All weekend, the Drudge report breathlessly screamed the headline, as if putting it in a big enough typeface could prove W. right and destroy the liberal peacenicks forever: BOXOFFICE BLOODBATH!!!!! That’s right, it was a massacre in the cinema, and I don’t mean like when Divine asked “who wants to die for art” in “Female Trouble.” I mean “The 300,” the latest in a long tradition of things whose name is a dramatic combination of a number and a “The.” The movie broke some box office records this weekend, and, if I may join in the thematic word play, pillaged over 70 million smackeroos from the chain wallets of our nation’s slack-jawed youths. What does it all mean? Isn’t America supposed to be weary of warmongering, tired of knuckleheaded pseudo-freedom fighters, sick of meaningless video game-style violence? Sure. We’re over Applebee’s and fast cars too. H. L. Mencken, you just have to keep being proven right, don’t you. Oh, you.
I haven’t seen the damn movie, but I have seen a blog post referencing a dramatically-lit “feature” from Men’s Health on the manly exercise habits of one of the stars. Lift tires, make muscles big for movie! Also the snarky reviews in the liberal media have been pretty entertaining. Hilarious, even. Is this the only way I can enjoy anything these days: by scrounging around in the sarcastic reactions to it? Well, no-one ever lost money overestimating my desire to look at rippling torsos on the internet or read witty put-downs of popular culture.
