how to be a pretentious film critic

Night of The Living Dead was on last night. The film critic David Pirie once wrote that it ‘says more about the Vietnam War than a thousand documentaries.’ Actually that’s my snappy paraphrase: he uses terms like ‘the psychological underpinnings of racist war’. But my line can be usefully applied to almost any film ever made (though it’s particularly effective if the film in question has nothing whatsoever to do with Vietnam). Take it from me, if you stand up during the closing credits of Notting Hill, say, or The Muppets Take Manhattan and declare in your most authoritative voice: ‘That film says more about the Vietnam War than a thousand documentaries’, nobody within earshot can fail to be impressed.

clothes horse

HORSE DRUG KATE, said a headline I glimpsed yesterday. By which I took it to mean that Kate Moss was now (yawn) into ketamine. But surely they’ve missed a trick there. All they had to do was change the headline to HORSE DRUGS KATE and they’ve conjured up another, far juicier, scenario for the jaded punter. Equine date rape - that’s where it’s at.

His master's voice calling...

The shop I work in was just refitted. We were there for the last week, helping to reassemble it. Throughout the first day we had the builders’ choice of music: terrible 80’s soft rock anthems, all of which sounded familiar, though I couldn’t have named a single one. Next day Sam brought the Shins and the Magic Numbers in. Or, to be more precise, CD’s by these bands. It was an improvement, and I got to ruin yet more people’s enjoyment of the recent Magic Numbers single by pointing out that it sounds like Only Fools And Horses at the beginning.

The door was left open a lot of the time, so people - usually elderly - wandered in, oblivious to the workmen and the empty shelves. When you pointed out their mistake it was like you’d woken them from a dream. One old American guy had sunglasses so huge they made him look like he was wearing a virtual reality headset - which perhaps accounts for his assumption that it was business as usual. ‘Looking good’, he said of the shop, but who knows what he was seeing? Goblins with eight arms probably.

We could be having to do it all again soon, since HMV/Waterstone’s may be taking us over. There’s panic on the intranet. Talk of ‘going over to the Dark Side’. The level of hysteria is such that people are actually suggesting that every employee give up a day’s wages to help keep the chain in the hands of its founder, James Heneage. Well call me old-fashioned, but I kind of like the tradition which dictates that companies pay you (however little) to work for them. Let’s not reverse that trend.

Looking on the bright side though, we could all soon be annihilated by a nuclear blast anyway. IRAN RAISES NUCLEAR STAKES, says a headline in the Mail. ‘Nuclear stakes’? What are they? They sound quite primitive, but then, they are nuclear… I think we should be worried.

behind the black door

So this was urban golf. A totally anonymous building in a Soho back street whose black-painted door gave nothing away except its number - 33. Once inside, however, you entered a hushed environment full of people bustling about their mysterious business, and the contrast put you in mind of a secret scientific research establishment in a low-budget SF movie. The futuristic aura was, however, slightly tarnished by the discovery that the screens in the virtual driving ranges all operated on Windows 98, as became plain when one of ours crashed. Several times. Still, a sense of wonder lingered. One of our number, Matt, became so intrigued by the thought of what a certain silver button might do that he pressed it, thus locking up all the golf clubs so that they couldn’t be removed. A member of staff would come along at various intervals thereafter, try a number of different keys in a nearby lock, and then scurry off, having discovered that none of them fitted.

I just watched. It was entertaining, and I got to enjoy four of the most expensive gin and tonics I’ve ever had.

Afterwards, we headed for a boat moored up on the Thames near Temple. We weren’t going anywhere (apart from further into drunkenness) but it was a pleasant setting. The movement of the water complimented the alcohol perfectly, and Richard Sell (perhaps the only person ever to lose a real golf ball on a virtual course) had plenty of passing boats to moon at.

Hey Rhys!

We did pub golf for Phil and Vicki’s joint stag-hen do. Pub golf is exactly like normal golf only without the course and clubs, and with a slightly greater emphasis on achieving drunkenness. I first flouted the rules in the Terriss Bar (sic), where I used the toilet in spite of the fact that it was a designated ‘water hazard’. I didn’t feel too bad. My bladder has always had its own agenda, and I respect it for that.

For the stag do proper, it’s ‘urban golf’ in Soho. This sounds like a euphemism for going round London clubbing homeless people with a five-iron (or whatever suits). But it’s an indoor driving range apparently.

I ended the pre-curry section of the pub golf night with a pissed actuary (is there really any need to name names?) trying to persuade me to buy the branch of Ottakar’s in which I work and sell it on to Sussex Stationers (or whoever). Even though it is one of a chain of 167 shops, he seemed quite confident that I would be able to ‘do a deal’, and I almost began to believe him.

Approaching forty now, I have myself been toying with the crazy idea of becoming an accountant (suggesting that I might be going through the dullest mid-life crisis ever). When I broached the subject with my friend Lindsey recently, she was very encouraging. ‘But do you think I’m petty and small-minded enough?’, I fretted. ‘Oh yes’, she reassured me.

By the way, Rhys thought I was dissing the Kaiser Chiefs a couple of entries back. I wasn’t. He also wanted me to mention him in this. I have.