things you learn from the movies

1.  Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people - whether they are employed or not.

2.  At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.

3.  Should you decide to defuse a bomb, don't worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one.

4.  Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communications system of any invading alien society.

5.  It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts: your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.

6.  When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your bedroom will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.

7.  If you are blonde and pretty, it is possible to become a world expert on nuclear fission at the age of 22.

8.  Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement.

9.  Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gasses, lasers, and man-eating sharks, which will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.

10. All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets that reach the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.

11. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.

12. It's easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.

13. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off-even while scuba diving.

14. You're very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

15. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German or Russian officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language.  A German or Russian accent will do.

16. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.

17. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

18. If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.

19. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.

20. Word processors never display a cursor on screen but will always say: Enter Password Now.

21. Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.

22. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off.

23. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.

24. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you meet will know all the steps.

25. Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.

26. When they are alone, all foreign military officers prefer to speak to each other in English.

27. If the villain has a female hench-person, she will be disposed of by the hero's female sidekick. This true even if the hench-person is a hardened terrorist with a black belt in judo, and the sidekick's only previous contribution to the action has been to fall over and clutch her ankle during the chase scene.

28. Science is a dangerous profession. "Good" scientists are killed during the first half of the film, "evil" scientists are destroyed by their creations at the end.

29. When the detective pulls up at the very door of the busy urban locale he needs to visit, there's always a parking space, he never gets a ticket, and his car is never gone or damaged when he gets back.

30. Female FBI agents always wear $2,000 overcoats.

31. Suspects always seem to know exactly what they were doing a week last Tuesday. Real people can't remember what they were doing this morning.

32. If a well known face pops up in what seems to be a minor role then they are the perpetrator.

33. Heating and air conditioning ducts are large enough to crawl through. They are well-lit and spotlessly clean. The grilles where they open into rooms can be removed with a gentle push.

34. All computer hackers are either disabled or under 18 years old.

35. All mothers are under 30 unless they have teen-aged children, in which case they are allowed to be 35.

36. All 20-year-old women are attracted to men thrice their age.

37. To be a brainy female in a film, you have to have long hair tied back and wear glasses; otherwise you must be thick. You can turn into a beautiful undiscovered swan later by having the hair untied and the glasses removed, but then you have to look like a rabbit in headlights.