Are you a pitiable cheapskate who loves to sneak food into the movie theater? Do you yearn for the sweet, forbidden flesh of an apple hidden in your purse, or a Kit Kat melting in your pants? Do you eagerly watch bad movies like Slender Man and The Meg just for the brief adrenaline rush that accompanies pulling a Twix out from under your hat?
If you’re a longtime veteran of sneaking food into cinemas, you may think you know every possible trick, tip, and hack of the process—but don’t rest on your laurels just yet. Instead, leave your chips and candy bars behind, because the absolute best food to sneak into the movie theaters isn’t a small, packaged snack: it’s a goddamn rotisserie chicken.
Anyone who lives within 100 miles of an American grocery store has easy access to rotisserie chickens. If you’re like me, you probably eat seven or eight rotisserie chickens a week. You’re probably eating one right now! But you probably never bothered to think outside the box long enough to realize that the rotisserie chickens you’ve always known and loved are tailor-made for cinema consumption.
Think about it: rotisserie chickens meet every possible criteria for the perfect snack. Are they covered in bird grease and salty brine? Check. Do they produce a potent and distinct odor? Check. Are they easily more than 1,000 calories each? Uh, check-a-roni. Rotisserie chickens won’t disappoint you like a stale mouthful of popcorn or a chalky bite of chocolate, because every rotisserie chicken ever made tastes exactly the same and is delicious.
How to sneak the delicious chicken you crave into a dark cinema
By now, I have successfully convinced your weak mind to hunger for this delicious chicken. However, you may still be anxious about how exactly you will sneak it into a movie theater. Do not fear: I shall solve every single problem in your life, starting with this chicken thing.
First, go to a store and buy a succulent rotisserie chicken. Pay for it with cash, because the government sells your debit card data to foreign hackers. Then, place the rotisserie chicken under your shirt and waddle out of the store like a genuine oddball. If the chicken is still hot, it will attempt to burn your skin, but don’t you dare make a sound. Merely swallow the pain as a pelican so greedily swallows the delectable sea bass or spiny lobster.
Walk through the hot, lonely streets, pushing through crowds of strangers without regard for decency or protocol. If someone is in your way, you must toss them aside. They do not understand the urgency that drives you. They do not know that if you fail to get to the movie theater on time, your delicious chicken may turn cold. This is unacceptable, and would earn my contempt.
At this point, your torso will be covered in sweet chicken juice. That is okay; it’s perfectly normal. If the movie theater employees ask you about the juice, laugh knowingly and claim that it is merely the natural gelatin all humans secrete to protect them from sun damage. This will provoke nods of approval. If someone asks why there is a rotisserie chicken-shaped lump pulsing beneath your shirt, tell them to mind their own business. To lower suspicion, make sure to buy a popcorn and drink from the concession stand before dropping it into the trash, where it belongs.
Once you are seated in the theater, lift up your shirt and admire the horror that lies on your belly. Running to the cinema will have caused the chicken to shift violently, so that now the inside of its clear plastic dome is littered with bits of unidentifiable matter.
You must be absolutely salivating.
How to eat the poultry that makes you sweat with longing
This is the trickiest part. You now have to eat the chicken during the length of the film without drawing attention to yourself. This will be hard, because as soon as you take that first bite of flesh you will want to scream things like “Oh baby wow! That’s my chicken!” and “Holy moly this is delicious food that I brought in from outside!”
Don’t do that! Don’t!
Instead, eat your chicken like a paranoid rat eats garbage, in small hurried bites with shifty eyes darting side to side looking for danger. If someone turns around to gasp at you, make a hissing noise and scratch at the air. If someone tries to steal a handful of greasy, delicious chicken skin, threaten them. If someone tells you that you ought to eat more quietly, tell them that they ought to have a less ugly face. That’ll show them.
After a sustained period of furiously consuming chicken with your bare hands, you may feel the urge to wipe your fingers clean. Resist this urge. The stratification of flavors that comes from mingling sticky chicken liquid with movie theater chair rest residue is unmatched by even the most fancy-schmancy Michelin-star restaurant. Embrace the carnage until the final moments of the film, where you may at last deposit the immaculately clean bones of your bird onto the floor beneath your seat. You’re welcome, floor.
This is all the information you require to permanently improve your life. Now you have no reason not to go to the movies three, four, even five times a day. Check back next week for more life hacks, including a recipe for an easy, organic lemonade (hint: it contains hog!).