Butter Me Up!
By Brooke A. Brown
So I’m at the movies recently with my Lovely Miss S and our good friend Kaarms. After purchasing tickets (for Juno, a wonderful little film) and deciding upon which sweet treat to best complement our salty popcorn, we found ourselves in familiar territory: butter on the popcorn? And if so, how much?
Some of us instinctively ask for ‘lots’ of butter upon ordering the popcorn. Others ask for ‘just a bit’ after they’ve given it a second thought. But something strange and somewhat beautiful happened on this fateful night. Upon our various requests for butter application, the girl behind the counter at Park Place Stadium Cinemas simply pointed our attention to a new station set up directly behind us – a self-buttering station!
That’s right, folks. You can now control how much butter goes onto your popcorn. Kaarms equated this revelation as being like a “hug from Jesus,” and with great flair soaked her kernels in melted, sweet-creamery goodness (so much so that the wax-lined bag later proved penetrable, leaving a buttery reminder of this historic event on her lap). Miss S reveled in the process, as well, and quickly mastered the single button applicator.
Now, I have no idea if this is a national trend, but it’s definitely the first time I’ve encountered such a thing. Will it last? Only time will tell. But I will tell you this: being able to butter your own bag or bucket of movie popcorn almost makes it worth the exorbitant expense.
March 26th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Some children look forward to Christmas…
I look forward to my next movie outing. I may as well have been an offspring of Paula Deen. Ahh, that sweet, sweet butter!
March 26th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Dude, that is outstanding! Yet another reason to go to Park Place instead of Marquee.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
But I like it when they fill it up halfway with popcorn and butter it, then fill it up to the top and butter it again. Even distribution, and all that.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Yes, but you can run out mid movie and re-butter as necessary. Granted, this entails missing portions of the movie, but you get good buttering of the popcorn.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
As much as I like buttered popcorn, I hate missing part of a movie. The buttering station does kind of sound like a good idea, but is anyone else imagining what a big mess that could be with little kids’ grubby hands all over it? The buttering station should be rated R, or at least PG-13.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
Personally, I don’t even like a lot of butter on my corn; and I certainly can’t stand to miss part of a movie. But for the butter-lovers, this contraption is definitely heaven-sent.
Jenn - I think the buttering station absolutely requires adult supervision.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Butter? What butter?
Do you mean the vile concoction of vegetable oils and chemical additives made to seem like butter which only adds hundreds of useless calories and a huge load of saturated fat?
A large bucket of popcorn with 6 tbs. of “butter” has 1650 calories and four days of saturated fat. Each additional tablespoon of “butter” adds 160 caloies and even more saturated fats.
To put this in perspective - the is equal to over 8 Krispy Kreme donuts. Each additional tablespoon or so of “butter” is another Krispy Kreme.
I think I’ll pass on the “butter” - self serve or otherwise.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:42 am
amodernguy is right, of course — that stuff is as much butter as the yellow goop Park Place serves with nacho chips is cheese. With all this being said, I’ve come to the following conclusion:
Park Place should serve Krispy Kreme donuts!