Summer Spree-Kill

Remember when you were a kid and it was fun to go see a summer movie?

I've been waiting to see THE DARK KNIGHT RISES for a long while. A big movie you get hyped up for a year in advance. The kind of movie you plan your life around. Less a simple movie and more a milestone -- a reason to live! A few hours of escapism before returning to the bleakness of reality.

And then some wackadoo shoots up a midnight screening and the whole venture gets tainted.

If it were random, that would be one thing. But the guy had dyed his hair red, dressed up like a supervillain and referred to himself as The Joker. Even leaving a booby-trapped apartment for bomb squads to deal with. He tailor-made his massacre for this movie franchise.

And what does that leave us with? A succession of talking heads debating how this could have happened, who's to blame, why he did it, how it could have been prevented. What do we know? Next to nothing. People want to know motivation. I'm sure some more information will come out as he's processed through the system, but it doesn't change anything. Whether he was some tea party nutjob or schizoid freak. He's ultimately some random act of madness that managed to slip through and carry out a senseless spree killing on a summer night at the movies. There's no way to perfectly monitor every person's state-of-mind.

I'm seeing the movie Monday afternoon. Hopefully in a slightly less-crowded theater. I'm still looking forward to it... and I'm not concerned about safety... but I know there will be a point where I will be thinking, "This is the scene where all those people got killed..." Massive spoiler.