Violence is so not cool anymore

I had a weird day in Santa Monica yesterday. There seemed to be more violence around than usual. I went out to buy a ticket for the 7:30 movie, it was still sunny and I was going to the bookstore first, then the movie. On the way, I was confronted by a large and frightening woman with no shoes who yelled at me "if I wasn't something something, I'd fuck you up!" She was literally foaming at the mouth. She continued down the street screaming and cussing and on the other side, people stopped what they were doing to see who was making all that racket.

Then when I found out the movie was sold out, I bought a ticket for the later show and headed home. I walked by an ATM where a young woman was trying to get money and was being harassed by a guy who could have been homeless, it's hard to tell. She was explaining "actually, I'm late for a play and just trying to get some money." I don't know what she was apologizing for but he continued to talk at her anyway.

When I got home, there were some kids on the stoop across the street practicing their rhymes. They were rapping at the top of the lungs the same two lines over and over again. I could hear windows and doors closing, the sound traveled for a whole block in each direction I'm sure, of all the nearby apartments. Only one woman yelled "shut up!" but it didn't do any good.

A few hours later, I headed out again to see the movie and I passed two women walking. They were talking but it quickly escalated to yelling and the younger one tried to grab the bag of the older woman as she shouted "will you just stop drinking already?!" They went on down the street like that, the younger one yelling and trying to grab the bag and the older one shushing her as other people walked by. I passed a couple on my side of the street, clearly in a fight, as the guy said something mean to his girlfriend.

Before the film, there were several trailers. I'm always tuned in to how people react to trailers. Whether they laugh, or talk the whole time or are engaged. During two for movies about random violence, the kind that doesn't make sense and makes us into crazy people, the feeling from the audience was not good. It felt angry. When the Bourne Ultimatum came on though, even though there's violence, the feeling is uplifting. He's fighting for all of us, and the people who get hurt are generally bad guys. People laughed and cheered and went along with it in a way that they absolutely were not going to for those two other films.

I'll venture a guess that random acts of violence are sliding down the backside of cool.