Tim Russert / The Fag Seat / The Incredible Hulk / James Rosen’s The Strong Man / Stay Classy, Liberal Scum
1) The loss of Tim Russert is as significant a setback to NBC News as I can ever recall, being that he was its smartest host and best interviewer (not to mention a fellow Beloved Buffalo Bills fan). A fervent secular prayer: Please, do not let that Communist, partisan fraud David Gregory ease into the host chair Russert more than capably filled for lo these many years. To promote Gregory would deliver the decapitating blow to a news organization already crippled by its own biases and high-grade inaptitude. Let not that awful network destroy what Tim Russert and his brilliant staff maintained so magnificently. Amen.
2) Friday night at the movies with my son; a sort of last minute development having mainly to do with international conspiracies and grain prices. One row ahead of where we sat, and to our left, sat a group of teenage boys who, despite their floppy, effeminate haircuts and jaunty halloos throughout the fucking aisle, wanted so badly to convince potential onlookers they weren’t queer that they instituted an empty seat between each of them. Apparently, their way of proving their stark raving heterosexuality was to lean way over to talk into each other’s ears during the movie, in a fashion that appeared so blatantly gay I thought of throwing a bottle of Astroglide between the three of them to see if a struggle broke out to determine who would be on bottom first. Well done, new meat.
Back in the day we referred to this gap between seats as the Fag Seat – i.e., “If people see this distance between us, they won’t think we’re gay” – but honestly, I thought the Fag Seat had mostly gone out of style. The last sighting of it at the movies was last year, a space placed between two grown men one row ahead of me; I attributed their arrangement to their NASCAR and Confederate battle flag gear. You know what I’m saying.
But before that, I’d not seen the Fag Seat executed for many years. Spent about fifteen minutes thinking about this…. I need to understand the psychology of someone who believes the Fag Seat settles for eternity the question of their august straightness, about as much as I need to understand the psychology of someone who might see two men sitting together in a movie theatre and automatically assumes they’re lovers.
Anyway, if you can help me out with that, drop me a line. And save all that “societal constructs and its widely held views of homosexuality” bullshit. I’m looking for real, thoughtful analysis here.
3) The movie was The Incredible Hulk, which I enjoyed immensely despite fearing I would hate it immensely.
After spending fifteen minutes thinking about the Fag Seat, I thought of how best to explain my fondness for a movie like The Incredible Hulk while harboring a deep disdain for a critically acclaimed movie such as There Will Be Blood. Though one is tempted to chalk it up to low breeding, the truth is that I long ago developed an equation that translates directly into enjoying a movie. It is:
Despite its plot or genre,
a movie still has to make sense
in order to warrant
proper Suspension of Disbelief.
Now listen: I absolutely am not going to get into longwinded debates with movie dorks as to why There Will Be Blood makes less and less sense as it goes along while The Incredible Hulk remains consistent; they just do. Nor will I debate with anyone the movies I have shitcanned on this blog (e.g., Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Spider-Man 3, and Transformers, all of which were truly awful films, and in the case of Pirates, among the worst I’ve ever seen). No Country For Old Men is probably the best movie I’ve seen in five years, and won my award for best movie of 2007 in February (before the Oscars, thank you) – it remains consistent, as all great movies must.
Anyways. As a popcorn flick, The Incredible Hulk is pretty good.
4) James Rosen is one of those guys who has spent the majority of his life obsessed by an event (Watergate), and then the better part of two decades researching all or part of that event (in this case, John Mitchell). His wonderful new book, The Strong Man, covers Mitchell’s ascent through Law and the Nixon administration, then precipitous decline, eventually into prison. A link to The Strong Man can be found at the Dot Com, on the front page’s little “Recent Reading” section, on the left hand side.
5) Cornered by the Falafel last week, Laura Ingraham addressed her absence from talk radio …
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/13/laura-ingraham-tells-bill-oreilly-shes-been-forced-off-the-air/
… which I link to from Think Progress only because of the lovely, well-intentioned comments immediately following the video. Stay classy, liberal scum.
2) Friday night at the movies with my son; a sort of last minute development having mainly to do with international conspiracies and grain prices. One row ahead of where we sat, and to our left, sat a group of teenage boys who, despite their floppy, effeminate haircuts and jaunty halloos throughout the fucking aisle, wanted so badly to convince potential onlookers they weren’t queer that they instituted an empty seat between each of them. Apparently, their way of proving their stark raving heterosexuality was to lean way over to talk into each other’s ears during the movie, in a fashion that appeared so blatantly gay I thought of throwing a bottle of Astroglide between the three of them to see if a struggle broke out to determine who would be on bottom first. Well done, new meat.
Back in the day we referred to this gap between seats as the Fag Seat – i.e., “If people see this distance between us, they won’t think we’re gay” – but honestly, I thought the Fag Seat had mostly gone out of style. The last sighting of it at the movies was last year, a space placed between two grown men one row ahead of me; I attributed their arrangement to their NASCAR and Confederate battle flag gear. You know what I’m saying.
But before that, I’d not seen the Fag Seat executed for many years. Spent about fifteen minutes thinking about this…. I need to understand the psychology of someone who believes the Fag Seat settles for eternity the question of their august straightness, about as much as I need to understand the psychology of someone who might see two men sitting together in a movie theatre and automatically assumes they’re lovers.
Anyway, if you can help me out with that, drop me a line. And save all that “societal constructs and its widely held views of homosexuality” bullshit. I’m looking for real, thoughtful analysis here.
3) The movie was The Incredible Hulk, which I enjoyed immensely despite fearing I would hate it immensely.
After spending fifteen minutes thinking about the Fag Seat, I thought of how best to explain my fondness for a movie like The Incredible Hulk while harboring a deep disdain for a critically acclaimed movie such as There Will Be Blood. Though one is tempted to chalk it up to low breeding, the truth is that I long ago developed an equation that translates directly into enjoying a movie. It is:
Despite its plot or genre,
a movie still has to make sense
in order to warrant
proper Suspension of Disbelief.
Now listen: I absolutely am not going to get into longwinded debates with movie dorks as to why There Will Be Blood makes less and less sense as it goes along while The Incredible Hulk remains consistent; they just do. Nor will I debate with anyone the movies I have shitcanned on this blog (e.g., Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Spider-Man 3, and Transformers, all of which were truly awful films, and in the case of Pirates, among the worst I’ve ever seen). No Country For Old Men is probably the best movie I’ve seen in five years, and won my award for best movie of 2007 in February (before the Oscars, thank you) – it remains consistent, as all great movies must.
Anyways. As a popcorn flick, The Incredible Hulk is pretty good.
4) James Rosen is one of those guys who has spent the majority of his life obsessed by an event (Watergate), and then the better part of two decades researching all or part of that event (in this case, John Mitchell). His wonderful new book, The Strong Man, covers Mitchell’s ascent through Law and the Nixon administration, then precipitous decline, eventually into prison. A link to The Strong Man can be found at the Dot Com, on the front page’s little “Recent Reading” section, on the left hand side.
5) Cornered by the Falafel last week, Laura Ingraham addressed her absence from talk radio …
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/13/laura-ingraham-tells-bill-oreilly-shes-been-forced-off-the-air/
… which I link to from Think Progress only because of the lovely, well-intentioned comments immediately following the video. Stay classy, liberal scum.
posted by Brian S. Wise | 2:02 AM
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