Revenge of the Sith

Thursday 19th May

Well, I went to see the new Star Wars movie. What a great movie. Now before anyone shouts me down and declares me a fool for enjoying a movie with dodgy acting and a hackneyed plot that relies far too much on special effects, I'd like to explain in simple terms just why I thought it was a great movie: I was entertained for 2 hours. Yes, that's it. No deep and meaningful discussion of it's complex and intriguing plot or it's overal deep meaningfulness as a reflection of he current state of the world. A movie is only good if it entertains you for it's duration - which it did. Lots of cool lightsabre swinging, some great maniacal giggling from the bad guy, more lightsabres, a spectacular space battle, yet more lightsabres and finally, a monty python sketch (if you don't get that last bit, try watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail and then the end of Revenge of the Sith again. It'll come to you).

The single best part of the evening - the part that made the whole deal sweeter for me was that I didn't pay for the tickets. Not even slightly. Ol' TA Temp made good with his promise to provide free tickets. There was a bit of an issue when we turned up with tickets that showed a price of £0.00. The monkey on the door used his walkie talkie to call over the manager, who attempted to interrogate us over how we obtained the tickets.

"Who gave you these tickets?" he demanded.
"One of my workmates," I replied.
"We've had to sack 3 people over this and we need to know who gave you the tickets," insisted the Manager.
"Well done," said I. "Given that he doesn't work here, his name's hardly going to mean anything to you."
"And," the Stead interjected, "we wouldn't tell you anyway."
"Um," countered the Manager, obviously more used to dealing with compliant monkey-like chavs than people of great intellect and charisma like the Stead and I.
"Look at it this way," I suggested, "As far as I'm concerned, these tickets have been obtained legitimately. Either you're going to let us in or not, so you'd better make a decision. Prefereably," I added hastily, "before the film starts."
"Er..." stated the Manager, confident in the quality of his argument.
"I don't think I like it here, it's a dump." mused Stead before unleashing his ultimate doomsday weapon: "If you don't let us in, you won't be getting our business again."

Well that did it. In these customer-focussed, customer-centric and more importantly, profit-maximising days, the thought of having to explain to his boss why he turned away 2 customers, even if it was for having dodgy tickets, was just too much. In we went without further ado.

And it was great.