SLINGS AND ARROWS

I know, I know… I've been neglecting you. You're feeling abandoned and forsaken like most of my natural children. (And those little bastards are legion.) You're probably also starving because I forgot to leave food out before I left. Sorry, my bad. Couldn't be helped, been out of touch, down in Maryland trying to get my hands on that "misplaced" Mega Millions lottery ticket. But don't be thinking I wasted my time searching through every McDonalds in the state looking for the thing based on that bullshit fable that loon Mirlande Wilson has been spreading. No, I went right to the source, the horse's mouth so to speak, tried to get it straight from Wilson herself.

The trucker cap says it all my friends. "Sweet Swine" indeed.

She made me do… dirty things, I ain't gonna lie. Some things were worse than others, some of the things were pretty degrading and other things were downright illegal even in Amsterdam. But there was no pot of gold at the end of that dark, disturbing rainbow, only failure and lies. When it was over I was just happy to get the hell out of there with the few pints of blood and what little dignity I had left in me. I'm kidding of course, I didn't have any dignity before I went down there. Alas, it wasn't meant to be between Mirlande and me but we'll always have Paris. Paris was this transgendered friend of hers and the three of us… you know what, let's just move on.

So have you seen The Hunger Games yet? Have you read the books? Do you even know what the hell I'm talking about? Well if you don't then you're alone in the world because the books have been read by some thirty million people, the flick's raking in the dollars and little girls all over the world wanna be like the story's bow slinging heroine Katniss Everdeen as played by Jennifer Lawrence.

"What does Marsellus Wallace look like?
Does he look like a bitch?" 

And by "wannabe" I mean that the number of girls signing up for archery classes in the United States has seen a pretty significant jump from like whatever it was before to whatever the hell it is today. Now I can't give you actual figures… because I don't know how to count good. Also as you could tell from that last sentence, I don't talk english good either. (I am not a smart man.) But whatever that number is, it's sure to get even higher in the summer when Disney/Pixar releases the animated feature Brave with its CGI, flame-haired mistress of the bow, Merida. 

Is it just me or does it look like
she's lining up for a crotch shot? 

Even the recent release of Wrath of the Titans got in on the act with the character Andromeda — played by that sultry bit of Brit hotness Rosamund Pike — picking up a bow and… well going completely unnoticed since no one really saw that film because they were still packing the theater next door to make The Hunger Games number one for a third straight week. 

"I have a bow too! Care to come watch me shoot stuff?
Please? No? Sod off then you wankers!"

But even though Rosie and the Titans failed to grab any headlines this week, the rule of threes still applies. Three movies, three chicks with bows, three reasons to be afraid. (See, there's three things right there. Scared yet?) Or perhaps I'm just overreacting since this is not a new phenomenon. Movies and television shows of such a nature as the action/fantasy genre have often handed the bow to the ladies when there's a battle to be fought. Gives them something to do, keeps them out of the way, lets them feel like they're making a contribution to the fight. And it's just so gosh darned cute. 

I have got the weirdest boner right now. 

Probably one of the most famous bow chicks of the genre is that blonde honey Legolas from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That movie franchise raked in somewhere close to a gazillion bucks and didn't spawn any kind of female archer apocalypse. And if a gal like Legolas couldn't inspire women the world over to turn their bra straps into bow strings and storm the halls of authority in some sort of Girl Powered revolution then I'm probably just worrying much over nothing because… Wait, what's that now? Legolas was a dude? You sure? Played by Orlando Bloom? Wait… Orlando Bloom is a dude? Really? 

Well that boner just got a lot weirder. 

And while that last exchange was uncomfortably horrific, it does serve to segue us to a very good point, men have been shooting pointy sticks at shit for far longer than women have even been allowed to leave the house. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was a dude that invented the weapon in the first place, probably to impress a chick. But that just goes without saying. I mean really, what don't we do to impress chicks? Hell, trying to impress a woman is why I write this damn blog in the first place. YOU WILL NOTICE ME SOMEDAY, HILARY CLINTON! 

Oh she acts like she doesn't see me, but behind those
sunglasses… sexy eye roll.

Not as if archery is like field hockey or the balance beam or synchronized bathroom trips or any of the three or four other sporting events that are strictly the purview of the fairer sex. Katniss and Merida can be as badass as they want to be, they'll never get anywhere near the popularity of the most famous fictional archer of all time. Yeah, that would be Robin Hood. In fact, I think he might even be more well-known than any real archers that are or have ever been. Quick, name an actual archer… GO! Can't do it, can you? But the legend of Robin of Loxley's been around forever, been played by dozens of dudes, sometimes even when we didn't want them to. Talking to YOU Russell Crowe! 

A grand legacy of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.
But then the poor just go out and spend it all on booze.

And though there's no cinematic trips to Sherwood Forrest being made anytime in the foreseeable future, the Y-chromosome set will be represented well this summer amidst the Amazon hoards when Jeremy Renner takes to the silver screen (Can we still call it that in the digital age?) as Hawkeye in The Avengers. 

"Hey Scarlett, I got this. What say you make like the 60's
and go fix Daddy a drink? There's a good little girl." 

So you girls wanna pick up a bow and a quiver (that's the little backpack thingie where you keep all the arrows) and learn to shoot like the boys, whatever. It's all good, we ain't threatened by it. Bring it on ladies. Get as good at it as you want to, doesn't matter, cause at the end of the day you're never gonna look as cool doing it as my man Burt Reynolds did back in the day when he was rockin' it in Deliverance. That's the pinnacle right there, dude was the motherf@%king Mack! 

"If the arrow don't kill it then my awesomeness will
because I'm Burt Reynolds, dammit." 

Guess that settles that. Now we can all just get back to… hold up, what have we here? Seems that little Jennifer is back playing Katniss again. And look, she's got herself a leather jacket this time and… and… and… Shit, that is pretty cool right there. 

"Hey Ron, when you're done being wrong, go make Mommy
a sandwich, would you? There's a good little idiot." 

Stupid, stinky girls gotta go and ruin everything!