Fill um's

First, I would like to share this music video with you. It ups its game from about 1:20 onwards.

As part of my programme of not running up and down the aisles of airplanes screaming and shaking the flight attendants until social services confiscate them, I like to distract myself from thinking about falling by watching some films. The films must fulfill certain criteria: they should involve things happening quickly and nonsensically with characters that serve only to bridge the gaps between explosions. While I may have inadvertently described a recent trend in soap opera, what I meant was that I watch action films. Comedies are ok too, if they're actually funny. So not American Pie then. I try to steer clear of anything that involves thinking though, because such films invariably have (or indeed are) tedious dead spots where the suddenly active analytical part of my brain has time to think about how much of a modern airplane is actually held together by glue and that if you look at the correct statistic (deaths per journey, rather than mile) then flying is less safe than driving. But still safer than cycling. Worst of all, 'coming of age' films - which are often just an excuse for directors to hire a cast of beautiful teenagers and play out the unfulfilled sexual fantasies they had in their youth about the girl next door, her mother, her dad, her dog or her vacuum cleaner - are usually so vile that they make me want to exit the plane prior to landing. And I've been told that is not advisable.

During my last journey I weathered three films (with a bit of cheating in one), they were X-men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek: XI and Dragonball Evolution. I would just like to say, before we move on, that if anyone suggests watching the latter film to you, the correct answer is to say "no", walk away without looking back, block all possibility of future communication with them and sneak to their house in the dead of night to paint a bloody red hand and the word "unclean" on their front door. If only there was a national register of such people, we could round them up with time-tested vigilante efficiency and feed them to a pack of baying paedophiles. Unless the person suggesting you watch the film is a child, in which case you should just give them more ritalin and they will no doubt grow up to be a fine upstanding contestant on Britain's got talent.

The X-men have always been second tier superheroes. When viewed in comparison to Superman and Batman they have neither the simplicity of the former nor the lone warrior cool of the latter. Instead they have strangely chosen to focus the absurdity of a man who can't grasp the 'under' aspect of underpants and the wooden character of an American who actually has a butler. At least they didn't try to emulate any aspect of Spiderman, who is a whiny dick with dirty wrists. I think this film was pretty good because it featured lumberjacks and people who are, because of genetics, able to turn themselves into diamond, or walk through walls, both of which are probably not ok with the IAAF.

Star Trek XI doesn't make much sense. Murderous abuse of science aside, it is non-canonical, worst of all sci-fi sins. Add to this the sad fact that due to union action by the federation of cornish pasty makers, Klingons had to be dropped from the final film. There is a woman painted entirely green though. She is an alien, and you can tell because she's green.

Dragonball is so shit that the cast and production crew needed reconstructive colorectal surgery after the completion of the film. However Chow Yun Fat is in it, and I quite like him because he once starred in a film called Hard Boiled that, in the finest traditions of Hong Kong cinema, features a shoot-out in a maternity ward.

I went to a a small festival dedicated to beer and bluegrass on Saturday. For some reason Hulahoops seem to be very popular at outdoor events here and there were some highly skilled female practioners, although judging by their facial expressions they might have been using performance enhancing drugs. Speaking of highly skilled practioners: There was a little bit of dancing to the bands and at the end of one song an old man came up and tapped me on the shoulder. He said he was 75 years old and that he felt I could "outdance anyone he had ever seen in his life" and "should be up there on stage". I will try not to let it go to my head. Especially because for all I know he's never the left the farm before and just judged me relative to Mavis the stillborn heifer and Old Buck the three legged dog that died back in '74. He seemed like a nice guy though and came over to shake my hand again before he left.