[Previous entry: "Marketing is arson."] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Wrong Alexandria"]
07/23/2002 Entry: "I apologize in advance."
A little over three months ago, I stopped watching television. I just went cold turkey. I've watched maybe two hours during various visits to my folks. And even then it was baseball, which hardly counts as anything. Instead of TV, I've been listening to a lot of public radio, watching lots of movies and DVDs, playing video games, and generally putzing around online.
One of the movies I went to see recently was Sum of All Fears. Based on the description, I figured it was a Black Sunday ripoff with updated villians, product placement, and Hollywood gadgets. All I knew about the movie was the little Yahoo blurb: terrorists/bomb/super bowl/blah blah blah. Seen it all before. Guilty pleasure movie.
Needless to say I was caught off-guard when halfway through the movie downtown Baltimore gets nuked. I thought it was a dream sequence at first. I looked around at the other people in the theater - nobody else seemed the least bit surprised. Then there was a scene when Ben Affleck is looking behind him at the mushroom cloud and it hit me - this image had probably been in all the commercials and trailers for the movie. Everyone around me in the theater, and for that matter most of the country have no doubt been watching commercials where Baltimore getting blown away. They've probably been seeing it about four times an hour every night for the past couple months. If I was the sort of person taken to panic attacks, I'm prety sure I would have had a pretty major one right about then.
So anyway now I'm wondering what other horrible images the people around me have been soaking up these past couple of months. If you find me staring at you a little too long, that's probably what I'm thinking of. I apologize in advance.
