Cinema Adverts

What with the buggered economy, the nation's youngsters attempting to kill each other either through knife related stabbings or by passing on STDs to as many people as possible, politicians trying to spend all of our money on such necessities as porn and inflatable houses for ducks and global warming meaning more rain in Scotland, times are bleak. And when times are bleak we must look for an escape, some form of entertainment that takes us away from all this shit. Well what better an escape than a trip to the cinema? In that darkened room there's that magic window showing us fantastical pictures that match our dreams, as long as those dreams include giant robots kicking each others titanium posteriors while millions of innocent bystanders are killed. It brings a sense of joy to a heart weighed down by the fact that within those two hours that you're there you've probably lost your job, your house and those bastards who used to be your neighbours have shot your cat's eye out with an air rifle. Cinemas are indeed great at insulating you from the nastiness out with.

Or at least that's what you thought! You see there's a window of time that allows you to ignore all that is cracked about life and it opens when the trailers begin.But if you arrive earlier something sinister is afoot, something that can ruin your enjoyment of the entire experience. Forget the film, these events will overrule any giddiness it may bring. Forget a happy ending, like when the Cloverfield monster killed all those annoying fucktards, because fear will have clamped its considerably muscular arms around the throat that in this metaphor is your brain and has started squeezing for dear life.

It all starts pleasantly enough. Enter the theatre early enough and you'll find an atmosphere that's pretty relaxed. Some music will be playing, the best-of Curiosity Killed The Cat or a mixtape of all those mid-90's pop reggae songs by acts like Big Mountain and Pato Banton. It's music from a more innocent, care-free time when singing "girl I want to make you sweat" didn't trigger some feminist retort about chauvinistic attitudes in popular music. And anyway, what's wrong with a song where the guy is inviting her to go jogging? Sorry, I digress. On the screen are movie related place holders containing trivia, Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes didn't use real tomatoes, or word games, guess the popular star: DRAB TTIP. It's all very nice.

Then the adverts start.

Not the trailers, but the adverts. The trailers are for movies about people dieing after using a haunted social networking site or the latest "serious" film from Euroland about relationships and stuff." FUCK OFF EUROLAND! I WANT A FILM INVOLVING CATS TURNING EVIL AND RISING UP LIKE A NEW FELINE NAZI PARTY TO DESTROY EARTH. GIVE US THAT MOVIE HOLLYWOOD! Sorry, I digress yet again. It's the adverts, the sort of pre-trailers trailers. At first it seems okay as it usually starts off with a Jack Daniels ad. You know, the ones filled with locals clearly ripped to the tits on the beverage they produce, and they're all happy and backwards and they live in the mountains and there's no women so you suspect that they may be cosying up to one another and it looks nice. Drinking makes you happy and able to enjoy the company of your fellow man, or at least it makes you forget. "Maybe I'll have a drink after the film," you say, "keep the fuzziness the film instills in me continue for a while." Drinking's great ain't it?

WRONG MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!

No, it's not fucking great. If you drink you'll end up murderising a kid whilst driving your 4x4 death machine under the influence of fake happy juice. And even worse, the kid's corpse will then stalk you, but not in a way that makes you feel like a celebrity. No, it'll make you feel like a murderiser!



HOW DARE YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT BEING HAPPY AGAIN! Especially not whilst there are children lying dead under computer desks the world over. What I want to know is why the dead kid is ginger? This is a shocking display of casual racism on the ad makers, or Doom Merchants, part here as it suggests that gingers can't cross the road without noticing without noticing a hulking great Honda Civic baring down upon them. If that kid had hazel eyes or was from the island of Tonga the uproar would be incredible. As it stands the silence from the Anti-Sun campaigners is deafening. In fact it makes me bloody angry! So angry I'm now going to have to take some "chill pills". It happens I've just purchased some from the internet. Nothing can go wrong taking pills from the net, can it?



What the fuck? I mean WHAT THE FUCK? Is this like an urban update of that old wife's tale about swallowing an apple seed and a full blown tree blasts through your skull a few years later? It's just so wrong. Like really, really, really, really wrong. Do these ads play before kids films as well because Care Bears and the Magical Adventure in Happy Fluffy Town just got ruined for poor little Timmy. In fact his whole life's now ruined. In fact mines has been by it too, but little Timmy has more years of torment ahead of him. Unless he's ginger and lives near a main road with a ton of pubs on it. The only way you could make that video worse is if the bloke looked up from the sink to see a couple of kids standing in the doorway, faces aghast as they stare in disbelief at the rat. Then the little girl, through a tidal wave of tears scream, "Fluffy! You've killed Fluffy!" Then to top it off the little boy chips in, "Thanks a lot Dad, this is the worst Christmas morning EVER!"

Thankfully these grim examples of why everything ever is horrible are usually followed by an ad for the latest must-have mobile phone. This thing has a camera, a music player, an Atari Lynx emulator, and a function that makes chips the way your mum used to before chip pans were banned as the lethal weapons that they are. Hell, it can even make phone calls to other telephones, mobile or non-mobile. The ad's bright, it's colourful, it's loud and it's filled with happy, good looking people who are clearly living the good life thanks to this wonder machine that fits in their pocket. They're clearly people who have said "no thanks, I'll get all my entertainment from my phone" because watching stuff on a really small screen with tinny sound is clearly the way forward. Of course they want you to join them, and after seeing dead ginger kids, rats being vomited up and listening to Big Mountain, fuck, you want to join them. You want to be one of those beautiful people, happy because having spent so much time focusing on a 5" screen they've went blind and can't see the atrocious world crumbling around their beautiful, well-trainered feet.

You just want to be happy, like them.

WELL YOU CAN'T BE BECAUSE YOU LOST YOUR JOB AND CAN'T AFFORD A NEW PHONE! You're stuck with your Phillips brick you've had for fourteen miserable, predictive text-less years. Even the happy ads now are punishing you, showing you what you should be, what you should have when you can't adhere because of matters outwith your control. It's basically saying "get it right up you, you shit phone owning knob you".

Hey, now a car ad's on with a soundtrack by Keane. Time to end it all. You may as well just stuff your face with popcorn until you choke. Ah well at least you'll get a sugar rush before you go, eh?

Only you won't because you accidentally lifted a bucket of salted on the way in. See you're so crap you can't even die happily. And now the film's starting and you just can't bring yourself to care. The world's caught up to you and not even the opening mantra "Directed by Michael Bay" could see you plunge lower.

And that's my account of the last time I went to the cinema to cheer myself up.