Friday, April 30, 2010

And you can’t even spell his surname…

Last night I was sitting on the couch reading (I was reading 'Reaper Man', a Discworld novel for possibly the gajillionth time, if you're interested)…when I noticed that Sunny had changed the TV channel and was watching to original 'Terminator' movie.

As I watched a few minutes of it, I realized something:

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the luckiest human being alive.

Think about it. The guy can't act…at all. He's as wooden as a Pirate's leg. He can't emote (when he tries to act happy or laugh he looks like Mr Potato Head taking a tazer hit)…He can barely talk for Christ's sake. He's not even what you'd call a good looking man either.

So he can't act, he can't talk and he has a face like a partially melted lesbian pensioner. The only thing he really has (or had) going for him was his muscles…but as we've seen over and over, having a set of bitchin' pecs and biceps the size of ostrich eggs doesn't exactly guarantee an awesome movie career. In fact, guys like AHHHhhh-Nold usually, if they're very lucky, get a line or two in a couple of 'real' movies. This is followed by a bit part or two in some crappy made-for-TV movies, and occasionally they get a role in a TV series that gets cancelled in halfway through the first season.

From there they only have two choices: Infomercials for gimmicky exercise equipment or softcore porn.

Ahhh-nold was lucky in two major ways: Firstly, 'The Terminator' was meant to be a bog standard, summertime 'chewing gum' movie…and instead it became an instant classic. For Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-nold it was like getting the part of the angry janitor in 'Spy babies 4: The Doodie-filled Diaper Disaster" and then discovering 'Spy Babies 4" had the same impact as 'The Matrix'.

But the main reason Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-nold is so lucky is that, not only was The Terminator a 'Turkey-turned-classic 'like 'Star Wars', he was given the one and only part he could play perfectly: A soulless, expressionless robot.

Think about it. Can you think of a more perfect person to portray an emotionless machine that Ahhh-nold?

Then, watching his career was like watching the nutters on 'America's Got Talent'. It was like he got popular as a 'joke' act…the talentless idiot who everyone keeps voting for because they're just so hilarious to watch…but then he stuck around for so long and starred in so many massively popular blockbusters that everyone sort of forgot that he couldn't act.

So, if we look at AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHhhhh-nold's career, he's basically an ugly guy who can't talk (no matter what the line is, he always sounds like he's gargling a couple of pool balls while a kitten claws his nuts), he can't act and has all the emotional range of a lamppost…yet thanks to getting the perfect role in the perfect movie at the perfect time, he went on to become one of the most successful movie stars of all time and then, just to put the icing on the cake, the people of California thought that this muclebound, awful actor was the perfect choice for Governor.

I thought you needed political experience to be a good choice for Governor…it turns out that all you really need to do is hang by one hand from the skid of a helicopter while going "glarglearglearglearrg" in every single movie you're ever in.

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