What's in my head?...

Some random thoughts that passed through my head on the way to work this morning, included:

On seeing a guy wearing a WWJD band – would Jesus buy a Bluetooth headset, have a camera phone, wear a tight-fitting trendy T-shirt, and run out in front of traffic to cross the road? Maybe…

Ten things that I would do if I was the Chief Exec of Manchester City Council (but this is the basis of a whole post on its own and something I’m going to think on more)

But mainly, how darn busy it was this morning… Now I was a bit later than I am normally on my walk to work. But still. I passed or was passed by at least a dozen people on the canal, when usually it’s only one or two. The pavement got to the point of busyness where I opted to walk in the gutter – actually something that I’d choose to do more often if the mad bus drivers and maniacal cyclists of Oxford Road would stop trying to mow me down when I did.

And why was the busyness of the pedestrian traffic particularly on my mind this morning? All because of a film book – Tom Shone’s Blockbuster. Buy it, read it, you’ll love it.

For last night before going to sleep, I read his chapter covering the blockbusters of 1992-94 and their legacy. And there he mentions Spielberg’s Jurassic Park as being amongst the Maestro’s worst work (which that year thankfully also helped birth a late-twin worthy of his usual – Schindler’s List). For it has struck Tom Shone, and thus me, that most of Speilberg’s greatest works are those that involve people. Crowds of normal folk, the masses, “that guy who wants to start a McDonalds franchise on the moon” (as he said of Close Encounters’ main character) and on a more individual level, just the average American John Doe. There were hundreds of dinosaurs, but hardly any homo sapiens. And normally this is what he does so well with people in his films – observe, examine, beautify.

So seeing all these people engaged in the beautiful minutiae of their lives, bustling to work, shopping, catching buses – mundane as it might seem – gave me cause to stop and wonder…