Dear Mr. Fantasy

Ordinary life and just plain reality -- the mundane business of being alive with its repetitive cycle of eating, breathing and eliminating waste -- must seem pretty damn boring to so many of us for having spawned so many ways around it. Avoiding, forgetting and escaping reality are growing in popularity and are now wildly out of control, done by almost everyone in America except those religious freaks who sit around and pray all day long, and what the heck do you think they're doing? Binge-praying, that's what.

Escape comes in many forms, and putting the word "binge" in front of any activity has somehow elevated it to being cool. Abuse of food, drugs and alcohol lead the pack, followed closely by inhaling poison (smoking cigarettes), obsessive exercise and self-cutting, clearly the most bizarre path to excitement. Most sexaholics and workaholics think what they do is perfectly fine, despite the inherent potential for contracting awful and potentially fatal diseases and ruining any pre-existing relationships. Gamblers and shopaholics seem like innocuous fun-lovers in comparison, until the last dollar is spent and they end up destitute and friendless.

"Dear Mr. Fantasy play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything, take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy"

                                           Lyrics of "Dear Mr. Fantasy" by Jim Capaldi

I'm thinking all this after reading a couple of movie reviews of just-released films that are apparently really bad. One of them stars Amy Schumer, that piggy, foul-mouthed  champion of fat women everywhere who poses seductively in negligees for magazine covers. Her new film is Snatched, wherein she shares star billing with Goldie Hawn, a.k.a. Kate Hudson's mother. Goldie is now 71 and the bloom is off the rose for sure, but she's apparently over her Buddhist meditation phase and looking to get back in the game. The film has already been severely panned by many professional critics, with Variety tagging it, "an aggressively cartoonish mother-daughter vacation-from-hell comedy that never strays far from the fractious, one-note surface."

But bad reviews won't prevent millions of people from paying about ten bucks a head to see it. After all, a movie offers two whole hours during which you can forget your troubles and, better yet, the fact that all of us are going to die. Throw in soda, popcorn and candy, all of which when consumed in the dark have zero calories, and it's a veritable mini-vacation, and with no packing.

Hey, if that's your thing I say go for it. Personally, I'll stick with just being: You can do it anywhere, you don't need tickets, and best of all, it's free.