File Under: WTF?!?!

We decided to break free from the office at 5pm tonight and go see a movie.

The screen: "Four Christmases"
The time: 5:15 p.m.
The place: Boston Common Loews Movie Theater, cinema 6

We grabbed popcorn and a soda and found two prime seats in the theater. Feet up, seat back, dark room ... and 'action!'

Two hours later and feeling good from some serious Vince Vaughn hilarity, we left the theater with every intention to go home. We were stopped at cinema 8 by a young girl wearing a grey wool coat, matching headband and carrying a clipboard. Her friend/co-worker/Stepford wife look-a-like was next to her furiously typing on her blackberry.

"You girls want to watch a free screening tonight?"

"Uhhhh... of what?"

"It's a new prime time TV show on TNT called Leverage. We're screening it tonight at 8pm, but there's live entertainment beforehand."

"Live entertainment? Like dancers and jugglers?"

"No, just a little magic show. Oh, and Timothy Hutton is going to be here!"

(PR note: This is your hook, ladies. Start with the Oscar winner when trying to lure people into the theater, then move into the side entertainment.)

"OH, I love Timothy Hutton! 'Beautiful Girls' was a great movie!" I said. The Stepford ladies looked at me blankly - they probably don't even know who Timothy Hutton is - but in we went to the theater.

We were coerced into sitting up front - I think to make the 'entertainment' feel valuable - and had prime seats for the freak show of people that were walking through the door. It's a truly weird concept when you can look around the room and realize out of the 70 people sitting there, you're the most normal.

Nearly 25 minutes later the "entertainment" started. He's a magician with blue hair. He took a dollar from a lady and made it disappear. Then he took a ring from a lady and made it disappear. Meanwhile, one man refused to read a card (part of the trick) and another man sitting five rows back felt a good long belch would liven things up. The lady in the front row keeps asking, "what are you doing?" as she watches the magic trick take place. The magician - ignoring the background noises of odd seat-fillers - made the dollar and the ring reappear, handed out Starbucks gift cards and casually walked off the scene.

The theater-goers shuffled seats to be in prime viewing location for the TNT special. We chose to sit in the back... better to watch the craziness unfold as it happens, instead of having to turn around throughout the show.

"I just don't know what is going to happen next," said Bail. And she wasn't talking about the show.

"Leverage" - which airs this Sunday night at 10 p.m. on TNT - was a decent show. I liked it because of Timothy Hutton. I could have done without the stupid blond and the French sidekick (a la "DiVinci Code") - both who were given the obvious roles of distracting the ugly while the real thieves did the dirty work. The plot was semi-interesting: steal from the rich and make a profit off of them. I give it 2.5 stars out of five. But the night wasn't over at the end of the show...

As promised, Timothy Hutton did show up. A rather good-looking man both on-screen and in person. The moderator threw the first question to the audience and the rest of the night is a bit of a blur. I struggled to find a legitimate question for the celebrity actor because I was so flabbergasted by the ridiculousness of the crowd. Moreso, I was amazed that the Stepford girls still have a job this far into the night.

I'm not sure how the night ended, actually. I remember someone asked if there were plans to do a "Beautiful Girls, Part 2: 15 Years Later," which I fully support, although I don't know that I'm ready to admit it's been 15 years.

What started off as a simple movie to rid our heads of the workday chaos turned into a night of complete confusion that left us walking out of the theater wondering, 'what the fuck was that???'

It's a strange realization when the most normal part of your day was at work.