Today I was renting “Transformers” on DVD – I managed to watch about half the movie before I gave up. It’s not that I haven’t been warned – after all it said “A Michael Bay Movie” on the box and frankly, when it says “ACME” on the parachute you don’t expect a soft landing, do you. I really liked the fancy CGI work, but the coming-of-age and first-love stuff managed to bore me and annoy me at the same time (not even to mention what was probably supposed to be comic relief). I have never been particularly interested in juvenile romance (that is other than that I’ve been a juvenile romantic at an earlier point in my life, but that wasn’t part of any movie I know of) but like most genre fans I could easily put up with bad SciFi movies, if only because there are so few good ones. Not anymore, it would seem.

A few weeks now and I will be thirty-eight. I have no children of my own, but a couple of nieces and nephews. The oldest one is eighteen by now and does not seriously believe the world existed before there was an internet. He liked “Transformers” – except for the romance parts obviously, but he was easily able to ignore that. I envy him for that.

On the other hand I have 20 years more education and experience, my own job, my own money and most of my pimples have cleared up. I might not be able to enjoy a kids movie, but other than that going on forty beats being young all the time.