The Twilight Saga is Decadent and Depraved

(This is a re-post from my old blog, a small homage to Hunter S Thompson I wrote a couple of years ago. Enjoy).

The Twilight Saga is Decadent and Depraved

“Oh God,” I said, as we rounded the corner onto Sidwell Street and glimpsed the blue glow of the Odeon, “I thought this movie came out a week ago?”

“It would appear not,” murmured Sophie Rickard, the erstwhile companion of almost all my cinematic forays in the city of Exeter.

“What in the hell is this? Has there been some kind of accident? Or a fire, perhaps?” I continued incredulously, as we began to attempt to squeeze our way through the noxious rabble that had that fateful day crawled out of the proverbial woodwork in order to bear witness to the latest instalment of the Twilight Saga, New Moon. We later discovered that what we had assumed would be a quiet, almost deserted showing of said film was in fact, due to a heinous release date fuck up on our own part, taking place on only the second day after it had been released.

Having kicked, scratched and bitten our way to the desk, during which time Sophie was forced to wrench herself from the grip of a weeping teenage girl who had somehow mistaken her for Ashley Greene, and I knocked another off her feet with a swift swipe to the ankles, we managed to obtain tickets. These were of course, by that time in the evening, worth more than their weight in gold, and we were forced to stuff them into our shoes and pretend to be hysterical in order to get back through the crowd, out the front door of the cinema, and into the queue, which by then stretched half way along the street.

As we looked about us at the various cliques of whispering, trembling teenagers with wide, shimmering eyes and palpably damp skin, we began to concoct ways in which we would explain our presence there should any of our peer group happen to pass by. We settled on the rather improbable story of holding a place in the line for our younger sisters. We got around the fact that neither of us in fact have younger sisters by arranging that if an acquaintance of Sophie’s should pass by, the younger sister we were waiting for would be mine, and vice versa. However, if someone we both knew had showed up, we would have been screwed.

After waiting about another half hour, during which the front section of the queue attempted to mount some sort of botched attempt at surging the doors, and were promptly chastened with water cannons, we finally made it into the cinema. The few hours that followed are difficult to describe, especially considering that my tortured psyche made a very valiant attempt to black them out during the next few days, which I mostly spent, according to reliable sources, giggling in my bedroom. I recall only a few significant happenings, such as the constant gasps of disbelief and delight which occurred whenever a main character took his shirt off, or walked in slow motion, or indeed, did pretty much anything. Then there was the girl a few rows behind us who seemed to be suffering some kind of fit of sobbing hysteria for the entire length of the film (seriously). And of course, the gasping, screaming, crying, hugging and general ripping up of fake velvet cushions which occurred following the last line of the movie, “Marry me, Bella”.

Sophie and I leaned against each other for support as we were propelled back through the cinema, down the staircase and out into the street, where we finally managed to make a break fro it when we saw a gap in the scrum, and run back around the corner to our house, where we dead bolted the door and kept watch at the front windows, broken whiskey bottles at the ready, until the last few stragglers had been rounded up by the vigilante groups the Mayor had dispatched for this purpose. Needless to say, never again will we get caught out in the Odeon on the the opening weekend of a Twilight movie - at least not without a can of mace and a couple of pointy sticks.