By DANNY GALLAGHER

Since the idea of taking ballroom dancing lessons made us feel uncomfortable, my friend announced last weekend that he wanted to go to a movie.

"That's fine," I think to myself. "It'll be a nice change of pace. Besides, we're always picking the movie I'm in favor of seeing since it's something we're usually both interested in. What could go wrong?"

I"I really want to see 'Alien vs. Predator,'" my friend proudly announced.

"Oh s#*$," I thought and then blurted out loud at the table of a busy restaurant during a Sunday morning breakfast rush after church.

"You really want to see that?" I asked astonishingly as if he just announced he wanted to spend the weekend going door to door selling Mary Kay cheek rouge.

"Yeah, you know me and horror movies, I love those cheesy horror flicks," he said.

"Well, yeah, we all like cheese but I don't stir it in my coffee and pour it over a bowl of Frosted Flakes every morning," I thought while stabbing a fork in my thigh to keep myself from blurting it out loud.

It's an interesting dilemma to be faced with every once in a while. On the one hand, I didn't want to be greedy and dominating by demanding to not do something as trivial as going to see a movie without any regard for how he felt. But on the other hand, I'd rather poke both of my eyes out with a tent stake than see another Paul W. S. Anderson movie.

Anderson has made his cinematic mark directing movies based on video games, which means they're easy to market and don't need to a real story or script since they're guaranteed an audience of brain dead, glazed eyed teenage boys with arthritis in their fingers from mangling joysticks, organizing their "Magic: the Gathering" card collection and a lack of dating.

Things got uncomfortably quiet after that - the kind of quiet a horny teenager at Camp Crystal Lake hears just before she's gutted like a small mouth bass by a misunderstood brut in a hockey mask. A million thoughts started racing through my head about what I should say or do next.

"Man, you're a real jerk, you know that you? I oughta hit you for being so selfish. Ow! Not there...and not in public!

"I know you'd rather pull an Oedipus Rex than have to see a movie that's obviously going to suck, but does that mean your self-centered, egotistical tastes in film should trump everybody else's no matter how ridiculously insipid they are? Well, sure, but that's not the point!"

"As your subconscious and ruler of you second in command to your endocrine gland, I command you to apologize for being such a pompous, arrogant moron and demand the both of you see 'Alien vs. Predator.'"

OK, technically, only three thoughts ran through my head. But why do you care? Are you taking my deposition or something?

Still, my subconscious was right and, for some reason, talking to me with Al Jolson's voice. I should apologize, and not only that, I should offer to buy the tickets. Not only that, I should offer to paint his house, get the oil changed on his car and rent a limo the next time his wife goes into labor with their first child and has to get to the hospital.

It took every ounce of my strength to get the words out, but I managed to force the muscles in my voice box to announce, "Look, I'm sorry and I want to pay for to the mov...gack, gack!" I neglected to realize at the time there was half of a cheese blintz stuffed in my mouth, which got lodged in my esophagus.

I woke up 20 minutes later in an ambulance with my friend, a nurse and a doctor who seemed unusually anxious to zap me with the defibrillator paddles standing over me. Apparently, when I blacked out, I fell out of the booth head first and all the blood rushed to my head. Damn gravity, you win again.

Luckily, I didn't have to stay in the hospital overnight, but the incident and the long wait in the emergency room had eaten up a large part of what was left of our weekend. We only had four hours left before he had to drive back home.

So we drove to the local cineplex, paid for two tickets for "Alien vs. Predator" and, unlike the other times I've purchased a ticket for a Paul W. S. Anderson movies, I wanted to do it. Besides, we've been friends for a long time and have fairly similar tastes in entertainment. How bad could it be?

Actually, it wasn't as bad I originally predicted. It was a billion times worse. There isn't enough Visine in the world to stop the burning in my eyes.

My friend, however, highly enjoyed it.

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©2003 by Danny Gallagher