The Rant

It’s not like I am hard to please. Forty-seven hours of back-to-back Law & Order Special Victims Unit episodes? Why would I even think about leaving the house? A house with no dishwasher, disposal, central air, flashing around the chimney that would actually block the slightest of rainfalls from becoming a water feature in my living room? Sure, that would be great. But you see, I don’t really care, because I am really not that hard to please. Or so I thought. And by voicing this humble opinion, I know I am going to piss off just about everyone reading this, including any of my friends who might be doing so, which I think is par for the course, because they have been sick of my crap for a long, long time. But I have to say, I saw Brokeback Mountain and I was profoundly less than impressed. Ouch! Don’t shoot! Aim that dart the other way! Leave the brakes in my car alone! If you offer to buy me a drink, you taste it first! No, I don’t live in my same house anymore. I don’t EVER stop at the BP Amoco on Union for coffee (my favorite in town, by the way) every morning at about 8:15 a.m. I don’t ever go to Old Zinnie’s. You can’t find me no matter what. I’m sorry, but I just thought that BM was one of the most overrated, lackluster, blah movies I’ve seen in a long time. I mean look at the casting: Jake Gyllenhaal as a rough-and-rowdy cowboy/rodeo-circuit rider was about as believable as having Donny Osmond playing Hitler. And it was about as hokey as it gets. And for those of you who think those heart-rending, country-ass lines like “I sure wish I could quit you” and “Lof is lok a box of choklats” from that Gump movie are the darling new symbols of Hollywood dialogue, why don’t you just go and look up my distant relatives on Reelfoot Lake, who all wear camouflage to church on Sunday mornings and say that kind of stuff during the blessing over lunch later? But Boredback, uh, I mean, Brokeback Mountain did make me cry. Cry about shelling out six bucks to see that thing. Of course, this unreasonable malice I feel about this movie could have been brought on by the fact that some loud, obnoxious poser and his loud poser friends sat directly behind me, and he answered his cell phone repeatedly during the movie, each piercing ring filling the theater with racket at what I suppose was most likely meant to be a pivotal moment in the film. But I wouldn’t have known. His little chiming, probably show-tune-playing ring tone kept resounding in my ears as he leapt from his seat each time, talking loudly all the way to the exit door, then returning only to announce that it was from his lawyer, or about his car, or … the other, I’m not sure. Hopefully from his proctologist, telling him to shove that thing up his rump until the movie ended. You know who you are. It was on a Friday at the 12:45 showing. Next time you feel compelled to allow your cell phone to ring repeatedly during a movie, either show some common manners and turn it off immediately or just run and grab yourself a bottle of that contaminated water Halliburton sold our soldiers in Iraq and maybe that will shut you up. Or you could just look at your phone and say, “I sure wish I could quit you!”