The World's End

Apparently there was some sort of gathering on the TV last night of a crop of current music video stars, and I missed it. I try to avoid the music that people enjoy because I find it's often awful and depressing, so I'm a little out of the loop as far as what is happening with the youngsters today in music. From what I gather, someone did a dance called twerping, and a former pop group called Lip-Sync got back together for about 15 seconds and performed something that vaguely resembles music. It sounds intriguing, so maybe I'll try to catch it next year.

I missed the telecast of the music thing because Mrs. Deathrage and I ventured out of the penthouse for a date. I know! That's something we never do. And to really ramp up the Wow Factor, we saw a movie in the theatre. I know! It's the craziest thing. We saw the British action-comedy The World's End.

We headed out to the Xtreme 36 Screen Mega-Mondo Cineplex because that's the only place a British action-comedy was playing which seemed counter-intuitive. I would have assumed it would have been playing at the art-house theatre that specializes in foreign films, but that assumption would be incorrect. So, we headed out for the matinee showing, and even though it was only 5 o'clock, people were everywhere. I'm not a fan of people, or lines, or even worse; people in lines. I don't stand in lines. I am always on the list, or I have extra-fancy All-Access Passes. Standing in a line is for suckers.

So we stood in an Xtreme line for tickets, and we stood in an Xtreme line to have our Xtreme tickets torn, and we stood in an Xtreme line to buy refreshments at the Xtreme Refreshment Counter, and we purchased a bottled water, a box of M&Ms (they had no Junior Mints), and a medium soda for $12. I was Xtremely pissed. Let's talk about that "medium" soda for a minute. Here's the breakdown of the soda sizes: The "small" is 3 tablespoons and will set you back $4. The "medium" is 6 gallons and costs $4.50, so it's a pretty good value as far as getting financially hosed goes. The "large" is $5 and requires a forklift to get it to the theatre. I don't perceive the "large" to be a good value because 2 hours is not enough time to drink all that liquid, and I don't think humans have bladders the size of the Hindenburg. I'm not an authority on human bladders, though, so I could be wrong.

So we headed to our theatre with our precious solid gold box of ordinary $5 M&Ms that were definitely not Junior Mints, and there were only 6 people in the theatre which was pretty sweet. We sat down as the previews started, and we were punched in the face with sound and previews for about 20 minutes. I've been to rock concerts quieter than the preview for About Time, and I saw Ministry on the "Land Of Rape And Honey" tour. They has a chain-link fence on stage to protect us from them.

Sorry, someone replace my video of Ministry performing live with the chain-link fence with the trailer for About Time, which seems simultaneously British, witty, maudlin and retch-inducing. The movie, that is, not the band.

Anyway, The World's End is about a pretty cool guy who gets his 4 boring, stodgy, wet-blanket friends together for an epic pub crawl and the four boring friends bitch and whine the entire time like a bunch of schoolgirls whose pigtails are too tight. The 4 wet-blankets are always picking on the cool guy because they find him to be distracted, self-absorbed, superficial, and always wearing a Sisters Of Mercy t-shirt. I'm not sure why they were getting so upset, well, except for the Sisters Of Mercy part. I never liked Sisters Of Mercy, they seemed like a parody of themselves and didn't get the joke, but that's probably just me, I guess. I always thought they performed too many squealing guitar solos to be authentic goth, whatever that means, but that's my opinion. He probably should have worn a Bauhaus shirt instead.

Sorry, someone replaced my Sisters Of Mercy video with a video by Bauhaus, and it hardly had any self-indulgent, ridiculous, or easily-parodied moments in it.

Anyway, I think the four stodgy friends were just mad and jealous because he could still fit in a rock tee from the 80's and they couldn't, or worse, wouldn't. Heck, I wore my Cocteau Twins shirt from 1985 just yesterday because that's how I roll. So, The World's End is filled from top to bottom with sweet jams as narrative from the late 80s and early 90s, and it's like they raided my record collection.

There were top jams from Suede, Happy Mondays, Charlatans, and more. Mrs. Deathrage kept nudging me at one point, and kept asking who did this song, and I'm like, "St. Etienne, obs. Duh.", which she didn't care for. The remark, not the band.

We went home and she played "Join Our Club" 4 times, which is a nice way to end our date.