Phelps Father skips Beijing for Fraser Flicks

Sunday I took my nephews to the movies at one of our big multiplex cinemas. It was raining so I was wearing my Olympic boxing wind-breaker. I bought tickets to The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor plus drinks and snacks at the concession stand and used my Visa (Morgan Freeman's voice: official card of the Olympics and the only card used there) for the transactions.

Typical in today's world of identity theft, they asked for my ID each time I used my credit card. I don't mind this as it's good practice for when President Hannity and his Savage brown shirts are running things.

Well, after an hour of covered faces and asking when it's OK to watch (to the exaggerated sighs of the corpulent comic book store owner sitting next to us), The Mummy, despite Brendan Fraser's manic mugging, turned out to be too scary for the boys. We opted to switch to another movie, so I zipped back to the ticket booth and bought passes to the other Brendan Fraser flick available, Journey to the Center of the Earth, 3D (soon to be a classic).

Good times were had by all and afterward I shuttled my nephews home with the hopes of turning around and meeting my wife and some friends back at the theater to see Tropic Thunder. She beat me there, bought her tickets and stocked up at the concession stand using her Visa, too.

The popcorn girl noticed her name and asked, "Oh, are you related to Michael Phelps, the swimmer?" My wife responded, "No."

"That's funny," said popcorn girl, "his father was here earlier today."

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