So in the absence of anything better, we went to see Catching Fire last night. It wasn’t bad at all and a lot better than the first movie in the trilogy. Definitely more expensive. I don’t know what they will do with part 3 since the last book in the trilogy was so weak that all I remember from it is the phrase “Let’s go to District13!”

What was quite disturbing, though, was seeing the previews. Of course, the previews for people who came to see a movie in the fantasy genre will be selected based on what these viewers might find appealing. Still, the sheer volume of escapism was unsettling. Vampires, Frankenstein (yet another one!), fantasy, Noah’s Ark with cute special effects, space monsters, more fantasy, and a movie starring Ben Stiller who fantasizes of being a superhero.

And look at the movie lineup. Is there anything about the reality we live in at your neighborhood theater?

Hasn’t the time come to stop escaping into fantasy and start becoming aware?

Yesterday as I got out of the swimming pool, an elderly gentleman spotted me and noticed that I was grunting, wheezing and moving my eye-brows in weird ways.

“Swimming is hard, isn’t it?” he said.

The reason why I was making weird noises and strange faces, however, wasn’t that the swim had been strenuous. What happened was that I was trying to create a conclusion to the article I’m writing. Intellectual efforts always elicit grunts and wheezing from me and make me look scary.