Post 35 – Damn The Man! Save The Empire!

Jokes have been rife this week about the uselessness of the Swiss army. On the way to my work I pass some kind of army training centre, and regardless of what time of the day or night I pass, there are about 40 soldiers just standing outside on the pavement nonchalantly kicking their heels and smoking. I figure it can’t take too much training to learn how to open a bottle with one of those little red knives, or how to make sure you put the tweezers and the toothpick back in the right place, so they probably have plenty time to spare. It’s like looking at waxwork dummies sometimes, there’s so little life to them. Perhaps that’s why Switzerland prefers to stay neutral – because their army is totally shit. Generally, whenever I walk past I comment on how they’re just standing around doing fuck all and occasionally profess that I’m going to go up and headbutt one of them to see I can coax some kind of movement out of the others. Today though as I walked past they were all standing around smoking as usual, however they were each holding a semi-automatic assault rifle in their spare hand, with a holstered pistol on their hip. Oddly enough I kept my head down and kept quiet.

Last night I refamiliarised myself with one of my all time favourite movies, Empire Records. When I was a teenager I loved that movie and I can still probably quote most of the film to this day. It was even the inspiration behind me taking a job in Virgin in the Bon Accord centre, hoping that it might turn out to be just like the movie – dancing, singing, forging lifelong friendships with colleagues, a caring boss, and dealing with complex teenage issues. It didn’t turn out that way however – the boss was a cunt, they forced us to listen to shit music, and the most complex teenage issues that arose was selling Westlife CDs to fat ugly 14 year old girls. The day that I was listening to Dark Side Of The Moon on the store CD player and the boss changed it to the best of the Lighthouse Family, that was the day I quit.

Anway, I digress. Empire Records, for those of you who haven’t seen it, is basically summed up as follows: upon finding out the cool indie record store that he works in is about to be sold to a chain, one of the employees, Lucas, takes the weekends takings to Atlantic City to gamble it and make enough money to save the day. Of course, that doesn’t work and he loses it, and has only a day to make $9000, gaining a lot of wisdom along the way. AJ, the handsome cool art student with the floppy hair, is in love with Corey (a pre-fame Liv Tyler), who has brains and beauty and is going to Harvard after the summer. Corey however, is in love with Rex Manning, a washed up musician and TV star, desperately clinging onto the last crumb of fame, and disgusted that he is lowered to spending a day signing records at Empire. Her best friend is Gina, (a pre-fame Renee Zelweger) a white trash slut who can’t bear to end up like her trailer-trash mother, but is heading that way. Debs is the other half of Berko, the lead singer in a punk band, and arrives for work that day with bandages on her wrist from a failed suicide attempt. Marc is the resident stoner with ambitions to start a band but with no idea how to go about it. Eddie looks after the vinyl department and delivers pizza on the side. Joe is the manager of this motley crew, and loves the store, and was hoping to put in an offer to buy it before it is sold to the chain, but has to use his money to replace the takings Lucas lost. Warren is a bolshy arrogant teenage brat who is caught shoplifting, but becomes quite endearing in an unquantifiable sort of way. During the course of the day, as well as doing a lot of dancing, they each face their own personal problems and help each other through them, becoming better people and better friends by the end, with lots of added cheese. (Except Rex, he gets punched, though in the deleted scenes he becomes a good guy too).

Anyway, I bought the special Fan Edition DVD last year, with 20 minutes of lost footage put back in, plus extra deleted scenes and a host of music videos. Whenever I put it on I drift away for a couple of hours into the wonderful world of the Empire Records store, with my best friends, AJ, Corey, Gina, Joe, Debs, Berko, Eddie, Warren, and of course, Rexy. Last night however, when the end credits rolled, I came back to earth with a bang. It hit me – there’s no more Empire Records. I’ve seen all the lost footage, deleted scenes, extras, got the extended special edition soundtrack, and there isn’t anything else. I have seen everything that’s ever been made about Empire Records, and that’s the end. Upon realising this I immediately attempted suicide with a pink Lady Bic with flowers on the handle and a moisturising strip, but it took me forever just to break the skin so I gave up. Besides just watching the DVD another hundred times, I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Would a sequel be too much to ask?

Incidentally I was nosing through the IMDB entry for Empire Records today, and I was highly amused by the ‘plot tags’ they have set up for people who are searching for movies by content. I really don’t think they give a fair representation of my favourite movie:

“Drug Addict / Head Shaving / Obscene Finger Gesture / Suicide / Virgin”

Why would anyone be searching for a movie about “obscene finger gesture”? And why would Empire be included in the results, when it is completely sans-finger gesture? It’s all too much for me. I need to go and do what everybody does in times of stress – put on AC/DC and play along on that drumkit that’s just lying about in my office.

By the way, if you haven’t seen Empire Records, go do it! Go!

Song currently stuck in my head – “Til I Hear It From You (Theme from Empire Records) by The Gin Blossoms.
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