Monday 26 May 2008

The Weekend: Lessons Learned

Five things I learned from the new Indiana Jones film (spoilers ahoy, my peeps):

1) Indiana Jones is now too full of awesome to be affected by the most basic rules of magnetism, gravity, or radioactive decay;
2) Despite his new-found immunity to the laws of physics, Indy still can't get his arse out of trouble without yet another convenient Higher Power arriving to bitch-slap the opposition;
3) You are likely to undercut your point that the Cold War made everyone unnecessarily paranoid about the "Red under the bed" if you have the hero's BFF sell him out to the Russkies twice in the same film;
4) The two most indestructible objects on Earth are snakes and fridges;
5) Even the most fiery of independent women will forgive the man who left her a month before their wedding day whilst pregnant, and do so within hours of meeting him again, and will then proceed to stare at him with pathetic co-dependent puppy dog eyes ad nauseum.

Five things I learned from another visit to the hated South:

1) There are more antiques shops in Hampshire than there are pubs;
2) Hypermobility looks like it really, really hurts (full sympathies to Mr Cleavage, who already had enough to deal with putting me up for the weekend);
3) Car cigarette lighters are not something you want to fool around with (in fairness, Dr B learned this is a significantly more painful way than I did);
4) Flight of the Conchords is awesome. So awesome that I should have kept the DVDs for myself and just given Cleavage a novelty toothbrush, as was at one point tradition between us;
5) No amount of faux-Victorian lampposts and artfully arranged deciduous trees can make up for the fact that paying £7.80 to see a film is a fucking outrage.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh, more spoilers, peeps.

"You are likely to undercut your point that the Cold War made everyone unnecessarily paranoid about the "Red under the bed" if you have the hero's BFF sell him out to the Russkies twice in the same film;"

Generally true, but in this case superseded by the Rule that an isolated Brit must be the arch-villain or some other form of high-ranking nemesis. So as long as the Yanks are chummy with each other, that's alright and Patriotism is preserved, of course. Besides: Britain - that's kinda on the same continent as a bit of Russia, right? Obviously dodgy.

SpaceSquid said...

Point taken.

Anonymous said...

I'm gutted that I couldn't make it this weekend, but sounds like you guys had fun. I saw the film on Sunday and was not massively impressed, although it was enjoyable. The plot was ludicrously obvious, even by usual Indy standards. And yes, clearly they don't make fridges like they used to (i.e. indestructible and with the tightest sealant known to man).

Flight of the Conchords is indeed teh awesome. 'Calm down Jemaine!'. I've to get my hands on their Radio 2 CDs, apparently Murray would regularly call Neil Finn for advice, 'the white Bob Marley of Wellington' :-)

Tomsk said...

Good to see another Flight of the Conchords fan. Dan introduced to me to this blog on his visit, while I introduced him to FotC. Not sure what he made of it though...

SpaceSquid said...

Well, my bullet-proof ego notwithstanding, I suspect he may have got the better end of the deal.

Hope the play-type business went OK, Jamie.

Anonymous said...

Yes thanks, not bad at all; pretty good reactions from audiences all round, and not too tiring (let's face it, I wasn't on stage a great deal of the time; pretty relaxed as far as plays go!)

Big news though: I had an interview at Oxford Uni Press on Thursday morning, and got offered the job that afternoon! As you may have seen on Facebook, I've handed in my notice today, and will be starting the new job at the beginning of July! All very exciting... It's a maternity cover post, but it's a foot in the door, with a chance to definitely move on to other things later!

The best thing about it is that some of my job will involve the Classics online reference material that they are piloting at the moment; finally I might get a bit of relevance to my degree!

Anonymous said...

Oops, that was me by the way.

Erm.




I'm Jamie.

SpaceSquid said...

Thank you for the biggest laugh I've had all week.

Also, congrats on the new posting.

Anonymous said...

Woo! Congratulations Jamie. Hope that does turn into something greater for you.

I enjoyed the FotC tv episodes, but I thought the radio plays were abysmal. The Neil Finn bit is about the only section I can remember, the rest was utterly forgettable. An example was made concerning The Office - the gags are too visual to work on radio, and what's used instead doesn't work. In my opinion, etc.

Anonymous said...

Glad to oblige Ricster :o)

I dunno, I heard some of one episode when the manager tried to book the Albert Hall for the next week. It was hilarious.

Plus, they weren't originally designed for television after all, the radio series were conceived as just that.

But I will wait to listen to the radio series before judging any further.