Spoiler Alert: I’m The Spoiler Queen.

Before you go ballistic, let me assure you that I’m not the kind of spoiler you want to throttle. You know, the kind who sees a show and then tells you how it ends, destroying the element of surprise, before you have a chance to see it yourself. Nope. No way. Not me. I’m the kind of spoiler who watches the show with you, guesses whodunit and/or exactly how it’s going to end, and tells you before it does. Come to think of it, I guess you might want to throttle me too.

About ninety-nine percent of the time, not long into a movie, play or TV mystery, I know what will happen, who did it, and how it will end. As a consequence, Macho Guy takes little joy in going to see anything with me. I can’t say I blame him because I blurt out my predictions. Try as I might, I can’t stop myself. The moment I think it, I say it. Luckily, MG hasn’t tried to throttle me yet.

I don’t know how I know. I’m not a mystic or a clairvoyant. I just know. I suspect that being a writer and being familiar with plotting must factor into my ability to anticipate the solution. Another factor could be my obsession with solving puzzles, the more maddening the puzzles the better, such as Sudoku, jigsaw, crossword and just about every other type of word puzzle.

One example of my predictive ability occurred when we visited Great Britain to celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary. While in London, we treated ourselves to a night at the theater. We went to see Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, the longest running play on record. [Christie’s play opened in the West End of London in 1952 and has run continuously since that time.]

The Mousetrap is a classic murder mystery set at an English country manor where every character is a suspect. I figured out who the murderer was at a certain point in the play. I whispered the dastardly killer’s name in MG’s ear. He scoffed at my prediction, but I stood my ground. Later on, when the murderer’s identity was revealed…yes! MG had to eat crow for doubting me because once again I was right on the money.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to take my word for that because at the end of the play, the cast came out and swore everyone in the audience to secrecy. The Mousetrap has a twist ending, and the cast urges audience members to promise never to reveal the solution. I promised, so I can’t tell you. Sorry about that.

A more recent example occurred a few nights ago. FYI: since MG and I are Detroit Tigers fans, we follow the telecasts of the team’s games so occasionally we don’t get to watch our favorite TV shows when they are originally aired. We record them on the DVR and watch them at a later date—minus the commercials, thank goodness. Last night, we replayed two episodes of Rizzoli & Isles back to back. As it turned out, it was a two-part episode but wasn’t billed as a two-parter so we assumed it was a stand-alone episode.

In the first episode we viewed, an international art thief was murdered before the opening credits, and the team of Rizzoli and Isles suspected that he stole a $20 million painting from a museum and replaced it with a forgery so no one would suspect it had been stolen. The painting was a valuable family heirloom loaned to the museum by a multi-millionairess married to a politician. Her husband was the one who persuaded her to loan the painting to the museum to help raise awareness for the museum’s fund raising campaign. Hmmm…

I told MG that I believed the husband was behind the theft. I suspected that he resented his wife’s control of the money and had the painting stolen so he could sell it and keep the money from the sale for himself. As the episode ended, the forger had been murdered too, the stolen painting apparently burned, and the investigation ended without the husband in handcuffs. I was taken aback by this development. I was so certain the husband was the guilty party.

Had I missed something? Had I lost my touch? Had my reign as The Spoiler Queen come to an inglorious end?

To cut to the chase, the second episode continued the story from the previous episode. The investigation into another murder revealed it was connected to the art theft and eventually led detectives to the husband. The investigation also provided the husband’s motive, which struck me as true to form for a politician. He wanted his wealthy wife to bankroll his run for governor but she refused. He had her family’s painting stolen and planned to launder the money from its sale through a PAC in order to fill his campaign war chest.

Ha! Vindication! I was right after all—and before seeing the developments in the concluding episode. The Spoiler Queen rules and strikes again! MG wondered aloud why I bothered to watch.

So, would any of you out there like to go with me to see a movie? A play? Watch TV? Anyone?

In the first place, there will be tons of special effects because the special effects are the real stars of action movies, despite the names appearing in the opening credits. The actors are only along for the ride, because when it comes to the box office bottom line, spectacle generally trumps interesting characters and an original story. Movie studio bean counters are aware of this phenomenon.

Unless it happens to be science fiction, a typical action movie is mindless entertainment. Your mind may actually kick back and take a mini vacation since you aren’t required to use it while watching the typical action movie. You couldn’t think even if you wanted to, because you wouldn’t be able to hear yourself think. The typical action movie, you see, calls for noise, lots and lots and lots of noise. Hey, if you shoot a movie in surround sound, you may as well make the most of it.

In the typical action movie, things go kaboom! There are the mighty and mandatory blasts of explosions. The crack and rat-tat-tat of gunfire. The screeching and squealing of tires during endless car chases. The pernicious crunch and grinding of metal on metal when those cars eventually crash—and explode, of course, most often over a cliff. And let us not forget the obligatory shattering of glass from all those explosions and crashes.

All of the above contribute to a headache in the making for me. Now given my lack of enthusiasm for such pyrotechnic carryings-on, and given the fact that I am not a fan of Tom Cruise, you may wonder why I went to see Mission Impossible 5: Rogue Nation. There were three very crucial reasons: 1) It was $2.00 movie ticket day; 2) It was $2.00 popcorn, drinks, and candy day; and 3) Macho Guy and the two friends we went out with outvoted me. [I wanted to see Inside Out.]

Surprise! I actually found two things to like about MI5. It would have been just another action movie sequel except for standout performances by Rebecca Ferguson as Lisa and Simon Pegg as Benji.

Pegg’s flustered, fretting, funny and very unspylike Benji had me laughing out loud from the beginning. The film’s opening is a hoot. Cruise is hanging onto the outside of a jet that is taking off while Pegg is hiding in the grass with his tablet and is opening all the wrong screens and tapping all the wrong buttons in a frantic and hilarious attempt to open the correct jet door so Cruise may get on board. While Cruise does the heroics, the comical Pegg steals the scene.

MI5’s biggest scene-stealer, in my considered opinion, was Rebecca Ferguson. Wow. Talk about a badass. Ferguson’s Lisa was the biggest badass in MI5. She rolled with the punches, and she outsmarted and made mincemeat out of all the bad guys she faced off against. She made Cruise’s Ethan and every other male in the film look like wimps and dummies by comparison. Her Lisa was a lovely, ultra cool, steely-eyed, but much tougher 21st century incarnation of Emma Peel of The Avengers. She was awesome.

Had I known that MI5 had a female badass as one of the leading characters in the film, I might not have been so reluctant to see it. As it was, the film exceeded my expectations, and I actually enjoyed it.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that I still want to see Inside Out.

On a very recent Saturday afternoon, Macho Guy and I decided to see a movie. As it happens, I have a bone to pick with the movie theater experience. There once was a time when people went to the movies and actually saw just that—movies—and a cartoon or two, or even a double feature. Movie theaters hyped the fact that unlike television, when you went to the movies, you didn’t have to watch commercials.

Flash forward to present day. Before you’re allowed to see the feature film you paid to see, you have to sit through advertisement slides on the big screen for local businesses, interspersed with a movie and celebrity trivia quiz, and—wait for it—commercials. That’s right, commercials, just like the ones we see on TV. Is that bogus or what? Then you have to sit through the latest “celebrity news from Hollywood” delivered by perky young talking heads. ::yawn::

Just when you think your movie is about to start, here come the coming attractions. You sit through trailer after trailer after trailer until all your popcorn is gone and the movie still hasn’t begun. [Don’t get me started on how much movie theater concessions charge for popcorn.]

At last, following the theater’s cutesy animated disclaimer and safety instructions, the lights dim and your movie is finally about to begin. Yay! You look at your watch or other time keeping device [probably a smart phone] and discover it is already 20 minutes past the posted show time for the movie. The early show time posted for the movie is a fraud. It’s to get you into the theater early enough to see all the ads. And that’s when you discover that you suddenly need to use the restroom.

My question to movie theater owners is this. Why are prices for tickets and concession items going up when theater owners are making additional money by screening advertisements in their theaters? If they’re going to make us sit through all that Madison Avenue brainwashing, the least they could do is lower the ticket prices. Robber barons. I smuggle my own snacks and drinks into the theater just to spite them.

Macho Guy and I decided to go to evening church services that same Saturday following the movie. The lector welcomed everyone and requested that cell phones be turned off before the service began. Being ardent practitioners of cell phone etiquette, we dutifully turned ours off.

Someone lacking sufficient piety managed not to get the memo. During the sermon, a cell phone began to ring. Not a normal ring tone, mind you. This was one of those specialty ring tones the cool people download to set themselves apart from boring folks like Macho and me. This particular ring tone was loud. Very loud. Extremely loud.

The soulless pew warmer who owned it must have selected “ignore” because the accursed apparatus rang again a few moments later. Good grief. That disrespectful heathen ought to fear God’s wrath and be in mortal terror of being struck dead by a bolt of lightening. Turn the sacrilegious contraption off, you blasphemer, was what I wanted to say aloud. Instead, I prayed for Archangel Michael to come down from Heaven and slay the evil device. Barring that, I was willing to settle for its battery to die.

We returned home and after dinner, Macho Guy turned on the TV while I cleaned up the kitchen mess. He channel surfed and as usual found little to his liking. He cracked open a book and read, and I went to my MacBook Pro and began writing this post.

Writing is so cathartic. I can feel my peevishness melting away . . .