TheJakartaPost

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Jakarta Post

It'€™s official: Life is now a movie, and mine'€™s a bad comedy

Madness

Nury Vittachi (The Jakarta Post)
Bangkok
Sun, June 1, 2014

Share This Article

Change Size

It'€™s official: Life is now a movie, and mine'€™s a bad comedy

M

adness. In the next few months, government regulators in many cities are planning to legalize self-driving cars. Have these people never seen any of the '€œTransformers'€ movies? The Decepticons must be ecstatic.

I was worrying out loud about this when a friend posited a theory that The Universe had run out of plot-lines for human destinies and was now recycling old movie scripts. This idea was so utterly ridiculous that it had a kind of brilliance to it.

His evidence was a TV news report about a pair of burglars who recently broke into a shop in the US city of Houston. Surveillance video showed that they crept around the store and then bumped into each other. Each thought the other was a guard, and they fired 12 shots before running off.

'€œHome Alone,'€ I said. '€œExactly,'€ he said.

The life-is-a-movie theory was bolstered the following day when a reader forwarded me a story about a mechanic in Sichuan, China, working on an oversized truck tire which exploded. He flew into the air and landed on a nearby rooftop, perfectly intact except for his trousers, which had '€œcompletely vanished'€ according to the report. Being deposited whole on a housetop is movie-like enough, but the missing trousers turns it into comedy gold. You can just imagine the householder standing on the roof hanging her washing and the pants-less guy saying: '€œEsteemed madam! I can explain!'€

In the Koreans filmed this, a lonely-but-pretty woman will be praying for a man when The Universe lowers a handsome, trouser-free sky hunk onto her skylight.

I sent out a general appeal for examples, and an animal-lover friend sent me a cutting which said that an over-subscribed training school for animal doctors in Scotland has started employing dogs to help with interviews. This definitely has shades of Babe, Bolt, Up, Underdog, Look Who'€™s Talking Now, etc. I wonder how the interviews will go? Applicant: '€œWhat are my chances of getting in?'€ Dog: '€œRuff.'€

The most worrying example came from a reader collecting news cuttings about killer robots, which are already in production in the US, the UK, China, India, Russia, etc. Government officials all gave the same reason: '€œWe'€™re building them so we don'€™t have to risk soldiers'€™ lives.'€

How is that everyone in the world except them knows how these stories end? When we try to decommission the robots, they turn on us and the Machine Wars start. Why do government officials never do their homework?

The final proof that The Universe is recycling movie plots came the night before I wrote this. My friend'€™s daughter commented that women in movies always go through a powerful personal transformation, but dad characters always stay as they are, stupid and evil. '€œHow come dads never have a mid-life crisis?'€ she asked. Her mom replied: '€œBecause men never get beyond adolescence, sweetie.'€ It rang true for my friend.

Thankfully, my own kids are more respectful. Even if they do have a nickname for me, which I overheard them using last week: '€œIs the ATM home from work yet?'€

For my life, the Universe appears to be using a tragicomedy featuring a hapless loser, so I better practice my lines. '€œEsteemed madam! I can explain!'€

The writer is a columnist and journalist.

{

Your Opinion Counts

Your thoughts matter - share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you've encountered on The Jakarta Post. We're here to listen.

Enter at least 30 characters
0 / 30

Thank You

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your feedback.