They've Hit Buddy! Let's Get 'Em, Girls!
I'm not really sure what the last Arnold Schwarzenegger movie was that I paid to see in a theater. I saw Terminator 3, but that was on cable and I only watched it because it was on opposite The Shawshank Redemption on TNT. And TBS. And PAX. And FX, and American Movie Classics and Bravo and IFC, Lifetime, ESPN2, Food Network and Toon Disney. That movie really gets around. But you know what, it can still make me laugh and laugh, especially at the end when the 1950s parole board lets a black man out of jail voluntarily. It's so absurd it's hysterical.

I think the last movie that Arnie was in that I paid to see was Batman and Robin. Nobody remembers that Arnie was in that movie because he was totally upstaged by benippled bat-suits and the money-shot of George Clooney's perfectly lit foam-rubber encased ass. And all of that was overshadowed by the awesome lack of ability exhibited by Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl. A blinding absence of talent like that hasn't been seen since the glory days of Andrew Shue. Sure, she was pretty good in Clueless, but she was supposed to be retarded in that one.

What I'm saying is that I don't think most people think of Batman and Robin as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. The last top-of-the-bill Arnie movie I think I paid to see was True Lies, which IMDb tells me came out in 1994. Eleven years ago. Wow. I'm even less of an Arnie fan than I thought.

All that considered, I guess it's not that much of a loss when I commit to never seeing another Arnold Schwarzenegger movie again, but it's a position I take seriously and a stand I take on principle.

Just yesterday, Arnold, the Governor of the Great State of California, vetoed the nation's first-ever state-legislature-approved bill legalizing gay marriage.

Don't get the wrong idea, though. This isn't some hippie idealist's meaningless one-man political protest that the object of the protest will never hear about and wouldn't care about if they did.

I should point out that not only is vetoing the bill a bastard-y thing to do, but Mr. Universe's reasoning for the veto is childish and cowardly. After all, when he was elected, he was supposed to be a the Moderate Anti-Republican Republican against campaign money corruption, pro-environment, gay-friendly, pro-choice, not given to fits of idealogy. You know, a Democrat.

All that considered, it's disappointing to watch him morph from Plucky Independent Outsider to Boring Predictable Hack Politician the way everyone else ever has when elected to high office.

So there's that.

But again, while all good reasons to not see any new Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, those aren't my primary motivations.

I'm also not avoiding all hypothetical future Arnie movies because his recent spate of films have all been Stallone-quality dreadful. Junior was Arnold's Rhinestone. And then he followed that up with Jingle All The Way, The 6th Day, Eraser and Collateral Damage, movies they didn't even watch in Austria. I hear they've named huge swaths of the country after their favorite son over there including a stadium, four mountains, a province, two rivers* and every second child born after 2001, male or female. And for that he gave them End of Days. Ingratitude thy name is Schwarzenegger.

No, the reason why I refuse to see any Arnold Schwarzenegger movies from here on out is because in vetoing this bill, he has guaranteed that every movie the he is involved in for the rest of his life will look absolutely dreadful.

You do not piss of the gays in the film industry without paying a price, Arnold. I know things are different now and you've got a political base that needs appeasing, but you've cut off your nose to spite your face.

Speaking of your face, prepare for it to be perpetually shiny, blotchy and uneven on screen forever. Who does your make-up on every film set ever, Arnold? That's right, the gays.

Hair? Wardrobe? Gays and gays. After this he'll be lucky to appear on film with a page-boy haircut and a velvet drape with a head-hole cut in it.

There was a great deal of clamor and protest when former superagent/studio head/crybaby Michael Ovitz whined to the media about having to deal with the "Gay Mafia" in Hollywood to get anything done. The man was pilloried, especially by the gay community.

You know who is outraged the most when generalizations are made publicly about Italians being in the Mafia? Italians. And we know they're all "connected", they just don't want the public scrutiny so they can operate under cover of darkness and nobody will ask questions next time they need to quietly dump a body. The more they protest, the more we know it's real.

The next time someone with "product" in their hair complains about unfair generalizations about homosexuals and their roles behind the scenes in Hollywood, just nod your head and wait. Arnie's got his fancy "special election" coming up in November which I'm sure he'll do some TV press for. If he comes out with a face like George Hamilton and Phyllis Diller's Teutonic love-child and dressed like a combination of any two characters from Three's Company, you'll know it's real.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.0


Pops


*= there is no more beautiful site in the world than standing at the base of the Alps at sunset in autumn at the confluence of the Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- posted by Pops @ 10:35 AM