No gym this morning, obviously. This cold is kicking my butt. I'm coughing up chunks of lung.

I woke up to wind and rain; I was happy to get into my nice, dry car in my nice, dry garage. I was not happy to get stuck in traffic for 20 minutes because someone had an accident on the Tennessee river bridge. It especially sucked because of all that coffee I drank.

Now that my commute to work every morning is a bit longer, I need to do something constructive with my drive time. Maybe I'll rent some books on tape or listen to foreign language tapes or something.

Jon just about busted a blood vessel yesterday in dealing with Bell South. We had DSL in the old house and before we even signed a contract Jon talked with them about DSL in the house. He set everything up to have it installed.

Yesterday he called them and they insisted we hadn't set up anything. After chewing on a bunch of asses he finally got a manager on the line and I'm hopeful it's all straightened out. Bell South sucks.

I see the quality of my posts is degenerating. That's because my mind is degenerating - other than some TiVo'd episodes of Good Eats I haven't watched anything since last week.

Turner Classic Movies is showing The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape during the next week or so. I have seen both movies several times but I'll wait until I see them to make comments.

Hey! I just thought of something to write about!

I wish to quote from a review of Magnificent Obsession:

"...[T]here are certain films that appeal to one sex particularly, speaking to them at their deepest, baseline level, while leaving the other sex bewildered at their appeal. For men, these films generally entail war, violence, and male bonding under the most extreme of conditions. I’m talking about films like The Great Escape, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, The Dirty Dozen, The Naked Prey, and, in particular, Zulu. These are the movies that men can watch over and over and over, much to the general disgust and bewilderment of their girlfriends and wives. These are films that we watch, nodding along as they speak a seemingly secret language that only we understand.

And what are the women’s movies? They’re bizarre, insane (or so they seem to me, and most men) romantic pictures. ‘Weepies’ they were called at their height of their popularity, or ‘four hanky’ flicks, since the audiences would cry their way through four handkerchiefs. These films, with their ludicrous plot twists and laughable obstacles tossed in the way of final, true love, provided their intended audiences with a ‘good cry.’ They also provided agony to any male dragged along, who dared to mock these films only at risk of life and limb. Men’s Movies bespoke a Code detailing the unwritten rules of what constitutes manly behavior. Conversely, Women’s Films spoke to a separate Code, concerning rules for relationships and emotional involvement that no man ever has, or truly can, understood."

Ken Begg is the proprietor and chief reviewer of Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension a site I treasure. The quote above is from one of his more inspired reviews. Poor bastard had to watch a chick movie.

Begg notes in his Magnificent Obsession review how much everyone has to suffer before true love can be had. This suffering, I suppose, is the distorted idea about the Romantic idea that what is important is the journey, not the destination. This suffering can be viewed as a kind of tempering process; turning the hero (or heroine) into an object worthy of love.

Another aspect of Romantic Art:

Ayn Rand took a whack at explaining art in The Romantic Manifesto. I found some of it to be useful and on one thing I agree: both "Guy" movies and "Chick" movies (and books) are the degenerate children of the Romantic movement.

Really. I don't have the book in front of me, but if I recall correctly, Rand defines Romantic Art as art that portrays "Man as he should and ought to be."

So, romantic movies, whether they are 'guy' movies or 'chick' movies, tend to have people getting involved in life-changing situations that turn them into better people - people who are as people should be. That's not a bad definition - you could apply this definition to everything from Spider-Man to Die Hard to Say Anything to Sweet Home Alabama.

Generally speaking, the guy changes in the guy movie, and the girl changes in the girl movie, but that's not set in stone. Take The Terminator for instance. Sarah Connor is the one who has to go through hell and changes for the better. Few people would refer to it as a chick movie, or even a romantic movie (although it qualifies as both).

Bad Chick Movies take this process to ridiculous extremes. Here is a movie I truly loathed: City of Angels. It epitomized everything that revolts me about chick movies.

A quick synopsis: Angel watches humans, helps them to be on their way when they die. He notices a cute woman doctor and falls in love with her. After invisibly stalking her for a while, he figures out how to become mortal so they can be together. They spend less that 24 hours together making the Beast with 2 Backs. While he's sleeping, she goes bike riding and gets hit by a semi. A little angst about the nature of being human, then The end.

I was hammered when I saw this movie. Fortunately I was at home and not in a theater so I was not arrested when I went postal. As I recall I was screaming at the tv - something about bags of horseshit. Anyway I scared the cats.

Where was I?

Degenerate children of the romantic movement. Yeah. Anyways: Guy movies reflect men the way guys want to be. Rand uses the example of James Bond from Dr. No. Dashing ladies man; cultured, suave; cold ruthless killer in the service of his beloved country.

On yet another side note, she complains about how the first Bond movie played it straight then complained about the successive foolishness of the sequels as the movie makers tried to play Bond tongue-in-cheek. I have to agree with her there. The Living Daylights, the first of two Timothy Dalton Bond movies, remains one of my favorites because it almost succeeded in cutting out most of that silliness. And Dalton was hot.

Note that Bond never changes. He is always "Bond. James Bond." (Check out On Her Majesty's Secret Service if you want to see a different side of Bond, though).

The Bond movies are an example of bad Guy movies - the character never changes, he just go through episodes of mayhem with the occasional bout of sex with a beautiful woman or three just to prove to the audience he's a confident heterosexual.

Given the choice of a bad guy movie or a bad chick movie, I'll take the bad guy movie every time. If I have to sit through something silly, I'd rather watch guys whup up on each other.

Or to further explain it, my brother and I went to see the Harrison Ford movie Regarding Henry. Very much a chick movie, it's about a slick lawyer who gets shot in the head during a convenience store robbery, and the pain he and his family have to go through as he pieces his life back together. The brain injury basically turns him back into a child, and along with it he adopts a child's innocence and honesty (meaning he's a better man for it). As we left the theater, we discussed the movie and we both agreed it left us feeling empty. "What that movie needed," I said, "was some exploding robots."