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September 09, 2005
You know there's something right with the world when...
typing "news" into any google instance brings up the BBC ahead of everyone else.
Those internet people, they're making the internet in their own image you know!
Posted by Tom Dolan at 10:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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 10:06 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
