Gamer

Woke at 9am. Fell asleep. Woke again. Repeated routine until 1pm when I eventually dragged myself to the kitchen to flick the switch on the kettle - a task that had seemed so impossible whilst I was horizontal. Bathroom. Coffee and cigarette whilst reviewing recent happenings on Facebook. Conversation with flatmate Johnny about intended schedules. Negotiation of fry-ups, home cooked pasta/bacon sandwiches and staying in or going out results in a decision to pick up fried chicken and watch my recent download of Gerard Butler’s Gamer. (I credit him with authorship rather than the director because it would never have found a home on my hard drive otherwise.) Excitement ensues. Later re-analysed as hunger for filthy bird meat. 

Home cinema invented: a chair stolen by other flatmate Tom during theatre-fuelled drinking binge, laptop mounted on said chair against my radiator, speakers jacked into said laptop, chairs bought for a play I produced two years’ ago. Fractious credit sequence begins as single-serving salt is sprinkled upon carcass and instantly the hunger that replaced the excitement is in turn replaced by sexual arousal as Butler appears on screen killing everything in KillZone multiplayer mode. Genital galviniztion is promptly ruined as Butler goes on to graphically annihilate human beings in the most inhumane way possible throughout the rest of the film. 

Raucous applause on my part is contrasted by Johnny’s declaration that Gamer is “The worst film I’ve seen in a long, long time.” As I bite down on the factory fattened corpse of a chicken, Gerard breaks the spine of a character whose name includes the word rape - only possible in a Sims-type environment, of course, where every dark human desire can be realised. This avatar-based game which Gerard has illegally penetrated (unlike Rick Rape who was trying to have an avatar-amour session with Gerard’s wife - stupid fucker) is called ‘Society’ and I immediately want to live there, with Johnny controlling me. 

Gamer causes repeated yelps of “Agh” and “Ugh” which are signals that I find it difficult to watch the 300-Scottish-Bigfoot lift people up by the legs and drop their skulls into the ground in its full widescreen gratuity... 

BUT... trash as it is, Gamer is undeniably well-made trash. Ridiculousness culminates in a dance sequence/basketball match in which Gerard and Dexter punch each other in increasingly elaborate ways. Lighting of the scene reveals Gerard as the ugliest person in the entire film. 

Go to work feeling as if I’ve eaten a sugar hamburger. Look forward to downloading The Bounty Hunter. Johnny does not. Johnny feels so ashamed of himself that he stays in bed reading Goldfinger until I return from work, drunk, ravenous for marathon download session.