On Shaq
This weekend I woke up on the floor thinking about Shaquille O'Neal and where him and I have gone since he first joined the Orlando Magic in the early 90's. I am older than he was when he was drafted into the NBA in 1992, and I'm still one foot shorter than he is and many million dollars poorer. He even had his own candy bar, The Mr. Big. I remember after going to an Orlando Magic game with my brother and dad in 1994, we stopped at a gas station and got one of them, which was as big as my forearm. We had his action figure standee, my brother has his rookie card in a plastic block, and my mom once made a sculpture and sent it to him called "Shaq's First Shoes".
Most of my heroes from childhood are old or still fictional now, but Shaq could still be considered a young man now at age 36. My criteria for heroism have changed to only include Andrew WK, the mainstay heroic jobs (firefighter, aid worker, cancer fighter, hope-producer), and a lot of my friends and relatives. Shaq has fell out of this zone a long time ago, and probably got replaced by someone like Blaine Lukens when he fixed my bike and let us see 2 Fast 2 Furious at his piss-smelling dollar theater and let us yell at the screen.
But when I woke up on that floor, I thought about the movies he made in the mid-90's that caught my attention only due to the fact that our man, Shaq, was in them. I never saw any of them when they came out. I had an older brother telling me how lame things that were age-appropriate to me were and a developing sense of what actually really sucked. I saw part of Steel when I was in middle school and was all about Ed Wood and Mystery Science Theater, which made the parts I saw with slicked-back-hair Judd Nelson shooting lasers and Shaq having to save the day by free-throwing a hand grenade into a trash can or some such shit.
But, the parts I didn't see were pure Bergman/Lynch stuff by what I can tell from the IMDb quote section:
John Henry Irons: I can imagine how you feel.
[about her being crippled]
Susan Sparks: No. No you can't.
John Henry Irons: You're right. I can't
Activate Sensitivity!
Uncle Joe: [referring to a hammer] I did the ironwork myself, I especially like the shaft.
Okay, when I read this I thought this was some sort of awful throwaway dick/gay joke. Turns out that Uncle Joe is played by Richard Roundtree, who played Shaft. That makes it even worse.
Nathaniel Burke: Eat the hot dog, don't be one!
Nobody has called anyone a hot dog since the Korean War, especially not scummy business/mafia types. In the excellent graphic novel DC: The New Frontier, jet pilots called Hal Jordan at least a dozen times. It also had a pretty cool rendition of the DC Comics superhero Steel, which this fucking movie is supposed to be about. From the release of Batman Returns in 1992 to the release of X-Men in 2000, there was a stretch of awful comic book adaptations and superhero movies. If someone can think of a good one from there (though I liked Judge Dredd, it was a bad, bad movie) please tell me.
To get back to Shaq's quotable movies, I'll give one more example. This one is from his magical genie/basketball romp, Kazaam!:
Kazaam: [lifting malik by the neck] Now, where's Max?
Malik: Uh... du... du... du... uh... he... uh... he went down that shaft.
Kazaam: WHAT?
Malik: Umm... uh... uh... there was nothin I could do, now put me down...
[starts choking]
Malik: ... I'm afraid of heights.
Kazaam: Wish not granted!
[Shapes Malik into a basketball, and then slam-dunks him into the Air duct]
It's all there, so I can't say anything more.
There are a lot of things that need doing, and I wrote nearly all of them down in lists in different places, hoping to trick myself into getting them done. Some more nebulous than others (the get in fucking shape challenge is back) and some just gotta get done real soon (throw out 30 gin bottles). But, I keep screwing around, case in point:
Shit like this keeps happening.
Most of my heroes from childhood are old or still fictional now, but Shaq could still be considered a young man now at age 36. My criteria for heroism have changed to only include Andrew WK, the mainstay heroic jobs (firefighter, aid worker, cancer fighter, hope-producer), and a lot of my friends and relatives. Shaq has fell out of this zone a long time ago, and probably got replaced by someone like Blaine Lukens when he fixed my bike and let us see 2 Fast 2 Furious at his piss-smelling dollar theater and let us yell at the screen.
But when I woke up on that floor, I thought about the movies he made in the mid-90's that caught my attention only due to the fact that our man, Shaq, was in them. I never saw any of them when they came out. I had an older brother telling me how lame things that were age-appropriate to me were and a developing sense of what actually really sucked. I saw part of Steel when I was in middle school and was all about Ed Wood and Mystery Science Theater, which made the parts I saw with slicked-back-hair Judd Nelson shooting lasers and Shaq having to save the day by free-throwing a hand grenade into a trash can or some such shit.
But, the parts I didn't see were pure Bergman/Lynch stuff by what I can tell from the IMDb quote section:
John Henry Irons: I can imagine how you feel.
[about her being crippled]
Susan Sparks: No. No you can't.
John Henry Irons: You're right. I can't
Activate Sensitivity!
Uncle Joe: [referring to a hammer] I did the ironwork myself, I especially like the shaft.
Okay, when I read this I thought this was some sort of awful throwaway dick/gay joke. Turns out that Uncle Joe is played by Richard Roundtree, who played Shaft. That makes it even worse.
Nathaniel Burke: Eat the hot dog, don't be one!
Nobody has called anyone a hot dog since the Korean War, especially not scummy business/mafia types. In the excellent graphic novel DC: The New Frontier, jet pilots called Hal Jordan at least a dozen times. It also had a pretty cool rendition of the DC Comics superhero Steel, which this fucking movie is supposed to be about. From the release of Batman Returns in 1992 to the release of X-Men in 2000, there was a stretch of awful comic book adaptations and superhero movies. If someone can think of a good one from there (though I liked Judge Dredd, it was a bad, bad movie) please tell me.
To get back to Shaq's quotable movies, I'll give one more example. This one is from his magical genie/basketball romp, Kazaam!:
Kazaam: [lifting malik by the neck] Now, where's Max?
Malik: Uh... du... du... du... uh... he... uh... he went down that shaft.
Kazaam: WHAT?
Malik: Umm... uh... uh... there was nothin I could do, now put me down...
[starts choking]
Malik: ... I'm afraid of heights.
Kazaam: Wish not granted!
[Shapes Malik into a basketball, and then slam-dunks him into the Air duct]
It's all there, so I can't say anything more.
There are a lot of things that need doing, and I wrote nearly all of them down in lists in different places, hoping to trick myself into getting them done. Some more nebulous than others (the get in fucking shape challenge is back) and some just gotta get done real soon (throw out 30 gin bottles). But, I keep screwing around, case in point:
Shit like this keeps happening.
posted by A.T. Nee at
1:24 PM
1 Comments
