Taking the Locals Advice

When the locals advise against doing something, that is usually a good yardstick. Don’t swim in the sea. Why? You’ll be eaten by bull sharks. Ok. Don’t walk around with your camera and bumbag like a tit. Why? A motorbike will stop beside you and a weaponised youth will persuade you you don’t need it. Right. Don’t buy drugs off prostitutes. Why? The cops are usually in on the scam and even when you pay them they’ll keep your shit. And so on.

So it is only now, after the event that I curse myself for not listening to sound advice; Never go to the cinema of a Wednesday. Why? It’s half price, so all the poorer people go. This doesn’t mean that the place does be rife with artful dodgers, or beggars choking up spools of consumption in the aisles. It just means longer queues than normal. Also, midweek seems to attract more imbeciles. As I stand in the queue behind around a hundred people I am asked to get out of the way for a photo. A childless middle-aged couple, with adult brains and the vote, are posing in front of a giant Shrek: The Final Chapter 3D cut out, with their thumbs up. Perhaps my father-in-law was right and the dictatorship wasn’t such a bad thing after all. They would have had police to take these people away and re-educate them better.

There is the customary special queue* (Fila Preferencial) for the elderly, the pregnant and the wounded. I ponder asking an old person to get the tickets. I select one, but I’m told that he is not 65, just poor enough to look it. As the queue nears its completion a suited woman squeezes past everyone and goes straight to the cashier. A man runs up to her and gets her to buy two more tickets for his auntie. I wait for someone to crack and finish her off with a back and to the left. Given that there are on average 4000 murders in the state every year, I think it this would be a warranted addition. If called as a witness, I’d say I seen nuthin.

To my left people who dress up when they go to shopping centres are attempting to blag their way into the Fila Preferencial. One of the party of 30 somethings has a broken arm, which hardly warrants entry in my book. It works though. The whole party of wankers get through. I ask the cinema man in the tie what constitutes being disabled. He points to the lady’s broken arm. I point to her three able bodied friends. He shrugs. I tell him I have really sore leg hair. He looks at me. I ain’t going nowhere. I tell him he is a spa in English, which is not right but helps all the same.

Of the eight films on show, the only one that isn’t dubbed is also the only one with Tom Cruise in it. I’ve always disliked him, not because he’s mad. He just annoys me with his grinning and his running. He reminds me of a lad I went to school with who always grinned when he ran. He was no fool, just conceited. I can stomach dubbed films less than I can Cruise. So after the 40 minute queue and customary argument over the price** we go in late. Cruise is already holding onto a windscreen on a motorway, grinning at Cameron Diaz and shooting between quips. Bastard. I know he will survive the film too, which makes it worse.

I’m in bad form at this stage. I’d been looking forward to some sweets and a coke for the film but all the shop has is Pepsi and Halls sore throat sweets. Halls seem to be Brazil’s equivalent of Ferrero Rocher. (Oh Ambassador, these cherry flavoured Halls are really spoiling us). They have also stopped selling beer, the pricks. I try to pay by card but it is impossible. The popcorn technician tells me I should buy three packets of Halls and a coke for a tenner cash. This is the easiest way as he also has no change though he has got four flavours. I decline his wares. Circumstances have conspired as they often do here. I once spent an hour trying to buy toilet paper, visiting three different supermarkets and failed, for various reasons. During the film I think of this and wish that was what I was doing.

The audience gives Encontro Explosivo*** a standing ovation.

* Portuguese can be confusing. Some words kinda look like English. I saw a parking sign that said Idoso outside a bank once and presumed it meant it was for Idiots.

It made sense I thought. At least 5% of those people I have met here I would class as morons of varying degrees. Idoso means elderly. There are no special spaces for eejits.

** It’s R$9 in but the cinema has no change tonight and the laser card machine won’t accept Mastercard or Visa. So it is really a tenner in and a tidy skim for the staff.

*** Encontro Explosivo is Knight & Day in English. Film titles here make no sense.