Sometimes Something Is Just So Awful, Even The Presence Of Joe Morton Can't Save It
I'm very happy to be me. I'm smart, I'm attractive, I'm reasonably fit, I can spell and I adhere strictly to a time-honored code of morality. Sure, I don't make any money and I can't ever go anywhere or do anything I want to do because of my responsibilities to my children, but what's the alternative? Be someone else? No way. Even if I were offered the chance to experience in real-life what happens in all those excellent, excellent body-switcheroo movies (Freaky Friday, Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son, 18 Again, A Prelude to a Kiss, Freaky Friday again), I totally wouldn't do it for two reasons: 1) judging from these movies, if you're a guy, the prerequisite for participation is to be an actor of the caliber of a Judge Reinhold, a Kirk Cameron or a (heaven forbid) Charlie Schlatter and 2) I've just gotten all my pants broken in just where I like them.

For the most part, it's good to be Pops. No commute, no co-workers, no bleeding ulcers. I read blogs all day and (every once in a while) make sure none of the kids are bleeding/unconscious/dead. Not much to complain about.

Except. Except except except. My gifts are many and sometimes I forget their potency and the havoc they might wreak upon a consumer society predicated on mediocrity and--even moreso--the ability to sell mediocrity on a massive scale. I should always be mindful of the fact that when a voice of great resonance speaks, it echoes down the corridors of society at large, filling ears both willing and unwillling, splintering edifices and rattling foundations.

I recognize now that it was irresponsible of me to bad-mouth the movie Stealth last Friday. My goal was to have a little fun at the expense of a silly action movie I had no intention of seeing, but when my words have such a profound effect that a film that cost well over $100 million to produce debuts in fourth place with a total of $13.5 million in its opening weekend, I'm doing the country a disservice. I'm costing people jobs and dealing a potentially crippling blow to the already reeling American film industry.

Damn my easy glibness! Damn my effortless charm! Damn my magnetic abundance of personal charisma!

If you don't hear from me again, it's because suddenly-untouchable director Rob Cohen has hunted me down and killed me. In my defense, I will say that in putting him out of work, I've only done what his complete lack of talent should have done years ago. The truth is sometimes an awful thing and it hurts hurts hurts. It's the way I felt when my mom told me I was adopted. It turned out in the end that she was kidding, but that was the longest three years of my life searching for my non-existant birth-parents. Oh how she laughed.

I guess in retrospect that didn't really have much to do with the truth since she was lying to me... but the point I think is still valid. Somehow.

After destroying something as good and wholesome and pure as a craptacular load of wank movie like Stealth, it is incumbent upon me to do something to make up for the damage I inadvertently caused. Follow this link to the list of cars made my United Auto Worker labor and then go out and buy one. There. When the American auto industry is single-handedly revived, I will have made my penance.

Of course some of those UAW cars are made by evil foreign Canadians, so you have to be careful. But it's a chance I'm willing to let you take.

I swear henceforth to be more diligent about the employment of my stupendous gift of persuasion. Unless something else comes out that is so obviously sucky that it makes me laugh, then who can say? It may very well be every man for himself.

God bless you all.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0


Pops


PS- My mom is in town. That means me and Mrs. Pops got to go out. We finally saw Batman Begins. At the risk of sounding all gushy, the only word that adequately works is the unfortunate fanboy acclamation: it was badass. Grueling and brutal, played very smartly like a monster-movie where the monster is the good guy. Christian Bale was great as Bruce Wayne and... OK as Batman. That sounds weird, I know. One complaint: whoever cut together the fight scenes is a moron. Big jumbly unintelligible messes of monochromic swirly-ness and punchy sound-effects. Impossible to follow. Other than that, like I said: badass.

See, I'm only seeing movies 8 weeks late. That's pretty good for me.
- posted by Pops @ 10:17 PM