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Monday, November 10, 2008

What is it about popcorn?


We went to the Wien Museum – it’s fantastic.

It shows life in Wien going back to before they invented Krapfens. Those Romans were inveterate travellers and there haven’t been too many places I have been where there is no evidence of Romans. (Except Australia of course – but we had no Pasta).

The Museum is free on Sundays – an excellent price indeed.

We also went to the Hayden English Cinema to see the latest James Bond movie. Why? I hear you ask. because we haven’t been to the movies for three months and couldn’t remember what it was like.

Now we remember – the cinema is full of people who haven’t eaten for months and feel compelled to drink Pepsi and eat popcorn non stop for two hours. The popcorn containers here are the biggest I have ever seen – two young girls were staggering up the steps with a bucket of popcorn bigger than they were. One man with a pregnant wife had to bring her up the stairs and go back for the popcorn. What is it about cinemas that people are compelled to eat through every movie and crunch the last piece of popcorn as the closing credits roll. Instead of carpet they should put down straw.

Logistically the cinema is great. You can book and reserve seats online. So you can wander in at any time and know that your seat will be there – right next to the two girls eating the world’s largest container of popcorn. One man arrived carrying what looked like a five course Chinese meal and a coffee maker but he was way up the back and all we heard during the movie was the click of chopsticks and the faint hiss of him squeezing out another espresso.

The movie was no sillier than an other Bond movie and was better that most. There were many laugh out loud moments. It starts with a fantastic car chase that leaves his car looking a bit like the Queen Mary – only he doesn’t have to explain to the rental company what happened to his Aston Martin - and the QM still has its doors. I love the sequences where they use touch screen technology and images appear instantly – and they can communicate with people anywhere in the world within seconds. Bill Gates watches these movies and says ‘see – that’s what I wanted it to be like!’

We have also been watching 24 with Kiefer Sutherland. It is about a Federal Agent Jack Bauer who works for the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) and catches very evil baddies who want to destroy the American way of life (the Bastards!). The series (each of 24 episodes) leaves no cliché unused and the best fun is guessing the next plot twist – which is getting easier as we are in series two and they have already used every plot twist and turn at least once.


There is even a black President who is surrounded by traitors and has to outwit them – which of course he does. The CTU itself is staffed entirely by a bunch of half wit no hopers who spend their entire lives plotting against one another, sleeping with each other, betraying each other or just generally stuffing things up.

Jack is easily the most dangerous person on the planet and leaves a trail of corpses, crushed and mangled bodies and smoking ruins behind him. (Dick Cheney could play this part). Jack Bauer’s daughter, on the other hand, is by far and away the stupidest and most annoying person on the planet and we have taken to fast forwarding the frequent segments with her in them.

If there really are people as dysfunctional as Jack Bauer and the CTU clowns I am simply not going to the USA again. I won’t and you can’t make me!

Last night our iron exploded. There was smoke and flame and crackling noises. I dropped to the floor expecting Jack Bauer to arrive and kill us all but it was just an electrical fault. I had a successful trip to Saturn to buy an iron – and bought one with the longest cord I could find.

I also bought some USB extensions so that I could run my wireless connection across the study floor and hang it over the balcony above the modem. Hopefully they will establish a dialogue and I can stop losing my internet connection every 20 minutes. Apparently only being a metre apart is not good enough – they have to be able to see each other.

On TV tonight they were interviewing some Marines who are heroes because there was a fire in a Florida motel where they were staying and they went from door to door to warn the other residents. ‘This is what we trained for’ said one of the Marines. Call me old fashioned but shouldn’t they be training them how to kill the Taliban rather than how to knock on doors in Florida motels?

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