Monday, August 31, 2009

Betrayal

One dollar movie night Monday at a place downtown, where every buck gives you the ability to see Public Enemies and the Taking of Penhalm 123, an unpassable deal, even though I wouldn't sit through the Washington/Travolta nightmare for all the comics in Kevin Smith's house. The movie was superb by the way, Michael Mann's indie digital style atop an awesome storyline about John Dillinger, who if you didn't know was probably the coolest, cockiest American sonuvabitch since Teddy Roosevelt, the kinda guy who would rob banks theatrically but refuse to take the patrons money, who once convinced a whole bank he was filming a robbery while he was actually casing the joint, and was gunned down in cold blood by some backhanded dealings by J. Edgar Hoover's top man, Melvin Purvis.

The point is I watched the whole damn thing in the beat up old theatre, Meghan and I passing back and forth a watered down four dollar coke, although most of the passing went to me, and trying to wolf down the one dollar Red Vine brand Twizzlers, which tasted less like Twizzlers and more like plaster, and near the end I realized that this whole thing was bullshit. Not the movie, which, as previously stated, was kick ass, but the whole idea of power. The balance of it. Some of the stuff the government did in that movie, especially to Dillinger's galpal Billie, was down-right detestable. And I am sure, as with all biopics (how do you say that fucking word?), it is overdone, but goddamn it anyway, some of the stuff our country does is ridiculous.

Afterwards we went to a bar down the way, where I had two cranberry vodkas and a rumplemintz shot (meghan had one beer and two tequilas, since she is definitely more of a man than I), and we sat around, attempting to converse but mostly distracted by three ambient factors: ESPN, a picture slide show, and a loud bald guy.

ESPN is the bastion of television sports, where I get to watch dudes in knickers try to hit balls with sticks and then run in a circle. And these men get paid millions of dollars annually to hit said balls and run in said circles. Not that I am crying sour grapes, but if our capitalist society thinks ball hitters deserve millions a year and the local Boys and Girls club owner, who is a standup dude who runs a charity which watches hundreds of local children, get's shit on all year, I think our priorities are just messed up.

The Picture slide show was of a local photographers art. Here's a pro-tip : chicks without shirts on does not a classy artist make. Not that putting sepia fucks holding bible verses is any better, but apparently we can't have a middle ground in the land of ideological consensus. In fact, some would say that women could be appreciated fully clothed. I know it is a controversial thought in a nation which allows Miley Cyrus to pose topless for magazines and do pole dances at the kid's choice awards, but mayhaps we could allow children, even children actors, to not sell themselves for sex. Just a thought.

And finally we had baldy, wearing his football jersey, loudly harping on governments spying on our phones, how many awesome battles he had had in bars, and occasionally Yankee Candles. He was the loudest person in the bar, garnered most of the attention, and noone, including myself or lovely date, let the idiot know he was making a complete ass out of himself. I am so sick of the loudest moron being the one who wins the debate (a phenom epitomized in our recent town hall meetings) but I am not doing a goddamn thing to stop it. I just don't know if it is worth it.

So in the end, I feel like I am walking outside a movie theater, just having watched a classy Clark Gable flick, with my whole past right beside me. Only I don't know she has set me up for failure, I don't know the white suited gentleman has been waiting for me to step outside the line, to leave my home state or dare attempt to get a job as anything other than a burgerflipper, and as soon as I open my mouth he is going to fill me with lead, lean down to my face, and pretend he didn't even know my last words.

Spoiler Alert: We lose. Winners win.

Either way, I am not scared of anything, and maybe someday I will summon up that John Dillinger courage in real life, the courage to stand up to bullshit and scoff and joke and take everything you can take from it before it wins. Just because the battle is inevitable doesn't mean I can't blow up something huge before the finale.

No comments:

Post a Comment