My Anti-Drug

Sometimes you don't know how bad you felt until you have an eggy in the basket the next morning.

I've been doing an experiment involving cheese and bad dreams, and it's working. The fact I know about the experiment is probably throwing off the accuracy somewhat, and some would question why I'd want to have a bad dream, but to hell with it. Every dreamless sleep is, in my opinion, a missed opportunity. I'm at a stage where I'm using Red Leicester to trip and egg in a basket to come down again, and if that doesn't make me the envy of Englishmen everywhere, then nothing will.

Halfway through my breakfast I was reminded of V For Vendetta. I've recently re-read it, having had all happy memories bludgeoned out of me by the film version. And it's actually as good as it ever was. I'm not going to wax lyrical on how Alan Moore is the Thomas Pynchon of comic books, but, as everyone and his dog knows by now, he's a beast and a half.

Perhaps, though, I was a bit mean to the film the first time around. It did have Stephen Fry. It did have John Hurt. It did have Stephen Rea, if I remember correctly. It did have a man in a Guy Fawkes mask doing in a party of fascists. It did influence Anonymous. And it did piss off religious groups and homophobes.

Here's a runthrough of what I said about it the first time:

"The Wachowskis sink their fat jaws into the neck of Alan Moore's story and suck all the interest out of it, leaving a corpse of a film for McTeigue to put a mask and a silly wig on. If you're sad enough to have read the graphic novel then my complaints become clear.
Originally the story was a commentary on Thatcherism. Very British, very meaningful, very poetic even in its politics. It was about anarchism vs fascism, two awful ideals battling over Britain's future and leaving the reader unsure who to root for. The film is intended as a criticism on W. Bush's less libertarian policies such as the Patriot Act. It's about a freedom fighter vs the Nazis: totally uninteresting. Even when V resorts to more extreme methods (putting Evey in jail) he comes across as no more psychotic as a parent playing a prank on a child.
It's truly a testament to the mollycoddled, easily-offended sensibilities of the Baby Boomer generation that such a watered-down, unimportant film like this created such an uproar in certain circles. Portman's acting is dreadful, and while "cool" action sequences have their place, you can't approach subject matter intended to be taken seriously with such a cartoonish feel. It's not quite as dreadful as the other adaptations of Moore's work, but that's not saying a lot."

Hmm...nah, actually, I can stick by that. The book has a power undeniable to anyone who is English and, with the sinking feeling of one slipping into a nightmare, doesn't dare switch off the news; whereas the film was basically an American liberal wetdream represented by a cartoon. This outright rejection probably has something to do with my being a philosophical anarchist as well, I suppose. Though, I think even if I wasn't I would have thought the film was a pile.

But then... Stephen Fry. Making eggy in a basket.

I'll give it another watch just for that.