Russ and I saw The Departed on Friday night, which was a hysterically funny and incredibly gruesome marriage of cinema, a perfect Scorscian Frankenstein of a film. All the hysterical laughter was due to Mark Wahlberg, a.k.a. Marky-Mark of the Funky Bunch, who stole the show every single time he opened his mouth. This happened in I Heart Huckabees, too. The guy's just pitch-perfect comedy, whether it's because he's jumping over a counter and yelling to Jason Schwartzman, "I'll cover you!" or encapsulating all the known curse words in a mere sentence with a deeply Southie accent.
Russ and I spent our entire walk home from the theater discussing how much we love Boston, even though neither one of us has ever been there. Russ said he thinks of it as a mythological land, where the linking verbs are repalced "motherfuckin'" and men make even the ugliest gold chain look, if not good, then at least right.
My own realization, walking home, is that Matt Damon is not attractive unless he's speaking in his dreamy little Southie accent. As soon as he opened his mouth - I think his first line was something like, "Those firefighters are homos" - I was instantly hooked. My love of his way with words had me oogling his booty, something I haven't done since Good Will Hunting with any real conviction. And for the record, let me say that I'm not someone who even cares about butts. Not even in high school, where it's like a part of the unspoken curriculum that you check out a few butts each day. I just rarely visually engage with the derriere. Not my thing.
So it got me thinking about the connection between accents and butts and I have come up with the Matt Damon hypothesis. Think about it -- Good Will Hunting? Accent - check. Checking out of the butt? Big check or as Buffy would say, "Wake up and smell the hottie." Didn't we all enjoy those long, numerical whiteboard scenes, with Matty face forward? But then, there was The Bourne Identity-Supremacy-Whatever the third one was/will be. Accent? Bland as American cheese. Butt checkage? None. There was no even curious attraction to the superman-type-fighting-world-governments. The Talented Mr. Ripley? He shows it all in the bathtub scene with Jude Law and I felt nothing. While I could go on, cataloguing Damon's movies and my own not-noticing, I'll take the road less long and present my hypothesis: Matt Damon imbibing Southie = attractive. From that wicked smile to that freckled, turned up nose to that cute little bum, I am deeply moved. I notice everything, like the subtle yet important difference between butt-in-khakis vs. butt-in-jeans. And yet, take away his accent and there's nothing there. His smile loses its edge and he's returned to my peripheral land of look-a-like butts.
Curse word verbs, gold chains, accents that make butts magically attractive -- Boston really is a mythological land.
1 comment:
Ha -- I haven't seen Bagger, but now that you mentioned Southie, I'm so in.
You know, I was okay with the end -- I would've been disappointed if you-know-who had gotten away with everything, but I like how the undefined character twists the ending, thereby showing where his allegiance ultimately lies. It's like a new take on "the good guy always wins," just in a more violent way than say, Scooby-Doo.
All is well, thanks!
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