Watch out, here I come.

Another Friday night, another evening spent falling asleep on the sofa during the movie we were watching.

Another Saturday morning spent wondering what the hell happened at the end.  My celluloid narcolepsy used to occur only when I watched films which were in black and white or which had subtitles (so Wild Strawberries was a particular problem).  But these days it happens all the time, regardless of vintage or language.

This week it was Blood Simple.  (Quite often these films materialize on our Netflix queue seemingly by magic.  Neither Christina nor I have any recollection of choosing the DVDs that arrive in the mail, which I suppose is yet more depressing evidence that we’re getting old.  Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon, or is it just us??)  I do remember being impressed that Frances McDormand’s outfits so perfectly calibrated the year the film was made (1984), and that there were lots of gunshots and blood.  There was a fat guy who did most of the shooting.  But that’s about it.  I might as well have not bothered.

When I worked as a lawyer in London, there was a tribal ritual which attached to Friday evenings that involved congregating in the pub next to the office and drinking endless pints of beer on an empty stomach until closing time.  I couldn’t remember much of these nights either, which was probably just as well.  But when I woke up the following morning and pondered the black hole where my memories of the previous evening ought to have been, at least I could understand why my brain was blank.