The Lair

I’ve watched The Watchmen before. But not in Sri Lanka, and not with the crowd I usually hang out with here. So off to the cinema we went. The first time, it was the movie experience. This time around, it was the movie going experience. For the past decade or so, I’ve probably watched more movies in a tiny screen embedded into the back of an airplane seat than I have on a large screen.

False alarm of the day: Despite dire warnings, the national anthem was not played before the start of the movie. In retrospect, I can’t even articulate why the concept of having a national anthem played before a movie screening bothers me so much. Except it does and I was glad when it didn’t happen. Maybe the practice has fallen out of favour?

The movie itself: the movie rating system in SL confuses me greatly. Back in the day, you had your general audience movies, the “more suitable for adults” shtick (which in the late 80s really meant a proverbial flash of ankle and petticoat) and the “adults only omgz” which probably included a flash of mammaries at most. Now The Watchmen is rated R in the US and 18+ in the UK. There is violence (big deal, this is the country which repeatedly televised the bug eyed terrorist corpse face with much gusto, we’re sort of used to seeing pieces of limbs and lots of blood everywhere) and nudity. You’d expect it to be an adults only classification here, right? Even the permissive UK slapped a 18+ on it, right? Umm. No. The Watchmen was classified “more suitable for adults” in Sri Lanka. Go figure. I don’t know what people were thinking either.

Then there was the actual movie; which surprisingly enough featured very little in the way of creative editing by censorious morality police. Yes, so Dr. Manhattan’s nether regions were perpetually blurred out (prompting much sniggering from myself). In a blatant double standard, his magnificent blue buttcheeks (I can’t believe I just typed those words out) were left exposed to the cinema goer. The infamous, cringe inducing sex scene aboard the Archimedes was (almost) uncensored, which surprised me no end. All in all, the movie was left intact.

Finally, there was the saga of the beer. Yes, apparently beer can be purchased by cinema going folk (Ok, it’s been years since I was in a Sri Lankan cinema, ok? I don’t know these things). But as usual, there are caveats and rules which make the experience slightly less enjoyable than it could be…

First, no beer purchases before 1700 in the evening. Not unreasonable, you might argue – until you realize that the movie starts at 1630. Or it would have, if they had bothered starting on time (they didn’t).

Second, containers of beer cannot be taken inside the hall. Note that this does not apply to other beverages, which people happily carted in – but apparently beer is … umm … special. Ok, I can see the logic in that too (someone could easily be buying for minors in the cinema hall proper) except that this requires beer be purchased and downed during intermission.

Which brings me to the last element in this hideous trifecta of beerfail – for some inexplicable reason, the intermission was barely 5 minutes long. Ice cold beverage chugged down in 30 seconds or less because omg-the-movie-is-starting-up-again and this is the part where Manhattan is accused of giving people cancer?. Yeah, instant brainfreeze. Not fun.

But hey, it was fun. I probably wouldn’t do that again in a hurry though – if I want to pay for the privilege of sitting in an unpleasantly musty smelling hall; I’d go back to school or something.

There are people who love being read to – that is, someone else sits down with a book or magazine or newspaper in front of them and reads aloud. I know several people who like this.

I’m not one of them.

I have often wondered if my childhood had anything to do with this (it probably did, we are all influenced by our childhood in some way or the other). My parents never read aloud to me. Not that I feel the lack at all, I was always given a book – or found myself one – and read it. There was never a question of someone else performing the labour intensive activity of actually reading to me, I’d read it myself thank you very much.

Why is this a problem now? Because I am completely unaccustomed to someone reading an entire book to me now. I simply cannot concentrate on the contents of the book, nor does it make it easy for me to visualize what is going on when I have to concentrate on the next words being read. When I am reading text off a page (or a screen), it’s easy. I read at my own pace. When someone else is going the reading for me, it’s pure torture. It’s always either too slow or too fast or just plain “uh. yeah, what did you just say? because I wasn’t listening”.

Which is a pity – because in my seemingly unquenchable thirst for new things to read, I have discovered that an mp3 player and a podcast directory, or an audiobook directory or two can be very useful assets. For most. For me? Well, I don’t have the patience to listen to podcasts. Not even when I’m driving and stuck in traffic. Give me a transcript any day.

Perhaps it’s an acquired ability.

Been a while since I had this much free time to myself. And by free time, I really mean time that I should be spending putting the finishing touches to some work – but I’m choosing to do other things. First, books – and there is truly nothing nicer than being able to catch up on some of the titles that I hadn’t read over the last year. Then, in orderly fashion – new book announcements, of which there are a few.

First, to no one’s surprise (certainly not mine, at any rate) – the final Robert Jordan WoT book is now three volumes. Why do I sense another potential money spinning venture here; with volume following volume? Perhaps I’m being overly cynical about this. Next, new Discworld. Note the timing of both releases – November and October this year, respectively.

And apropos of nothing – more than one person has already asked me how I manage to keep some (most) of the character names in the WoT series sorted out in my head. And the answer is; well – at least I think the answer is – I have read the books a few times now over the last decade or so. I do re-read books. These things get remembered. As an explanation, I always thought this sounded sort of weak – until I read about the woman who has perfect recall.

Except that the article takes the sheen off a pretty remarkable achievement by setting it in a slightly creepy context -

When it comes to the 2004 election, she opts out entirely. I soon find that except for her own personal history and certain categories like television and airplane crashes, Price’s memory isn’t much better than anyone else’s

and later …

The difference is that she scans her past relentlessly. Every time we think about something, and especially how it connects to something else, we get better at remembering it—a phenomenon that psychologists call elaborative encoding

And now? you find a picture of someone who seems to spend most of her time relentlessly scanning her past. Ooerr.

And on that note, I’m off to forget most of what I still remember about characters in the WoT series.