Bit Steep For An Afternoon

An astonished man tractored a trailer full of shredded umbrellas through the park. I thought about asking him where they were all going to end up, and thought about him replying fuck knows or the bin, and not a rickety and hazardous public art installation that really delves into the bonce-envelope shared by climate change and futility. I watched him trundle through the trees, hopping off the tractor every twelve seconds to throw another bunch of knackered metal twigs in the trailer, and turn the corner into somewhere I had no interest in imagining.
The cinema showed a grubby and redemptionless frolic through a popular holiday destination. I saw it, didn't fathom it, and didn't mind not fathoming it.
The sun couldn't stop itself, and the thick socks necessary yesterday were by lunchtime moist and foolish.

Hold It Hold It Yeah Nice

I looked at the pictures of faces in the exhibition of pictures of faces. Two of them were so bad I wanted to phone some kind of very specific hotline and tell them it's their fault I'm infuriated and demand that they compensate me in ways it's not my responsibility to imagine, except to say that if they're not at least prolonged and terrific they'll be no compensation at all. I knew why I disliked these pictures, both at the original viewing and when I went back during lunch to check that I was still pummelled into froth by absolutely every aspect of their existence. But the good ones just made me think things like: yeah, good that, tones etcetera or: that's a really nice fence in the background there, a decent arrangement of shapes and colours, and I like shapes and can tolerate colours. For the bad ones I thought: these pillocks look like they've been asked to look like they're feeling the feelings people in compelling photographs feel, but all they seem to be feeling is the hope that the photograph might be good, which it isn't, because the hope for a good photograph is getting in the way of what's worth photographing, or is this actually the whole point and it's actually very successful, hence its inclusion in this travelling exhibition of successful large photographs, I wish I was looking at something less complicated. And when people asked how the exhibition was or why I'd been on lunch for ninety five minutes, you're not in France anymore mate, I didn't say anything about my detailed dislike of the things I disliked, for fear the amount of detail in the dislike would reveal other unpleasant character aspects, ones I don't cultivate on purpose, which might then ruin my chances, of what I'm not exactly sure.

Unheard-of Side

In a right-angled cavern south of everywhere, a mercilessly average film projected itself at our heads. Bees were in it so how are you going to really complain. It featured a distressingly competent actor playing identical twins with beards and coughs. And one pretty soon ended up pretending to be the other and some people realised and some didn't. And there was a plot and some vengeance and it was all in Spanish. Which probably was because the financial backers had had it all filmed in English like anyone with any sense would've done but then grew worried about recouping their dubloons and had shown a rough cut to the local ombudsman and he'd gone fine yeah guns and money I get it. But: If an English-speaking-and-hearing audience is going to leave a screening thinking they haven't been filmically nobbled by this then we're going to have to re-do the whole thing in Spanish so as to hang a thin and arty and therefore more valuable gauze between the audience and its common sense. But we'll show it in the multiplexes rather than the art-sheds. For extra because so basically I'm not very sure. But I've booked it all now and it's too late to stop. And in the taxis afterwards they'll wonder what it thought it was, and in beds they'll curse and shrug while dreams of better things run through them, and you might almost make your money back.

Sounds Amazing

The cinema has a bin and after you throw your money into it one man kicks you in the base of the spine while another one laughs at your wallet. You are given twenty minutes to recover and then you thank them and carry on with your life. When I worked in a cinema it wasn't like this. To get the comforting blend of humiliating pain and disgust you had to actually see the film. But hard times promote innovation and it's good to have your foibles serviced. Now you still have to pay, but it takes far less time. And there's no fuss. You could go on Gumtree, for example, but it's impossible to get someone to do it for free unless you're filming them, and I don't have a camera or a phone with a camera, and if you offer cash you'll end up paying far more than you would at the cinema before they'll do it anywhere near hard enough. Even the Special Brew guys in the underpass lose their nerve just before they connect, and they'll often offer you a Valium afterwards and say perhaps you ought to attend an evening class on how to make better decisions. Maybe meet someone. So it's only the cinema you can rely on to dish out a proper good and ruthless steel-toed shit on your life. All you have to do's turn up with an hour's wage in one hand and the expectation of a pleasant time in the other. They'll take care of the rest. With encouragement, you can drag yourself so far through despair that you come out the other side of it onto a plane of devastating joy. A good way to do this is to put your head in the bin and weep on all the money. I've seen some people ask to be smashed in the stomach or the balls, but they are clearly new and will soon be tired of childish agony. The spine's where you want it. You'll think you don't, but they'll insist that you do. During its first week of release I was employed to see Dude, Where's My Car at least seven times in full. I know what I'm talking about. My managers were angry about my habit of reading books and eating hot dogs in the corridor, instead of sitting in the back row making sure everyone was satisfactorily traumatised. You're being paid for this, they said, and you act like thirteen hours a day might be slightly too much. We've given you a torch. Little did I know that one day I'd be paying my own money to experience tiny fractions of global torment, beginning with the Nicolas Cage remake of The Wicker Man and continuing most recently with Looper. I want to go back to the cinema I used to work at and thank them. With my fists. But it went out of business in the first wave of the recession, and by now it'll've been turned into a Wetherspoon. There's no hope.

European Cinema

The Thor riots went largely unreported by the mainstream media. Thousands took to the cinemas to kick the piss out of Kenneth Branagh effigies. "It was his vision", they bellowed, "and he is therefore most blameworthy. But don't think we aren't also going to smash the teeth out of Natalie Portman's cardboard cut-outs, and the face and brains out of anyone who dares to go around resembling Anthony Hopkins."
And they did, and it went on for seventy five hours, and even those with no limbs turned up just to scream things like "Branagh is a wallet-raping dangleberry."
The cost of the damage is still being calculated, but insiders say the total is likely to be "nowhere near enough."
Hopkins has been fired into space, where he will be safe from the families of the goats, goblins and Cleveland Steamer enthusiasts who were slaughtered just for looking like him.
"I'm off", he said, in a statement read by his lawyer. "If I'd've realised how woeful the finished product would be, I'd've nailed Branagh's thespian ballsack to the wall of a public toilet and streamed his whimpering demise live on my website. Suffice it to say we are no longer on kissing terms. I hear the Chinese have had him placed under house arrest even though he lives in Suffolk. If you ask me, they should cover him in duck shit and stab his shins with a chisel until he's fucking dead."

Poindexter

That squib with the hair products is regional manager now. And he needs me to sharpen up.
He was born eighteen months after I was. And the cast of the film of his life is small. But their roles are rigid.
The soundtrack is jangy-jangy la-la shit-foam. And there is little scope for DVD extras.

Must Haven'ts

Simple things followed simple things until an effect was produced. The effect was a bit boohoo. The things were manufactured torrentially and distributed in battalions and dressed in gowns and left in places where people might pick them up and buy them. After a while a sticker was added to the front of them and people almost couldn't not buy them. Eventually so many people had bought them and talked about them that anyone who hadn't bought them felt sick at the thought of doing so, because everywhere they looked they saw people with them, and in the other direction was a bright animated advert for them, and in the papers were discussions of them and of the people who owned and were talking about them, or hadn't yet bought them but planned to or hadn't yet bought them and did not plan to, because of all the hectoring and boofboof.
There were attempts to turn the things into a film. The first one failed because of weather and no money. The second one failed because of two deaths and no money, but raw noisy footage exists. The third attempt is being made in secret, by a web of people who know how to keep secrets secret.