Great Tai Chi class last night. They’re always great but last night Grandmaster Lazlo was away so Guru Graham took over and gave his own take on the finest that eastern philosophy and mystical karma can aspire to, whilst inflicting serious damage on any possible assailants and causing pain and suffering to any would-be attacker. Job done, take a shower, sit down with a cup of tea before bed and just a quick flick through some mindless tv channels (Mel tries to hide the remote but I’m telepathically bonded with it and have a special in-built gps tracker in my head to find it every time) and found The Fast and the Furious. Oh my, that’ll do.

I mean how totally anti-zeitgeist can a movie be? In 2001 they should have been making movies about low-emission vehicles, about electric-powered Noddy cars, about cars so pure and environment friendly that they use trees for power by converting horrible carbons into lovely, pure oxygen for virgins to inhale into their pale and pure lungs. Aaaahhhhhh.

But no, they made a film about car racers. There is a story in there somewhere but its facile, childish and totally irrelevant. I mean, how much of a story can there be if you use Vin Diesel to act it out? The man simply can’t act. He can only smoulder. And brood. And get angry, violent, ripple a few muscles and then smoulder some more. He likes smouldering. He’s good at it.

And he smoulders in some wonderful American Muscle cars. Others in the movie use neat, clean little Japanese vehicles, but not Vin. He only drives US and V8. He’s a bad boy hero in the Clint Eastwood mould. Or smould. An anti-hero. A criminal, a thief, a baddie that you really wouldn’t want your daughter bringing home. “Hi Dad, I’ve brought Vin home for a quick smoulder before we go the movies in a very muscle-ripply way. Sorry about the noise, that’s his new 17,000 horse power Camaro that emits 3 tons of carbon every hundred yards”.

Yet its precisely because its such an awful film (6.2 on IMDB; not catastrophic but not The Godfather either), is why I want to watch it. Because it doesn’t matter if I leave it half way through and go to bed. I know what happens. Nothing happens. But whilst nothing is happening, just turn up the volume and enjoy some truly fabulous rolling metal.

Nothing happens in Rugby League either. Well, not in my life because I don’t watch it. I won’t watch it. Its a horrible game, a brutal, violent, northern cousin to the ‘real game’ of Rugby Union. Which is a gentlemanly, intellectual, considered brutal violent game played down here. (OK, its not strictly geographical, as it used to be, but I’m just making a point. And inventing stuff that fits that point, like all good research). And in the Rugby League Supercup on Satruday, the Wigan prop, Ben Flower, punched an opposing player so hard he knocked him almost unconscious. But rather than leave him there to get over it, as they would in Rugby Union, obviously, Ben bent over the supine and semi-comatose man and punched him again. And that’s just not cricket. Obviously, its Rugby League. And sucker-punching a prostrated invalid is arguably giving the spectators what they want. Its what they like in the North. A 6 month ban from the game? He should have been man-of-the-match. Only on the pitch for 3 minutes but its given that awful, God-forsaken game more publicity than its enjoyed in the last 20 years.

Happy brutal Wednesday

A xxxx