The Long Weekend

Tom came over last night in what appears to be a new, and welcome season of Movie Night. Last weeks Shadow of the Vampire was a huge hit to the audience of one, so I was keen to maintain the highest standards of movie choices, yet allowing for the strange, ancient relics and oddities too.

So, for a third time, as Tom has never seen it, I screened Robert Altman's "The Lost Weekend" with Eliot Gould as gumshoe, Perry Mason. He enjoyed it. Particularly the fact that it is a very iconic 70's movie, all set in Hollywood, with hippy, lesbian chicks, alchoholic writers, and tough guys. There is even Arnie as a henchman, which is crazy because this is a 1973 movie, and I know that Arnie trained in the City Gym in Portsmouth for 5 years before heading to Hollywood. I will have to check my facts.

Anyway, the quest is on to maintain the highest standard, which is quite a tough thing, as we all know, not everyone enjoys the same movies. I would like to give "The Blue Max" a showing, and a lost 70s WW2 movie with Antony Quinn as a Spanish goat herder called, "The Passage". It is always risky showing oddball movies as they sometimes backfire. I remember I was horrified when Don and Lee hated "The Third Man" and, one of my personal favourates, "The Duellists" fell decidedly flat. I put this down to the cultural differences of nationalities, and the fact that not everyone is, or wants to be, a film buff. So there you go.

Feeling fairly busy and pumped up right now from massive swimming and gym sessions, but it fits in really well with my timetable, and I am very wary of how one can literally turn ones life around by the maintaining of regular exercise and keeping generally busy. I am so glad I don't work all of God's hours and have the majority of my time to pursue my own interests, and not being forced to sit behind a desk waiting for the clock to strike four thirty, as is the rule in some of these schools. God help me if I ever have to do something like that again. Once one has a taste of relative freedom, it is very difficult to contemplate signing away all your time for The Man ever again. I think I would rather be even poorer than I already am. And, I still stand by the fact that I believe people now in general have far too much money and that most people live in this horrible bubble of new cars, new clothes, holidays in the sun etc. And that many people are really not that brainy, efficient or caring and are just riding the false wave for as long as it will carry them. When you understand that over 8,000 species of animals are on the verge of extinction and that 80% of the world's wealth is spent on personal appearance, one does tend to feel a tad sad and sorry for the Earth we inhabit. Unfortunately, we are the disease. We are the virus. And we deserve everything that is coming to us.