Posted by AsssyrianVoice4Peace from 63-93-68-220.lsan.dial.netzero.com (63.93.68.220) on Tuesday, October 15, 2002 at 8:51PM :
Welcome to Hotel Satire, People…and you Gals. It’s summer and you know what that means. It’s time for my semi-traditional article on summer as a dick thing. By the way, I did not come up with this concept, so men out there, don’t get all worked up, if you catch my drift. It was inspired by a Spike Lee movie. Yes, as the hero states (in Mo’ Better Blues, 1990ish) to one of the two gals he is juggling/dating, when she protests his behavior, "It’s a dick thing." She queries back bitchily, "A dick thing?" He repeats firmly, "A dick thing!"
I did not care for this movie much because there were too many gals in it, and they actually completed their sentences (indicating lesbianism), but I felt that Spike Lee had the right thing with this "dick thing." As I’ve maintained since I first instructed gals on this matter in 1990 ("It’s A Dick Thing) and again in 1994 (It’s Still A Dick Thing), summer is the quintessential "dick thing." From the fireworks of July 4 (when gals slave from dawn to dusk making sandwiches, salads, and barbecue fixings so the menfolk can celebrate independence, and remember those revolutionary days when gals couldn’t vote and Spike Lee would have been a slave) to Labor Day weekend (when gals work their butts off from dawn to dusk making sandwiches, salads, and marinated chicken wings so we can celebrate working people.
Gals, face it. Summer is not your thing. In the summer, all gals go inside for the duration, emerging only for food shopping, factory outlet purchasing, or to drive the husbands and kids to various venues so they can play with their balls. All gal attempts to play softball, drive a motor boat, fish off a pier, or ride a motorcycle should cease. Why? Because they are annoying to guys who don’t want to see gals’ bouncing breasts on the ball field or gals burning rubber on the highways or grabbing rudders on the high seas. Don’t ask why. It’s a dick thing.
Most importantly, Gals, if there’s a motor involved, if there’s horsepower in the vicinity, then we’re talking major dick things. Never interfere with guys and their throbbing…engines. Your job is to pose near it, showing cleavage (if you don’t have any, get some) if you are his girlfriend; providing the refreshments if you are his wife. When in doubt, remember the Satire motto: accessorize and/or serve. Any physical activity gals do during the summer should be related to her guy: biking alongside him while he jogs or jogging in place to keep the weight at concentration camp levels so as to look good posing for photos near his various motorized toys. Otherwise you are a lesbian. Don’t ask why. It’s a dick thing.
Now, clearly, the summer of 1997 has reached new heights of dick, so to speak. How do I know? Hollywood. They know that summer is for dicks. That’s why the summer spate of one and two dick movies: Con Airdicks, Dick Off, Dicks in Black, Hercudick, Airdick One, Aging Dicks at Sea, Batdick and Robdick, and so on.
I was particularly impressed with Con Airdicks (starting Nicholas Cage and John Cusack) and Dick Off, (starring Nicholas Cage and John Travolta). These movies make the Vietnam and Gulf Wars look like a Sunday in the park, a tiptoe through the tulips, and a picnic on the beach.
Con Airdicks is about Nicholas Cage who is a Ranger in the Gulf War, where he legally strafes and murders and so on. His first night home, he meets his loving wife who is a waitress in a roadhouse bar kind of place, where he is taunted by the same three guys that taunt everybody in every Hollywood movie ever made, cause that’s what unshaven working class guys do. These three guys get aggressive about it, going after his wife, humiliating him. So finally he beats them up, killing one of them in the process. The judge gives him ten years in prison, claiming that, as a civilian, his fighting skills as a Ranger make him a lethal weapon. Already we are moved by the plausibility of these events, and by the many challenges to the stereotyping of working class guys.
Our hero Cage is caged. But, being a Ranger, he is a model prisoner and a loving husband and father, unlike the other prisoners who are animals—except for one who becomes his buddy. He spends his prison time dreaming of his release when he can see his daughter (born shortly after he goes to prison) for the first time. That day comes, and he is put on a special airplane used to ferry the most dangerous criminals from one prison to another, hence con air. Don’t ask why. It’s a dick thing. The other cons on the plane all make Hannibal Lector look like Jesus Christ, by the way. Two of them are locked up tighter than Fort Knox. Yet, these dangerous cons are more organized than the New Left and the Moral Majority ever dreamed of being. Somehow they are able to take over the plane, led by John Malkovich, and attempt to fly to South America, after making a stop or two at some heavily guarded airports on the way. Meanwhile, John Cusack, an FBI dick, is on the case. He realizes that Cage is a good guy, cause he is a Ranger, and the both try to save the day. In the process more things are blown up, more people, including "innocent civilians," are strafed, dismembered, skewered, dropped from heights, stabbed, shot, impaled, burned, smashed, and tortured than in all of World War I, II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf combined. All of the above are done by and to our heroes, by the way, but, for some reason, they are still heroes, plus they don’t die. Don’t ask why. It’s a dick thing.
In Dick Off (the highly-praised movie Face Off, in case you aren’t a moviegoer), John Travolta is a cop and Nicholas Cage is a psychopath (whereas in Con Airdick, although he killed large numbers of people, including half the population of Las Vegas, he was a good guy). Travolta and his team manage to capture Cage, after much shooting, strafing, etc. Even after Cage is killed he doesn’t die. They keep him alive on a life support. Meanwhile, Cage’s brother, also a psychopath, is in prison and has planted a bomb somewhere in Los Angeles. To find out where, they need to get someone inside the prison. Guess who? Travolta. Guess how? By turning him into Nicholas Cage. By literally taking Cage’s face off, removing Travolta’s as well, and then by putting Cage’s face on Travolta. This was so real and believable, I can’t tell you. Medical science can now take your face off and put someone else’s in its place and match the voice and everything.
So then, after more strafing and maiming, Travolta as Cage goes to prison and finds out where the bomb is from the brother. Meanwhile, Cage, who is lying virtually dead (and unguarded), rises up, sees Travolta’s face sitting in a jar in the next room, and succeeds in kidnapping the medical team, making them turn him into Travolta. Then Cage as Travolta blows up the medical center, with the team in it, thereby eliminating all evidence that Travolta is Cage and Cage is Travolta. So Cage as Travolta takes over Travolta’s job and Travolta’s wife and daughter. Not only that, he gets his brother released and saves the day by disarming the bomb, thereby becoming the city’s hero and able to get all the firepower he needs to enact worldwide terrorism. Don’t ask why. It’s a psychopathic dick thing.
Meanwhile, after more impaling and dismembering, Travolta as Cage manages to escape from maximum security prison (surprise, surprise). By the way, in this prison all the prisoners wear steel shoes that magnetize to the floor, so the guards can control them (zapping them with voltage when necessary). This prison is more evil than Dachau, more secure than Alcatraz, yet Travolta as Cage manages to escape, kill Cage as Travolta, i.e., himself. This movie is so clever and plausible and intelligent that one wonders why anyone else in Hollywood bothers to make movies.
Anyway, after more dismembering, impaling, and slaughtering of the inhabitants of downtown Los Angeles, Travolta as Cage prevails. But only after he and Cage as Travolta have bashed up a few boats, dropped from great heights and beaten each other to bloody pulps, unloaded machine guns into each others' chests, etc.—even then they don’t die, they don’t even seem tired. Don’t ask why. It’s a dick thing.
And speaking of dicks, when they exchanged faces, how did they deal with the dicks? One can only imagine that procedure, since they did not show us any dick lifting and exchanging. But then how did Cage as Travolta fool the real Travolta’s wife, who was a surgeon? And if she was a surgeon, why didn’t she, once she knew he wasn’t really Travolta, inject him with something to render him unconscious? We know why. Because that would have involved a gal actually doing something crucial to this fabulous and complex plot, which is out. Complex plots are dick thing, remember.
So, Gals, get with the proper summer protocol. Here’s how I am spending my summer. Let it be a model for all of you. While your man is getting roused over the many dick movies, or revving his motors, start your day applying a nice shade of Max Factor lip silks. Why? It hydrates better than the leading lip balm. Next consult a women’s magazine for how to "get the look of the moment." This will take most of the day, the week even. Spend some time on the beach with the other gals discussing which is the best shampoo and smoking Virginia Slims. Gals who chat while smoking Virginia Slims aren’t "gossiping, they’re fact-finding." Don’t ask why. "It’s a gal thing."
Next, go to see that wonderful gal summer movie "My Best Friend’s Wedding." This movie has left me practically speechless. It opens with a lovely rendition of "One Fine Day." I think they meant it as a spoof on wedding’s but I thought it was beautiful. Then we hear about Julia who is talking to her gay guy editor about her best friend, who is a also a guy, for the last ten years, whose birthday is coming soon. They had made a pact that she and her best friend would marry each other if they didn’t find anyone by the time they turned thirty or whatever, I can’t remember and does it really matter? This plot is nothing compared to Face Off or Con Air, and hardly worth remembering. Next we find that her best friend has found someone and is getting married in just four days, and is just now telling Julia about it, even though she’s been his best friend for ten years or so. Her friend’s pending marriage clues her to the fact that she has loved him all along! Even though she rejected him ten years ago, that’s why they became best friends.
I am not making this up.
So, Julia is determined to break up the engagement and get him to marry her, even though she is perfectly happy as she is, with her job and her gay guy editor, who, by the way, is the only interesting person in this picture, and also seems to be Julia’s best friend, even though the movie is about the other guy. Don’t ask why. It’s a gal thing.
The rest of the movie consists of Julia, who has no galfriends at all, unless you count the gay guy, buddying up to her best friend’s fiancée in order to find out how to make her look foolish. Don’t ask why Julia has to do this or why Julia Roberts, pretty woman incarnate, can’t get this guy simply by showing up. Anyhoo, Julia discovers that the fiancée is going to quit college and follow her man (Julia’s best friend) around from game to game, so he can write his sports column. Julia tries to get the gal to assert herself (i.e., become a lesbian and a communist). She also tries to get the gals very rich father to offer him a job with his company, knowing that her best friend will hate this since he is not impressed by money and all of that. (Frankly, he doesn’t seem impressed by anything much, and we wonder why these two gals are fighting over him, but don’t ask about this. It’s a gal thing.) This doesn’t work. Then Julia discovers that the fiancée can’t sing, so she takes them to a carioca bar and gets the fiancée to sing. This backfires. Don’t ask why. It just does. Then she gets desperate, because her best friend seems to really love this gal. Possibly because she’s ready to sacrifice everything to follow him around from ball game to ball game, and live on his crummy salary, even though her father has enough money to by the world. And he doesn’t seem to love Julia, the most beautiful woman since Helen of Troy. Possibly because she won’t follow him around? Possibly because she’s independent (therefore a nasty, scheming bitch lesbian)
In desperation, she calls her gay friend for help. He encourages her to tell her best friend the truth: that she loves him and wants to marry him. Alternatively, he tells her to just congratulate him and say goodbye. Why she can’t be his best friend after marriage is not explained, so don’t ask.
Through a mix up, the gay guy must pose as Julia’s fiancée, and Julia plays it up to make her best friend jealous. Which it does. But he still persists in marrying what’s her name. Then Julia writes an email on the fiancée’s father’s computer, which gets her best friend fired from his job. Her best friend thinks his fiancée did it. Julia confesses, tells him she loves him, etc. But it doesn’t work. So Julia gives up and acts and matchmaker, trying to bring the two back together on the day of their wedding. In a really inventive scene, Julia and the fiancée have a "cat fight" in the gals’ rest room and all the gals in their watch and urge them on and applaud when they make up. This is a new and refreshing scene, having two gals fight; and also having the people in the vicinity applauding (the latter being part of practically every movie made since the 1960s).
Anyway, the wedding happens, Julia is alone until her gay friend comes and dances with her. Which might mean don’t have men best friends unless they’re gay? Whatever. The movie is charming, so who cares what it means. The main thing is: (a) two gals fight over a guy, with marriage to him being the ultimate goal; (b) the guy picks the one who best accessorizes and serves him (although the fiancée indicates she might not do this, in which case next summer’s sequel will be My Best Friend’s Divorce); (c) there’s cute guys and gals and gorgeous gowns and an expensive wedding—perfect for its June release and for planning next year’s weddings.
Remember, Gals, if you fail to grasp the dick thing and the gal thing, if you fail to do the right thing durng the summer thing, you clearly get what you deserve: life without a man, a wedding,
-- AsssyrianVoice4Peace
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