Post spoiler warning: Yahoo! sucks. Oops, wait. I think I just did that wrong. I just gave away the meat of this whole endeavor. Oh well.

You know I hate playing the role of spoiler. Truly I do. But this cat needs to be let out of the bag.

Last night, Yahoo! Movies “Showtimes and Tickets” feature made my wife cry.

Congratulations, Yahoo! You just made my world famous “eat my ass” list. Kudos.

My wife and I have been having sort of a rough go of it lately. Ongoing problems with the gerbil, stressful job situations (for both of us), bills, time constraints, family and so forth. Last weekend was a go-go-go whirlwind and we still haven’t really recovered.

So my wife thought it would be nice to take a night just for us. We’d get off work, have dinner, then go see a movie. She looked up our local movie theater (about one mile from our house) in the Yahoo! web site and found Robin Hood at 8pm. She was really looking forward to it.

We got home from work and were getting ready for dinner. Long story short and several Greek tragedies later (perhaps to be told another time) we finally embarked on the one mile journey to the movie house.

You can guess where this is going, right? Well, first a piece of good news. We got the best parking spot ever at the theater. That celebration turned out to be short-lived.

As we got out of the car I looked up at the big scoreboard of movie times and said, “Interesting. Nothing starts at 8:00 pm.”

We walked up to the ticket window. No one was there. Only a note that said, “Come inside to buy tickets.” This most decidedly did not portend well.

Inside at the counter a helpful worker bee approached. “We’re a little confused,” we said. “Do you have Robin Hood starting at 8:00 pm? We didn’t see it on the sign.”

The busy little bee checked his magical computer and said, “Why, yes, we do.”

What the hell? Really? Wow, I guess sometimes the shit really can work out! I turned to my wife and said, “See honey? It’s all okay. I told you it would all work out.”

Then the bee added, “Uh. Wait a minute. I was wrong.”

BINGO!

He went on to tell us that Yahoo! was often wrong with their movie times and the only way to be sure was to call or use their own web site.

This was the capper to one helluva week and one helluva day, and it completely dashed my wife’s hopes and squashed something she had really been looking forward to.

I tried coming up with a bunch of other ideas. Go to a different theater. Go out for a drink. Go get a treat. Throw rocks at the big board of movie times. With tears in her eyes she said, “Let’s just go home.”

Back at home we went to Yahoo! to confirm the scurrilous mayhem that had ensued. Again we were denied. All we got to see was this bullshit:

Sorry, we have no showtime information for this theater at this time. Call the theater for information: (555) 555-1212.

Indeed! Good day, Yahoo! I said good day! Thanks so much for ruining a night we really needed. Ya filthy bastards!