The Wife and I went on something called a "date" this evening. A date, as far as I can tell, is an evening in which you hand money to some random teenager so you can get a couple hours of glorious freedom from parenting, enabling you to spend more money all while cautiously watching your cell phone, hoping it doesn't buzz or ring or pop up with some text.

We decided to see a movie, our go-to date option. We had, actually, planned to use a gift card to a fancy restaurant, but yours-truly, his brain battered by years of parenting, neglected to make a reservation, and the restaurant was jam-packed. But we weren't going to waste a good babysitter.

We'd planned to see Argo, but my wife suffers from Affleckophobia: fear of Ben Affleck. She also suffered from a similar condition, Damonophobia, or fear of Matt Damon, but I'd spent years forcing her to watch Bourne movies, and now she's over it. I'd thought of doing the same and making her see Argo, but she just looked so sad. Ben Affleck scares her that much.

So we went to see Skyfall instead. It was playing in the Cheap Theater. Our cheap theater is great. Half of the movies it shows are Bollywood productions. Half of the remaining movies just came out on DVD.

Like most cheap theaters this one also has flypaper floors and stained seats -- assuming that the seats hadn't been ripped out for some unknown reason. The movie itself looked like it was being run on an old science-class film projector and the speakers had a nice, pleasant buzzing sound coming from them. The employees are extra surly. And at Skyfall, at least, the clientele seemed like it had been stolen from a nearby porn theater.

Come to think of it, it probably was stolen from a nearby porn theater. I heard some awfully funny noises during the flick. And Daniel Craig does spend half of the movie shirtless.

The Wife doesn't see Bond movies much. She hadn't seen any of the Daniel Craig variety, and the last one starred Timothy Dalton and, she said, "I fell asleep because it was nothing but car chases."

Her synopsis? "It has so many bad puns!" Yeah, true, but it's a Bond movie. And all Bond movies have bad puns.

"You know what this reminds me of?" she added. "The Muppet Movie."

The Muppet Movie?

Main characters getting back together (007 and M in Bond; Kermit and Miss Piggy in the Muppets); them being dismissed as obsolete; they fix up an old building for one last show (the Muppets built a theater to show a telethon, Bond fixed up his childhood home so he could shoot some bad guys); and lots of bad hair (the Muppets all have bad hair and, well, if you've seen Javier Bardem's hair in Skyfall, then you'll know what she means). Oh, and both Kermit and Bond spend most of their respective movies shirtless.

I guess that's what I get for not remembering to make reservations: I take my wife to see an awesome Bond flick and she likens it to Muppets. Now I'll never be able to watch a Bond movie again without getting "Rainbow Connection" stuck in my head.