On Friday night, after the baseball game, my wife and I decided to watch a movie. We've been married seven years, we have two kids together, and for those of you riding this train, you realize, watching a movie is as good as it gets. When we were younger and without children, we went out to restaurants, went on weekend trips, lavished in each other's company. Now we watch movies. That's life.Given this information, one might be inclined to think that the movie selection, our compromise as man and wife upholding our vows, would be paramount to the entire movie-watching experience. You would be wrong. Basically, we choose from the free movies On-Demand, movies that the programmers at Comcast realize no one, unless they're jacked up on crack, would pay to watch.
Friday's selection: Roadhouse starring Patrick Swayze as Dalton, a much-coverted Zen-bouncer who takes on an entire town of rednecks with guns and kicks all their asses, one by one, without ever messing up his mullet. If you've never seen Roadhouse, you're missing one of the most awkwardly written, embarrassingly acted, ridiculously conceived movies ever made. It's brilliant. Every single line in this movie is cliched to the point where I found myself cringing, recoiling in vicarious humiliation for the writers, actors, producers, and anyone who was within 20 miles of the set when this monstrosity was made. I loved it.
Fast forward to Saturday night. Again, I find myself cringing, recoiling, and vicariously humiliated, only this time I was watching the Red Sox play Texas, not Roadhouse. While I took ironic pleasure in Roadhouse's brutal badness juxtaposed with Patrick's ass-kicking mullet, irony eluded me when I was watching the Red Sox get spanked in Arlington. I was plain pissed.
It's fair to ask, What now for The Red Sox? When you take a look at the line-ups the Sox have been putting out the last couple of games---and, in fairness, Youk has been serving his suspension---and you see Varitek, Kotchman and Alex Gonzalez coming to bat in the next inning, there's cause to be concerned. In fact, you have every right to change the channel, watch a movie with your wife, grow a mullet.
To quote Dalton, the bouncer extraordinaire of Roadhouse: "Pain don't hurt." Dalton, you haven't been watching the Red Sox lately.
2 comments:
Movies like Roadhouse are so effortlessly and beautifully stupid, I don't understand why people try and make cult classics like Snakes on a Plane. It's got to come organically from good intentions.
If you ever get a chance, catch M Night Shyamalans' monster Lady in the Water. I don't know if any other director has filmed a love letter to himself as amazingly ridiculous as Lady in the Water.
-Brian
I'm with all the way on this one, Brian. The 80s gave us much too much to process in a lifetime. For God's sake, "Top Gun" is terrible movie with some of the stupidest one-liners in history, but people ate it up, without irony.
Point of the story: when you have too many people with mullets and asymetrical loud clothing, and then throw cocaine in the mix, you lose your irony barometer as a society.
Someone should do a dissertation on that.
I'll try to check Lady in the Water. Sounds like my speed.
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