My Fellow Americans.

(Or Australians, as the case may be. Or New Zealanders. Or the one guy who once read my blog in Equatorial Guinea).

I regret to inform you that today, at 6:12pm Eastern Standard Time, I made a critical error in judgement, an action which I deeply regret. Please offer my sincerest apologies, and allow me to explain.

While urinating this afternoon in a public restroom at a movie theatre in South Philadelphia, it so happens that I overheard two young women discussing a blockbuster film which has recently achieved great critical acclaim. I found their banter amusing. A “found footage,” if you will, demonstrating that the lost, once-great art of conversation has not yet croaked its final, dying breath. And so, in the manner of a modern-day hard-hitting investigative journalist, such as an Anderson Cooper or a Lois Lane, I posted my recollection of their conversation to my facebook page.

I recounted this exchange, to the best of my abilities, as accurately as possible. For that, my dear, sweet, trusting readers, I hope that in this regard you are able to look into my soul and find that my conscience is clean, my character unblemished.  I regret, however, to inform you, that I did so foolhardily and unwisely…..

……….in that I had forgotten to add the disclaimer more commonly known as the “Spoiler Alert.”

I would now like to re-post my comments in their entirety, so as to better shed light on the incident at hand.

****SPOILER ALERT.****

****** SERIOUSLY. SERIOUSLY. SPOILER. ALERT. I AM NOT MESSING AROUND, YOU GUYS.*******

*** YOU THINK I’M KIDDING. YOU ARE DEAD FUCKING WRONG. I AM GOING TO RUIN YOUR ENTIRE EVENING. IF YOU KEEP READING THIS, YOU WILL BE WEEPING THICK MASCARA TEARS INTO A SOGGY KLEENEX, BALLED UP ON THE COUCH IN A GLOW OF NETFLIX REGRET, WAILING AND GNASHING YOUR TEETH. YOU WILL CRY OUT AT WHATEVER GOD HAS FORSAKEN YOU, A SAD PUDDLE OF HUMAN SORROW, A MERE SHELL OF YOUR FORMER SELF. ****

*****DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU.*******

***** SPOILER ALERT.************

From the facebook page of Katherine Fritz:

overheard in bathroom stall. a conversation between two other girls in adjacent bathroom stalls, discussing “hunger games: catching fire”:

girl 1: i mean, i didn’t remember any of the rebellion stuff.
girl 2: right? i mean, suuuper sad.
girl 1: and i guess i forgot like, how fucked up and evil and weird the whole, like, political plotline was, how it’s like, about government being bad and stuff.
girl 2: iiii know, right! i mean, i read all the books.
girl 1: right? i loved them. except i kind of forget what happens in book three.

[pause. sound of peeing.]

girl 2: i mean, i remember she winds up with peeta in the end.
girl 1: well, yeah, obvi.

I KNOW.

I AM THE FUCKING WORST.

For those of you who were personally victimized by my irresponsible revelation of the fictional romance between the popular characters created by the novelist Suzanne Collins and subsequently dramatized by Jennifer Lawrence and Sir Joshua Hutcherson, I have nothing left to offer but my sincerest condolences, and my personal assurance that I have spent the remainder of the evening constructing a crude cat o’ nine tails from some old fishing line, my earrings, and my discarded movie ticket stubs in an earnest attempt at self-flagellation. If this experience in any way has ruined your personal enjoyment of the final (as of yet unreleased) Hunger Games films, or the final pages of the Suzanne Collins novels of the same name, I will personally reimburse you for the cost of your ticket to said films, at a rate of approximately $12/adult or $10/student. Although I have many thoughts to share about the rising cost of ticket prices in a land of vast unemployment, (when the world truly needs a bit of escapism, a little laughter, and perhaps a mirror to shed light upon our own society), I will hold my tongue and make appropriate financial restitution to you, my victims, those whose lives have been, in no small way, shattered by my selfish and unthinking actions. Please contact my personal assistant, who will be happy to assist you. (At the current time, my personal assistant is a woman named ‘Samantha,’ who is entirely fictitious and is, in fact, portrayed by myself, speaking in a British accent, complaining about myself to her/my equally fictitious coworkers ‘Huckaby Barnswallow’ and ‘Jerome.’ If you are an actual human at all interested in filling the role of “personal assistant,” please inquire within.)

I beg you to understand that I understand your plight.  Were I one of you, I would be upset as well, demanding action, demanding justice. Ms. Collins creates a landscape so compelling and rich that the joy of the journey is in the telling. Simply put, while there is much to admire about her accessible novels, which are currently sparking a renewed interest in the joys of reading amongst adolescents and adults alike, there is vastly more critical acclaim to lavish upon her creation of Katniss Everdeen, a female action hero, defending a struggling people from the injustices perpetuated by a corrupt distopian government.

But obviously, I beg your forgiveness. I can see how revealing that she falls for one of the dudes that she’s been sort of falling for throughout the whole thing except for those times when she’s like OH MY GOD PLEASE SHUT UP AND STOP TRYING TO KISS ME I HAVE TO LIKE RUN THIS ENTIRE REVOLUTION RIGHT NOW …… yeah, I can totally see how that would be annoying.

Frankly, I was pretty thrown when Katniss and Peeta landed on Cloud City and Sugarsbeard Duckwing was like, alright, you tribute bitches, let’s see how you handle these Orcs! Ka-blammo! And don’t even get me started on that scene where Cedric Diggory says that tearful goodbye to his family back in Westeros and then sacrifices himself in that Sarlac pit so that the rest of the team can make it past Mordor. Tears just flowing down my face, like you wouldn’t even believe. And then — it’s like, it honestly still blows my mind, the filmmaking is just so incredible — I mean, can we just TALK for a minute about how Han and Chewie and Ginny and Harry and Don Draper and Walter White climb that giant mountain after the Ewoks set that forest fire and you’re like, okay, I finally feel safe for a minute here, and then it turns out that Katniss was actually a Cylon sleeper agent the entire time but then again not really because of the inception and it’s all really a weird dream and Rosebud was actually just a sled? MIND. BLOWN.

But yeah. She totally marries the vampire at the end.

My bad.

(in all seriousness: I loved the movie. It’s freaking awesome, for so many reasons, not the least of which is this one. Plus, Phillip Seymour Hoffman! Go see that shit.)