2 Guns

Watched 2 Guns last night - can recommend it if you like Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, explosions or all of the above.  To be clear, there is no exploding Mark Wahlberg, but if any of the three things above is not your cup of tea then you should probably watch something else, like Mr Pip, which I'm sure is an excellent film but could probably still have benefited slightly from more explosions.  I haven't read the book so I assume the movie is about a heroic lemon pip who must fight his way through the pith and skin of his lemon prison to find his family on the outside, and also I think Hugh Laurie might be in it because I vaguely remember seeing the shorts when I was slightly drunk.  Is Hugh Laurie the lemon?  Who knows.  Art is hard.

The other good thing about 2 Guns was that it allowed me to make a joke about my biceps didn't feature any of my least favourite kind of actor, which is 'Famous, But Not Quite Household Name Famous'.  These actors absolutely ruin movies for me because I spend the entire movie  frantically trying to remember where I've seen that actor before and losing track of the plot.  "Oh," I announce three-quarters of the way through, "it's Hugh Laurie, of course it is" and that ruins the movie for everyone else who was focusing on the dramatic escape from the lemon squeezer.  Bad example, everyone knows who Hugh Laurie is.  

Better example?  300.  

HB and I watched 300 the other day, and it is simply stuffed full of actors that you recognise, but aren't quite sure why. HB was mildly impressed when I dredged from my brain that the actress who played the Queen was also the actress from Game of Thrones* but was able to keep watching the movie, happy within himself.

I wasn't.  Here's why.

WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE?

The more discerning among you will of course realise that it's Faramir and whatsisface with the sex addiction, but it took me half the movie to figure it out and then I sort of yelled during a dramatic battle scene and HB was unimpressed and I was disproportionately proud of myself.  I'm awesome to watch movies with.

Also speaking of 2 Guns, I had an accidentally awkward gym experience this week; trotted into the gym about 6.30, which is generally after everyone has done their gym things and gone home, only to find probably the three fittest people in the company hard at work(out)**.  This was a bit awkward as I was only really going because I'd just bought an iPod charger and could finally listen to heaps of favourite songs that I hadn't heard since I lost the original charger two years ago.  I haven't really got the hang of this gym thing yet.

Briefly considered going "Oh!" as if I had forgotten something important and then leaving, never to return, but by the time I had considered this the moment had passed.

Two of the Super Fitness Colleagues*** are guys who I occasionally share gym time with; they do things like 'press-ups, but your feet are on a swiss ball, and your hands are also on a smaller swiss ball' and 'lifting your whole body weight on one armpit' and 'balancing 10kg on your nose' and that sort of ridiculous thing.  They are so far out of my fitness league that I don't feel intimidated, and they pay me no more attention than lions at a watering hole would pay to a small bird which was also at the watering hole, trying frantically to do 20 minutes of safari exercise without safari passing out.

Artist's impression.

However on this special occasion we were also joined by a girl from work who we shall call Sally - because that is her name, and I generally only use pseudonyms when I wish to say something unkind about somebody,****  and I do not intend to say anything unkind about Sally, mostly because she is lovely, but also because she is probably a Terminator.

Sally proceeded to show me up at every possible aspect of gym-going behaviour; she arrived with a cheerful hello, went to the changing rooms, and reappeared in expensive-looking, properly fitted workout gear.  Then she skipped.  For like ten minutes.  Not the half arsed, one foot at a time, "whoops dropped one end of the rope" skipping that people like you and I do.  This was Rocky montage skipping.  The rope went so fast that you couldn't even see the rope.   I provided some much needed realism by puffing away grumpily on the cross trainer in an ill-fitting and hilariously inaccurate Superman t-shirt and a pair of trackpants with last night's Indian spilt down one leg, pausing only to take a big swig of water which went down the wrong way and meant I had to get off the machine for a little bit because coughing fit, except I didn't want to look like an idiot in front of Super Fitness Colleagues so I didn't get off the machine, just ran and coughed for a bit while everyone very politely pretended I wasn't.

And then Sally tripped over her skipping rope and I thought, "Aha!  Ahahaha!  Ahahahahahahahahahah YOU ARE HUMAN AFTER ALL" but then when I went to leave she was really lovely and had a little chat and wasn't even sweaty and I felt like an absolute tool.

The moral of the story is that we are all different and everyone is beautiful in their own way.  Just kidding, the moral of the story is that maybe in the future I will give it an extra hour before I venture into the gym in the evenings.    


*side note: stars of historical/period dramas should only be allowed to feature in other shows/movies from the same time period.  Game of Thrones example: seeing Queen Cersei as Queen Mrs Gerard Butler in 300 does not negatively impact my movie-going experience; seeing Littlefinger as a scruffy and potentially corrupt policeman in some post-9pm, Sunday night Midsomer Murders-esque drama is extremely jarring.  I realise these are prior roles. I think my point is that once an actor plays an iconic character, all previous movies they appeared in should be re-filmed with someone else.  Surely that wouldn't be too difficult.

**is that what you call it? "They were busy gymming."  "They were in the middle of a set."  "A set of what?"  "Things"

***terrible superhero league name

****this doesn't apply to you, Button; I give you a pseudonym purely to protect your reputation.