Warming Up

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I didn’t feel on top of the world today, but was surprised how little a day of boozing had affected me. Luckily we were mainly taking it easy, hanging around with a couple of our guests who’d stayed overnight at the party, going out for breakfast and then watching films. I managed to somehow dig out a Metro column, even though I was feeling particularly uninspired.

For breakfast I had waffles with maple syrup and bacon. All good sense says that shouldn’t work, but it really does. But it mainly made me wonder how any American lives beyond the age of 30. You have to respect a meal that is going its best to give you a heart attack and diabetes. It would be healthier to be slicing off bits of your own liver and stuffing them down your throat. But probably not as tasty. Then again I would have thought that about maply bacon before I’d tried it. It’s certainly a welcome repast after a bellyful of booze, but I will not make a habit of it and will be back to porridge tomorrow.

Tonight we went to see Pitch Perfect 2. Even though these films are not really aimed at me, I’d greatly enjoyed the first one. I didn’t enjoy this one as much. Though there were some good laughs, it felt less joyous and a bit more cynical than the first one and Anna Kendrick who I think is awesome had been edged out a bit. I didn’t really buy the new girl or understand why they’d brought her in to things as I didn’t care about her, but then I remembered I am 47 years old and the film makers weren’t really thinking about me. My wife who enjoyed it more than I did pointed out how remarkable it is to have all these female characters and pretty much none of the film is about the importance of having or getting a boyfriend. And in an industry that has largely ignored its female audience in recent years it is gratifying that Pitch Perfect 2 is outperforming Mad Max. And I was pretty tired and tetchy too so maybe I wasn’t in the right mood for it. I don’t think it’s really about questioning whether (spoiler alert) Fat Amy inadvertently showing her private parts to the US President would really lead to the Belles being banned. But I did think that (spoiler alert) the Germans  were better than the Americans and deserved to win.

Maybe the writing just seemed a bit lazy in places, but that seems to be the way things go. We’ve had a big success with a brilliant script, but now we know people will come anyway and we’ll make lots of money then that doesn’t matter. It’d be nice to think that the guarantee of making lots of money would make the filmmakers work harder to reward us for our loyalty, but what do I know about show business?