Miscellaneous

MoviePass is a Pain in the Ass

1 Comment

How many emails do you have in your inbox from Mitch Lowe?? If your answer is “0” or “who the heck is Mitch Lowe?” then I guarantee you are not a Moviepass subscriber. I know that because my inbox is FILLED with emails from him. In fact, at this rate, I’ll have to upgrade my google storage. Mitch Lowe is the CEO of the now-infamous Moviepass, and he has been spamming subscribers with emails weekly (or more) with changes to the plan, making it more and more of a hassle.

If you have been living under a rock, here is some history. Moviepass is a subscription service where you pay a certain amount per month, which allows you to see movies in the movie theatre. It used to be that $9.99/month got you unlimited movies. The one caveat was that not all movie theatres participated. But most did. Now, things have changed drastically.

When the company started, there was much speculation about the staying power of a company that seemed to hemorrhage money. After all, a regular movie ticket in New York costs $18; it seemed too good to be true! Someone had to be losing money. And sure enough, somebody was: Moviepass. Ultimately, they lost so much money the app literally stopped working. On July 26th, they went SO bankrupt that their app wass inoperable, and they borrowed $6 million from investment firm Hudson Bay Capital Management to “turn it back on.”

https://twitter.com/MoviePass/status/1022643819043532800

But did Moviepass give up? NOPE. Many articles online were published speculating about the end of the service, calling the new changes to its services a “going out of business sale,” or wondering just HOW low the stock prices needed to drop before Mitch Lowe and his company Helios and Matheson gave up.

As of the writing of this blog post, it still refuses to die. But it officially sucks. They have decided to keep the company operable and continue to take money from subscribers, but the difference is… there are no movies you can see on it anymore! It is actually a genius idea. Moviepass has subscribers paying for a monthly service that basically provides nothing!

The first change came with “ticket verification.” This was where they required you to take a photo of your ticket stub and upload it to the app. They said this was to avoid fraud, but I had an inkling that it was just for them to test the waters as to what kind of changes people would put up with. Then came the movie caps: 3/month for your subscription instead of unlimited. This still seemed reasonable, especially the way ticket prices were in New York. However, it did make people wonder how they could just change the terms. Turns out everyone agreed to basically any change in terms in the small print. SURPRISE!! The third change came in the introduction of a tiered plan, where you could pay more for more movies. Then they introduced “peak pricing.” Then they decided only CERTAIN movies would be available. But you didn’t know which ones, and you couldn’t be sure when, since it only showed movies for a certain day on the day of. There was no planning ahead.

Now, they have a whole different thing going on, where certain movies are offered in the morning, but by the time the theaters actually open, they have disappeared from the app. This is extra funny because the way the app works, you need to check in to the movie, and then purchase the ticket within 30 minutes. This new trick of theirs makes this impossible, as the movies have disappeared from the app within 30 minutes of the theater opening! I have no idea why they would do this. Advertising money? Providing extra frustration for customers hoping they will jump ship to another movie subscription service? I am clueless. All I know is, it is frustrating AF.

There are other companies popping up with alternatives to Moviepass, which look better by the day. There is AMC Stubs A-List, which offers unlimited movies (including IMAX!) and e-ticketing options in advance, but it’s twice as expensive and only good at AMC theaters. Then there is Sinemia, which is $10-$15/month, depending on how many movies you want to see. If you want to avoid a hassle, I would definitely say to switch. However, $20/month for movies is $240/year, which is a steep price! Also, if you are locked into an annual plan with Moviepass, you might be SOL like me.

I signed up for Moviepass through Costco, which was offering a $79/year annual pass. It seems crazy that I signed up for a year and they continued to change the plan on me! Actually, even Moviepass wasn’t sure at first if they could do it. At first, they continued to offer unlimited movies to annual subscribers, and they did not apply peak pricing. But then they said FUCK IT WE ARE SCREWING THEM ALL! And they did. As of today, there are 11 movies showing at the theater near my house, and only 2 of them are available on Moviepass. And of course it’s the shitty ones.

As an annual subscriber through Costco, there is an option to cancel my membership in the next 3 days, before August 31, for a refund. Costco is providing full refunds for anybody that cancels and is holding MoviePass funds in escrow/threatening legal action for changed/cancelled plans. I am strongly considering this, since the hassle is not worth it anymore. There are still movies I would like to see, but Sinemia seems like a much calmer way to do it.

And in the meantime, if I see one more email in my inbox from Mitch Lowe… Nevermind, I don’t know what I can do, there are no options! I did see 30 movies in 7 months for $79 though, so… whatevs. I should probably stop complaining.

The page from my bullet journal of all the movies I’ve seen… look at all those check marks!
Continue Reading

Big City Living, Long Legs and other Personal Problems

Sprained in the City

No Comments

I am 3 weeks post-ankle-sprain, and I am hoping to run my FINAL race of the 9+1 this Saturday. It has been a very long road to recovery, and I have not passed the proverbial finish line yet. Recovering from an injury in New York City has its own set of unique obstacles, just like being Sick in the City. Specifically, it’s an issue because we are required to be on our feet walking everywhere we go. Accordingly, it is more difficult to recover, and more difficult to live a normal life. I compiled a short list of my gimp-difficulties below.

  • STAIRS. Y’all, I never realized how many stairs I do in a day. Ok, I guess I did realize because my fitbit tells me, but it’s a LOT!! This particular injury made it relatively feasible to go UP stairs, but nearly impossible to go DOWN. I dare you to attempt taking the stairs down to the subway by slowly walking down each stair with both feet, and holding onto the railing, in rush hour. I have heard some nasty comments in my 8 years in New York, but nothing like when you get in the way of a person trying to run for the subway. Particularly when you appear to be a young, healthy person.
  • STANDING. There is a lot of standing. Especially when waiting for the subway. As you probably know from either the news, or personal experience, or my multiple blogs complaining about the MTA, the trains in New York are in unusually terrible shape, and it is common to wait 10-12 minutes for a train, especially at night. When standing is difficult, and the subway walls are covered in all sorts of bodily fluids, it becomes necessary to balance on one leg for long periods of time. Great balance work, but also V annoying.
  • SUBWAY BALANCING. This is an offshoot of the previous bullet point, but it is not common for a person to give up their seat for a seemingly healthy young person. Therefore, you must stand, or in my case, balance on one leg. I have found a few tricks for this, like for example, facing the direction the train is going, instead of sideways. My forward-backward balance is better on one leg. Also, I’m always ready to lose my balance a few times. I’m ready to receive more ugly looks and comments directed at my gimp self. #ShitHappens #ShittyPeopleHappen #NewYorkProblems
  • HEAT! This week has cooled down a bit, but last week’s triple-digit temperatures did NOT help my healing. The hotter it was, the more my ankle swelled and became more uncomfortable. No amount of icing helps when you leave your apartment and enter the almighty depths of Hades, right outside your front door.
  • RUNNING. I know what you’re thinking: “Why are you running if your ankle is busted?” I’m not talking about running for exercise, I’m talking about running out of necessity. Again, I didn’t realize how often I did this until I was unable to. There’s the quick “oh shit, I’m in the crosswalk and a cab is going to run me over if I don’t shuffle faster” run, or there’s the “I’m going to miss the bus that is one block away and then I’ll have to wait 20 more minutes” run. There is a lot of mandatory running.

Basically, it’s super hard to live in a city that never sleeps and never stops running when you’re unable to run. Here’s hoping I don’t fall in another pothole in the near future. Meanwhile, I hope you had stock in CVS because I have purchased at least 4 ankle braces from there. Am I missing anything on this list?

Continue Reading

Big City Living, Long Legs and other Personal Problems

Oops I Sprained It Again

2 Comments

That’s right, I’m a gimp. Again. Some of you may remember my unfortunate ankle sprains right around the time I began this blog. It coincided (extremely unfortunately) with my very first half marathon. It was approximately 18 months ago. I had been completely free and clear of sprains until now! WAHHH.

You probably assume I was doing some sort of crazy exercise when I sprained it, like jumping on Spiderbands that were suspended from the ceiling or something. But no, I was walking. On my own two feet. And before you ask me the most offensive question, like emoji-bf did when I first told him, NO, I was not on my phone when it happened. My phone was actually in my pocket! This was doubly lucky because I get to tell everyone that “no, I am not careless, I am just clumsy,” and it’s also lucky because I fell completely on the ground and my phone probably would have shattered if I had dropped it.

I was casually walking on my way from work to the subway to go teach two classes at the gym. I looked left and right to cross the street (112th street on the west side), and unfortunately, I was too busy looking for crazy New York drivers to look down at the crazy New York streets. There was a huge pot hole in the crosswalk. I learned a very important lesson: potholes are not just dangerous for cars.

I fell to the ground and 3 people stopped for me, including a dad holding his two little sons’ hands. As I was falling, watching my fitness goals and dreams blow up before me in slow-motion, of course I screamed “SHIT!!!” I looked up to try and hobble out of the street before I was run over by a car, and I spotted the dad and his kids and I apologized for my curse words. The dad kept asking if I was ok and said his kids had heard worse. I’m sure that’s true; it’s New York, they probably heard worse just that morning. I was in a LOT of pain. I felt tears stinging at my eyes but I knew I couldn’t cry in front of these kids. One of them had a cast on his wrist already, so I just hoped my ankle wasn’t broken like him and tried to hop to the sidewalk.

After many rounds of “I swear I’m fine” as I blinked back tears and hopped down the street, I walked into a Famiglia Pizzeria and asked for a bag of ice. I was on my way to the gym, which meant I knew I had a good hour to ice my ankle on the subway. As luck would have it, the only other person in the pizzeria was an NYPD officer. He saw me standing flamingo-style on one leg and he looked down at my ankle. His eyebrows flew up to his hairline as he saw the swollen ankle and he asked if he should call me an ambulance. I adamantly said no (although it would have probably gotten me to the gym faster than the MTA), and then he asked if he could “take a look at my ankle.” I told him no thanks, because the last thing I wanted was a stranger touching it. I could barely touch it myself. He asked me where I was headed, and when I told him “the gym,” he looked at me like I was crazy and decided I was beyond help.

I double wrapped a plastic bag full of ice, hopped down the two flights of stairs to the subway, and iced my ankle all the way to Brooklyn. The hard part, of course, was that I was supposed to then teach two fitness classes. My first class was Spinning, where I sat on the saddle of the bike, and propped my ankle on the handlebars on top of a bag of ice. I barked orders at my class for a full hour on the microphone, while trying to numb my pain. It was the first spin class I ever sat through without breaking a sweat. One of my regulars told me it was one of the hardest classes I ever taught. I guess I’m mean when I’m in excruciating pain.

The next class was supposed to be kickboxing. LOL. Considering I couldn’t even stand, I was definitely not jumping or kicking anything. I set up interval stations around the room and told them what exercises to do, for 1 minute on, 30 seconds off. I finished the classes with 5 minutes of core work on our backs (I could do this!) and then I had to ask for help to get me off the floor. Pretty comical.

Having a sprained ankle in New York comes with a unique set of problems, since I am constantly required to be walking and standing to get around in the city. I am in the middle of compiling a list of Sprankle Problems. Stay tuned. For now, here are a few awesomely gnarly photos of my cankle. Enjoy.

Continue Reading