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September 05, 2005

Unwelcome Fellow Feeling

So, this lunchtime, as a break from bangbangbangthrustthrustbouncebounce pop music, I'm in the basement of HMV - feeling slightly guilty as I look at collections of Beethoven piano sonatas and hoping nobody from work spots me.

I decide to suspend my choice for a bit, not knowing whether the 14 quid 10-cd set is a waste of money, as I'll only buy the 60 quid one later, and because lunch is still not over and my head is still full of noise, I head up to the video floor to find out whether Green Wing is available on DVD or not yet for someone's birthday. It isn't.

However I've not been up there long when I realise that every plasma screen is playing the film of 'Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy'.

I wanted to see this at the cinema, but the timing just didn't work for family reasons at the time. In olden days I'd have just bought it unseen - after all it is Douglas Adams. But I've heard some very mixed views on this. Some people saying it's great, others saying it's terrible. I'm also aware there's a sort of 'fan hysteresis' that goes on here - some people saying it's great slightly longer than they ought to if it's got flaws, and other fans saying it's never going to be as good as the books/radio series/towel and refusing to see anyting good in what's been done.

I occupy myself in comedy through the title sequence and then amble over to one of the screens for a closer look.

Obviously you can't stand in front of just one screen gawping, there's an art to this. You have to stand in front of one for about a minute max, then pretend to look at something, then move to an aisle where you can peer over it at the screen - stalking the film basically. And then finally you give up and just become blatant about it.

However, after about three minutes of watching, two things dawn on me:

i) The film isn't as bad as people have said, and I'd probably quite enjoy it even if some things have changed
ii) every other screen in the floor also has someone standing in front of it gawping.

This wouldn't be too bad, except for the fact that

iii) They all have thick glasses, look pasty, and are wearing ill advised coats
iv) 90% of them have very very bad beards.

I decided pretty sharpish it was time to either buy or leave.

And left.

(Mind you, now I think about it, how unlikely was this little grouping outside of forbidden planet or a regional university rocksoc? You don't see, or at least *notice*, them in HMV normally. Perhaps I walked out just before the beginning of a wonderful situationist intervention? Or perhaps it's a cunning marketing tactic by the shop to pressurise closet anoraks such as myself into just parting with money for the thing anyway?)

Posted by Tom Dolan at September 5, 2005 10:06 PM

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Comments

CLOSET anorak? you wish! :)

Posted by: Simon Thornton [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 5, 2005 11:30 PM

Thhhhhpt.

Posted by: TomDolan [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 6, 2005 06:38 AM

Uh...

Nah. That's what all the *cool* kids are wearing these days; it's a sort of post-ironic geek chic. We're just out of touch and middle aged.

Posted by: mildlydiverting [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 6, 2005 12:45 PM

Trust me, these soooooo weren't the cool kids.

Or if they were they'd fallen foul of the golden law of retro fashion - "never wear anything you're the right age to have worn the first time round".

Posted by: TomDolan [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 6, 2005 12:55 PM

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