Saturday, August 9, 2014

Why Does It Always End With A Bar Scene?

Why Does It Always End With A Bar Scene?


There is a crime, a plot that involves somebody really screwing up and people getting shot or hurt or generally fubar’d (fucked up beyond all recognition – from the movie Die Hard 1 or 5 or one of them).   Sometimes all of these.  Greed, revenge is a big one – always revenge, getting even.  “You killed my sister’s cousin’s girlfriend’s cute little dog.  Yer gonna pay for thet!  Shot him like a dog!  Wait he was a dog.  Okay, you shot him like a squirrel!  Nobody shoots my sister’s cousin’s girlfriend’s cute little dog like a squirrel and gits away with it!”

Sidenote: Can a squirrel shoot a dog?  Can you shoot a dog like a squirrel?  I don’t think the squirrel’s little arms are long enough …  Maybe that is supposed to be, “shoot a dog like the dog was a squirrel.”  That makes more sense.  End sidenote.

Something like that.  A 7/11 or bank or ATM machine robbery gone wrong.  Something like diamonds or highly secret government weapons, like a new 75 tool Swiss Army knife that includes a thumb drive AND a magnifying glass - and maybe a missal launcher.  Frequently it’s radioactive and is threatening downtown Cleveland Heights.

The hero is a cop, FBI Agent, NSA ninja. He’s a tall; we are led to believe he’s tall (he’s never short, that’s for sure), no-nonsense dark haired (seems like he’s always dark haired … and really nice hair (we are led to believe)) manly man. 

If he’s black, his head is always (and I mean always) shaved.  Dome like black chrome.  And if he’s black he always (nearly always) wears a moustache and goatee that is trimmed – trimmed like by a diamond cutter.  No living man can trim his own beard like that.  It’s just plain impossible.

And he’s nearly always broody.  Dark and broody.  He’s got crime on his mind and nothin’ else.  He hates crime with a passion.  The only thing he lives for is gettin’ the crimers (criminals) and puttin’ ‘em away.  To do hard time for their heinous crime.  If he’s married, he’s divorced.  Just can’t keep a relationship together.

Now if the hero is a heroine, she’s pretty much the same in all ways except there is more latitude with the hair color.  And even though she has feminine arms, like sticks sometimes, she is wa-a-ay strong with super-kung pow karate skills.  She can take apart any man no matter how huge he is.  She could take apart Robocop like he was dried pasta.  If her partner is a man and he can lift a car, she can lift a truck.  If he can lift a truck, she can lift a space station and throw it into orbit.

You don’t mess with that chick.

If she’s married, she’s divorced because she just can’t a relationship together.

Of course either way, the hero/heroine has a team.  Always a team.  Got yer screwed up Army/Navy/Marine (Marines are really popular) guy (almost always a guy).  He’s in AA or some kind of therapy and has a rage problem.  Generally there’s the nerd, who can hack into anything from the London Bank to space satellites.  Almost always a guy and he’s so nerdy he strikes you as a forty year old virgin type.  Then there’s the token black person, also usually a guy, but sometimes she’s a she and so damn beautiful traffic stops when she’s anywhere near a street.

Everybody always hittin’ on the black chick, from the all the other chicks on the cast to like lampposts and the K-9 corpse dogs.  But she’s just not interested, because she was married and she just can’t keep a relationship together. 

Throw in the bald supervisor, who’s always pissed about something – or everything, just never quite sure what – but he (or she, sometimes he’s a she, and if she’s a she, she is nearly always a black she – who is usually overweight) is pissed.  Every episode, or act (?), if it’s a movie, has to have a scene where the boss reams everybody out.    He (she) is going to take the hero/heroine’s badge and gun for screwing up again.  But does the hero/heroine stop the investigation?  Does a bear in the zoo, shit in his cage?  Hah!  NEVER!  (Well, of course the bear shits in his cage, but the hero/heroine never stops … not shitting in the cage (that’s the bear - never mind) …) (frequently the bear in the zoo, shits in his cage just when you are standing there with your five year old grand-daughter.  Now why is that?)

Every freakin’ time!

Okay … so we got our cast of psychologically messed up good guys.  Now we move on to our bad guys.  The crime doesn’t really matter.  ‘Cause whatever it is, it’s always really heinous.  Like super-di-duper bad.  “And he/they (sometimes she) just has to be stopped.”

Hair.  Used to be hats, white hats and black hats.  Now it’s hair.  Good guys have incredible hair, good women (sorry about the chicks thing, but “hey!” I’m just trying to stay “street”) have just plain amazing hair.  Venus would envy such hair.  In real life it would take at least three heads to grow that much hair.  And either the hero or heroine could have a gun fight in a running car wash with jets spewing axle grease and their hair would remain just amazing. 

Bad guys always have bad hair.  Or, they are kind of bald, never shaved heads, but kind of like homeless guy bald.  If the bad guy is a she, she stills has amazing hair.  For some reason women can be extremely villainous, but the hair quotient doesn’t apply to women.  I’ve spent a lot of viewing time trying to figure out the bad guy woman thing, but it eludes me.  They are almost never blonde though, that’s one thing.  And, the bad guy women generally wear like nine inch spiked heel shoes.   I mean shoes you could pick ice with, or kill somebody with (which is a plot twist that is even used occasionally).

I don’t know how any person could even walk in those shoes, let alone climb twenty feet of polished marble like they seem to be able to do when they have to get away; like early in the show.  Later in the show, in the same shoes, when they need to be caught, they can’t get over a folded newspaper.

The crime occurs; a plot is sort of suggested (a plot that my cat has figured out within the first ten minutes and is now licking his …) the hero (person) gets all wrapped up in getting the bad guy (persons).  The boss gets pissed and grabs the hero’s (person’s) badge and gun.  The hero (person) continues to go after the bad guy (persons).  And, of course, does get them and puts them away to do hard time.

And then everybody meets up in a bar for beers.  Including the Army/Navy/Marine Vet, who is AA (or whatever) (which is never fully explained).  Including a stop-by by the bald boss (or overweight black lady boss) who stoically congratulates the team and says he (she) never stopped believing they would get that bad guy (bad guy woman).  Even though the boss has to go into for hernia surgery soon for being pissed off all the damned time.

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Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014
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