Action movies have gotten a lot of poor bastards killed

The other day, while I was debating some right wing ass-hat who probably prays to a shrine of Karl Rove in his house and masturbates to a copy of Mein Kampf, I realized that being a lifelong devotee of Hip Hop is like befriending that new kid in High School that everyone dislikes in a knee jerk fashion. Whenever someone would confront me about my friend being a horrible human being and your garden variety eye-rolling generalizations, I'd simply diffuse their whole argument by kindly pointing out that, like a weak link on a debate team who happens to be a double amputee, they didn't have a leg to stand on because they've never talked to him. I get frustrated when my friend gets labeled a blistering misogynist just because he pinched a girls ass once, I get irritated whenever people think my boy is an intolerant thug just because he got into one little fight during lunch period, the hardest thing to get through peoples heads is the fact that my friend has a plethora of wonderful qualities that just aren't being tapped into. The most insulting charge, one that has made me seriously consider going on massive killing sprees more times than not, is when people try to get my homeboy expelled because they feel that his negative attributes will spread throughout the school like the plague. I mean, if some jackass decides to walk up to a fellow student and punch him dead in the face while gripping a roll of quarters, that level of aggression was probably always in him, I'm sure the new kid had nothing to do with his actions.

Dropping the High School analogy for just a minute, for years I wanted to believe that pop culture had no influence over the actions of otherwise rational individuals. If a light-bulb illuminated over some jackass' head and he decided to kill his entire family, chop them up into millions of pieces with some cutlery that he ordered on-line, and happened to served them up to his Co-workers under the guise that it was actually pork barbecue that they were chowing down on, I'm sure that Marilyn Manson CD had nothing to do with him being nuttier than squirrel turds ever since he escaped the birth canal. But looking back though, please don't tell any conservative scumbags that I said this, I have been influenced just a tiny bit by music and film. OK, so I get the sudden urge to break some poor bastards jaw whenever I hear M.O.P's "Ante Up" or "Ground Zero", sue me. I'll admit it, after me and my friends saw "The Last Dragon" in the theater many years ago, we did come back to our block and started physically pummeling any kid within eye shot for no legitimate reason. Lastly, yes another admission, when Digable Planets dropped their first album, for 2 years straight I fucked nothing but chicks who wore hear-wraps, had dreadlocks, and recited bad poetry where they 'Spooooooke--Liiiiiiiiike--thiiiiiiiis". Happy? I came clean, like beating off in the shower with a bath sponge and shit.

That got me thinking about the millions of young men everywhere, over the past 50 years or so, who are taking an extremely long dirt-nap because they believed everything they saw on the big screen. Think about all the poor souls that had to lay in an ill fitting tuxedo while some preacher waxed poetic about how the doctor wasn't able to retrieve all the bullets out of the deceased gentleman's asshole, finding elaborate ways in which to describe the dearly departed as a dumb-ass based on him thinking he was "Dirty Harry" in real life. Here are a few action movie devices, that if believed, can get inappropriate things shoved inside of you by some deviant employee at your local morgue.

Mexican standoff: How many times have you seen this in movies? Two men having their extremely high powered handguns pointed at each other, neither man daring to blink, each man's barrel aimed at a forehead, as both of them sternly urge each other to "drop their weapon". Even as a kid I knew this scenario was a watery bag of crap, primarily because as soon as the other man raised his weapon you don't have any idea that he wants to partake in any sort of witty banter, a person's natural reaction is to unload with reckless abandon. In real life someone is getting filled out like triple penetration porn, if not both of them, with all men involved leaking on the ground like a leaky transmission. I'm sure there has been somebody, possibly a person who saw one too many "Death Wish" movies, who decided to talk to their would-be dispatcher like he'd seen a million times before. Unfortunately this is real life, so as he utters "Listen, you drop your gun and..." *Blam* *Blam* *Blam* Nothing like being gunned down mid sentence, with your killer capping off the occasion with "Did that motherfucker think we were in a Martin Scorsese movie??"

The Bruce Lee theory: When I was a kid I did nothing but play with my He-man men, dream about making sweet love to the massive boobs that Lisa-Lisa had, and watching Bruce Lee movies as frequently as humanly possible. Nothing got me more amped than seeing Bruce enter some Karate school to avenge the death of his homeboy Chin-Whah, taking on a thousand students like he was stomping on an ant hill, I personally felt that I could do the same thing one day. That was until junior high when I attempted to fight these three dudes after school, me circling them like Bruce with that wide-eyed scowl that he had, I couldn't wait to make easy work out of the pubescent fucks. Immediately I realized that real life isn't to be fucked with, these dudes weren't waiting for me to get finished with one dude as I prepared for the other like the movies, they all rushed me at once which resulted in a very public ass-whipping that will be handed down generation to generation like folklore. Man, movies are bullshit.

Putting your trust in adversaries: I'm certain that more men have had hot lead pumped into them, like being ass-raped by the tin-man, based on how accommodating and trusting on screen adversaries are. I can't tell you how many times I've seen some hapless sap be outgunned, stuck behind some sedan that looks like a piece of Swiss cheese, only to slide his gun on the ground as a sign of defeat, his would-be dispatcher allowing him to walk out safely into their custody. I'm not a street cat, I'm a black guy from the suburbs who likes System of a Down, pulling triple flip Ollie's, thrusting inside of black women so thick that Gap doesn't make clothes for, but I bet you dollars to donuts that a few men found themselves on the business end of a full clip based on that theatrical foolishness.