The one where I go see Deadpool

Neither of the boys were particularly interested in going, and I had the day off work today. So I spent my afternoon getting stoned and taking myself out to see Deadpool.

Overall, fucking hilarious. Credit sequence was great, there were a lot of 4th-wall breaks, and Ryan Renolds manages to be glib with rarely getting into that, "omg we get it you have a come-back for everything" type characters. It's anti-hero without being tragic.

Stan Lee has the best cameo I've seen yet.

(Apologies to the guy in front of me who missed the cameo because his girlfriend covered his eyes during the strip club scene. Shame on you, lady. There's relationship paranoia, and then there's the certain brand of crazy that type of behavior indicates.)

Being the type of person I am, though, I gotta roll my eyes at the romance story-line.

Possible spoilers ahead, readers.

So Deadpool before he becomes Deadpool (aka Wade Wilson) is hanging out at this bar for vigilante killers I guess. The bartender is hilarious. TJ Miller. Seriously. That guy did not get enough screen time. There's this short-haired hottie hanging around, and she's all, "hey why don't you come have sex with me PS it costs money because I'm a prostitute." They joke, they banter. (Yes, he makes the joke about "what are we gonna do with the rest of the long amount of time because I'm going to jizz in like 30 seconds into this.") Turns out he's fucking great in the sack, and they're now going to do an amusing montage of the two of them in all sorts of great positions and situations throughout the next calendar year. Until he pulls a Ring Pop out of his ass (no, seriously) on Christmas and is like, "this is the best vag I've slain in my whole life how's about we get married?"

So, yes. That's all hilarious. The sheer amount of sexual situations during the montage is pretty impressive.

There's just one problem. There's no indication during the montage that the girl is still a ho. Like, yeah, she's doing all sorts of crazy stuff...but it's just with Wade. 

I resent the implication that once a ho finds the right dick, she immediately stops craving all other dick.

This might just be me, too, but I get the impression Wade Wilson is the kind of guy that wouldn't really mind being in a type of open relationship.

Anyway. After Wade gets all radioactive and uglified, he's convinced his super hot GF will not want to be with him anymore. The typical, "this relationship is too perfect and something bad is happening so I'll leave to protect you" bullshit mixed with a healthy dose of, "nobody can be in love with somebody that isn't a perfect physical Adonis." 

He finally turns up at this strip club she's working at now because it's almost the end of the movie and the baddies are after GF. It would have been really nice to have some indication before this point that she was back to sex work. The way it's presented, this is another place holder until she can find the "one and only" dick again. 

After a decent baddie-fight scene, turns out GF is cool with the way he looks now. That banter from earlier even comes back to re-establish the relationship after she slaps him in the face a bunch. You know, because that's their thing. In case you hadn't figured that out. Because banter is all they do (well, and have really great, kinky sex). You know how ho's be. She spends so much time catching dick, it's hard to have any other hobbies. All she has time for otherwise is cultivating the skill of appreciating literally everything that guys like. (omg a hot chick that can reference Star Wars? Spooge.)

Sexual Scarcity

In which I take a platitude from monogamous culture and stretch the analogy to points never dreamed of.

Frisbee and I spent the weekend at a tournament with essentially the same group of folks from the first time we went. (The team also went last year, but I was incredibly sick with a head cold and couldn't go. I essentially mainlined Vitamin C the entire week leading up to the tournament this year so I wouldn't miss it.)

During breaks between games, one of the other men on the team and I started a Venn Diagram 

of women at the tournament we'd consider having sex with. (Not the man from the above linked entry - he is still happily and monogamously married.) It combined two of my favorite activities: cruising and math.

Although our methods of qualification were quite different, we surprisingly only disagreed on three out of a sample group of about 12 women. Discussion over data points revealed that he bases "yes" on a set of arbitrary physical characteristics he finds attractive (for every woman considered, he would have to do a walk-by to visually assess), while I am more likely to say "yes" to women who I think would be fun to hang out with (which is no less arbitrary a judgement).

Which led to further discussion of how, if these arbitrary qualifications aren't met, there's still ways to get to the "yes" category. Which led to him uttering one of those statements that just makes me feel really sad for straight people:

"If I can't have steak, I'll still eat hamburger."

To which I replied, "Yeah, but if I want steak I'm going to have steak."

The expression epitomizes the straight person perspective that one type of sexual encounter is inherently better than another. e.g. steak is inherently better than hamburger. It also implies sexual scarcity - that there's only a certain amount of steaks out there in the world.

Here's the point where I'm just going to take the analogy and run with it. 

1. Nobody is placing a ban on steaks. 

Steak exists. Steak is available. There are different cuts of steak, different ways of preparing steak, etc. The powers that be have not issued a doctrine saying, "from now on all meat products shall be ground and consumed between two sesame seed buns." Nobody is saying you can't have steak if that's what you want.

2. You have access to steak.

Steak is not behind some sort of barbed-wire fence. If you bring a steak to the cashier line at the grocery store, the cashier is not going to say, "omg you think you can buy this?" and then put the steak back until somebody more qualified to buy steak comes along. If you're at a restaurant and steak is on the menu, the waiter is not going to tell you, "oh, you're not allowed to order steak" and then hand you the steak-free menu you should have been ordering from from the start.

3. There are other places to get steak.

Let's say you're at a restaurant and somehow got away with getting a menu that has steak on it. Only to be told the very last steak was just ordered by that person at another table. Because of the layout of the restaurant, you can see the steak being brought over to the other table as it's served. Look at that lucky so-and-so with their steak. It looks so juicy, so appetizing. It's just what you were craving this evening. *pouts*

It is completely okay to go to a different restaurant and get steak there instead. It is completely okay to just order another drink at the restaurant and then pick up a steak on the way home and cook it yourself.

4. Steak can be unappetizing.

Man, you really, really wanted steak but now it's not cooked correctly. Or it's just not hitting the spot like you thought it would. Maybe you should have gotten that pasta dish instead. That person at the other table eating the pasta dish looks really happy with it. Why did you think you wanted steak? 

5. Hamburgers are also delicious.

Seriously. The only issue is when you don't really want a hamburger but you wind up eating one anyway. And then you stay with that hamburger because, eh, it's not what you wanted in the first place but it's better than nothing. Those other hamburgers and steaks probably have just as many issues as the hamburger you ordered, so you're better off staying with a mediocre meat product that doesn't really make you happy.

Fuck that noise.

Get yourself a steak if that's what you want. It it turns out to not be a good steak, go get a steak that is. If there's no steak at the moment, get yourself a double cheese burger.