possibly Angelo & Maxi’s, Morton’s Grill, Clyde’s or one of our usual haunts while there.  If it was Angelo & Maxi’s or Clyde’s then I would have had a big fat steak along with red wine and a nice Port to finish off, which is always always a bad mistake for me.  I mention all of this, not so that you think I was an alcoholic, but simply to put the night into perspective.  It was boozy.  I was drunk.  There was a sign in the cinema for the midnight Friday premiere of Spiderman.  Fuck yeah!  We were definitely going to see that!

We had to be up early the next morning for flights back to London, but that was okay.  It was Spiderman, and we were going to see it.  Excitement levels were elevated by the time we bought the tickets, I can tell you.  After we had them reserved, we went for some more drinks.  I think Brian was there, and there was something about me jumping over a sign in the car park and falling on my snot… but its all a bit foggy to be honest ;-)  The time came to go to the cinema and pick up our tickets (we had booked over the phone I), and we got there to discover no queue.  No queue and no excited fans.  How could this be?  This was Spiderman for fuck’s sake.  We shrugged and went to the counter, and asked for our tickets, only to be told that the midnight performance wasn’t tonight…  It was tomorrow night!  Don’t be silly we said, it’s a midnight show; that implies you show it at midnight on the day specified.  Yes they said, midnight Friday is the minute after twenty three fifty nine.  No, we told them confidently.  Midnight Friday is the minute after twenty three fifty nine on Thursday, not Friday.  Everybody knows that!  Zero zero colon zero zero.  The first minute of the new date.  The point where the clocks switch to the new day.  That’s midnight you stupid Yanks, now put our damn show on!  We know you’re only joking with us!

Alas, it was not to be.  They really did schedule a midnight show for the first minute of the day afterwards.  We were hugely pissed off as you can understand.  Spiderman wasn’t coming out in London until a couple of months afterwards and we were going to miss it by one day.  One day.  That’s all we needed.  Dejected, we went to bed and got ready for getting up stupidly early the next day for the flight home.  I think we had to get up at something like half five the next morning in order to make our flights, and let me tell you there were three very sore heads that morning.  John in particular was a complete fucking mess, and I (their responsible manager!) was barely coherent and badly in need of well, erasing the events of the night before.  And coffee.  So, you can imagine how completely fucked off I was when we got to the airport and found out that there had been a tornado the evening before which had diverted our airplane to New York instead of landing in Dulles International. 

At least British Airways were setup in such a way that they could transfer us to a United Airlines (meh) flight taking off soon afterwards.  Would we mind just please queuing over there and they’d get us sorted out.  Off we went, to the UAL queue and waited for a long time.  Someone from BA eventually came around and told us that the UAL flight was overbooked, and that they wouldn’t have another chance at getting us back to London until that evening.  In the mean time, they’d put us up in a hotel somewhere and we could get some sleep.  That sounded real good.  Breakfast, sleep and a relaxing day easing out of the hangover from hell.  Then the thought hit Dave and myself virtually simultaneously… We were going to see Spiderman!!!

We dropped our stuff off in the Hampton Inn, which is where BA put us.  We had some breakfast and then headed out to grab a taxi to take us to Tyson’s Corner and the cinema where there was a midday showing (at least they couldn’t get that wrong).  Either this trip or the one back is where we met that fabulous taxi driver whose accent we couldn’t place.  We asked him about it and he made a game out of making us guess (My country is the largest in the Middle East… where famous carpets and rugs come from…).  Eventually we pinned him down to Iran, and I think Qom but I’m not totally sure about the city.  Anyway, we got to the cinema and bought our tickets, and were assured the show really was in a short while from then.  At that point we grabbed a McDonalds or Burger King to take the edge off the hangover.

So, we got to Spiderman, and it was awesome.  There was a trailer for “Eight Legged Freaks” beforehand which scared the shit out of me though.  I was still seriously arachnophobic at the time and the first warning that I had of spiders on the screen was a giant hairy eight legged freak jumping towards the camera.  Yes yes, laugh it up all you want, mister Bushe, but at the time I was in a vulnerable state from the night before and not prepared for the sight of my nemesis on the screen in such detail.  Anyway, John fell asleep during the movie, which was priceless.  The movie itself was… well it was Spiderman and worth the lack of sleep and feeling of sand under my eyelids throughout.  I think we actually contemplated going to see it again before getting back to the flight, but there wasn’t enough time for that.

We made our way slowly back to the hotel, after a spot of mild retail therapy in Tyson’s.  I think there was a coach back to the airport and Virgin Atlantic put us on an almost empty 747 on the way home.  There were something like fifty of us on the entire plane, so they simply shifted everyone forward.  Those who were travelling business got bumped to first class, and those of us in “economy plus” were bumped to business.  Could it be that this was John’s first flight in business? It certainly was with British Airways, though I’m not sure if he had been with us in Virgin Atlantic Upper Class before.  We were finally able to get some sleep, and sleep we did.  Oh, there was a movie with John Cusack on the flight that I tried to stay awake though, and ultimately failed.  The flight was delayed too.  We had gotten into London and there were noise restrictions in place so we had to wait for something like half an hour above the English Channel somewhere.  Anyway, we eventually made it home.  We were exhausted, but we had seen Spiderman so we just didn’t care ;-)

Spider-man, Spider-man,
Does whatever a spider can,
Spins a web, any size,
Catches thieves, just like flies.