Things I've Learned At The Movies

Mutating into a fly is bad. Mutating into a spider is good.

Is there a person on earth who can look at Jeff Goldblum and not think about the wretched giant fly and his high-pitched squelching? Hardly fair considering how much fun Tobey Maguire has as a spider-man, flipping around the skyline shooting webs and fighting crime. Giant flies don't fight crime because they're too busy barfing stomach acid on their food to digest it. And while Jeffy sent the ladies screaming and running at first sight, Tobey had them loitering in wet t-shirts for a few minutes of his time. Spiders 1, Flies 0.

Aim, and then shoot. Bullets are expensive.

Most movie shootouts have adversaries squatting behind conveniently placed barrels or crates, popping their heads up like a game of whack-a-mole, taking turns firing and hiding as fast as they can reload their guns. Here's a thought. If your target is hiding behind a stone pillar or a car door, you can't shoot him. Pop up, stay up, and when that rat-bastard drug smuggler Raul killed your partner and framed you and cost you your badge pops HIS head up, shoot him square between the eyes. Then head on down to that bar where all of the other ex-cops hang out and drink some beers.

Maniacs must be killed and killed and never stop killing them.

Crazy people have a lust for life. Mostly for your life, but also for their own. A maniac can take several rounds in the chest, an axe through the spinal column, be drowned in battery acid, be set on fire·and then while they're lifeless on the floor, you walk past them to get out of their creepy house, and they grab your leg and drag you down and start throttling you. The only sure way to be done with them is to either make a giant hole in their chests with a shotgun at close range, or to cleave them vertically with a broadsword. If this battle is taking place in your home and you're a renter, try to lure the maniac onto the linoleum or else you'll probably lose your damage deposit because of the death splatter.

Bank tellers will push the alarm button even when you tell them not to.

It's true. There you are, just robbing a bank, trying to get ahead in the world, and some jackass do-gooder screws you over. You're taking the bank manager towards the vault, and Suzy Churchgoer decides to play superhero by calling in the cops, as if it somehow benefits her. Hey lady, you'll be lucky to get promoted to "holder of the wristband of keys" during your entire employment, so ease off and give a guy a break. Like it's such a bad thing to rob a bank. Last year my bank charged me roughly fourteen million dollars in transaction fees. In other news, I wasn't mugged even once. That means I could have carried all my money around in large bills, in a backpack, all last year, and I would have saved fourteen million dollars. Evil!

Absolutely anything could explode at any second.

In a movie, if you flip your car, it will most certainly explode when you're just clear of the wreckage. If you are rescued or rescuing someone from a fire, or any sort of building, it will explode right after you leave. In either of these scenarios, you should run for about three seconds before the explosion, and then when you hear the giant bang, throw yourself into the air Superman style. The physics are hard to explain, but essentially what happens is that you body-surf out of the danger zone on a giant sound-wave cushion. Okay, I made that up. But anyway, when you land, shield your head from falling objects. Burning hunks of metal (or a giant red wooden door if it was a barn that exploded) will be falling all around you. You will probably lose all of your belongings in the explosion, but that's what you get for living in your car. Or your barn.