Saturday, June 28, 2008

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to wear boy ponytails.

Lord knows I love me some comedies, and the recent Baby Mama was a rather happy surprise. Despite the trailer, which gave every evidence of being one of those where you no longer have a reason to see the movie, actually the movie had plenty of comedic surprises, one of them being Steve Martin doing a hilarious bit as one of those eco-CEOs who swims with the dolphins and believes he can save the world by selling it back to us, one organic fairtrade mango at a time. And how does a movie signal to us that he's a type? As the Bible preaches it to us: by their ponytails ye shall know them, the graying hippie men who've found a kinder, gentler capitalism to purvey.

The iconic graying ponytail: what a sad, sad thing it is, turning otherwise pretty good-looking men into sorry stereotypes. You know who you are, late-night jazz talk hosts. You already have the good navy blue suit and you know how to rock the white dress shirt, so why don't you get a haircut already? Get a haircut!

Tonight, at Red Rock before the movie, I saw yet another dejected ponytail on an aging man. (The ponytail itself looked forlorn, a coiffure adrift in an alien land.) He was wearing--wait for it:--black jeans, a mock-neck, short sleeved black turtleneck, a belt with some studs on it, and the 'tail. It was not good--so not good, in fact, that I was momentarily struck dumb, and my friends, that does not happen so often.

There oughta be a law, and if not a law, some absolute penalty: men, if you're too old to be sporting that ponytail, you shall summarily be shorn and made to wear golf shirts with tiny polo players embroidered at the breast, for a season.

3 comments:

  1. I will now reward you with five minutes of unbroken eye contact.

    Man, I really liked this movie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. i totally agree with you!! old man 'ponies are horrible! make them stop! and i think the penalty sounds fair.

    but yes...steve martin was hilarious...

    ReplyDelete
  3. 1. Ponytails only suit a few wonderful men. Like sweet old hippies. But the creepy Karl Lagerfield-esque version...ick.

    1.5. Five minutes of unbroken eye contact. She shoulda gotten hazard pay. Hi-larious. (Oh, and "come sit on the table with me")

    2. I loved Baby Mama except for one thing: the whole running hermaphrodite joke. I love that they freaked themselves out reading the baby book (I did that years ago, preparing for an acting part, when the first half of Pregnancy & Childbirth made me wanna have one right now, and the second half made me wanna get my tubes tied.) No, it just annoys me that as a culture we continue to make cheap jokes at the expense of a community that is so thoroughly shamed and abused. *sigh*

    ReplyDelete

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