I've always loved reading Bill Simmons. Other than checking The Effrontery [ed. note: shameless plug], there is no better way to entertain yourself during moments of extreme boredom (read: work) than reading through the Sports Guy's latest offering of banter. Because things have been busy around here lately, I'm still getting caught up on his more recent columns and rants. Well, this morning I was ripping through his NFL Divisional Playoff Preview column from two weeks ago and discovered one of the best calls he--nay, anyone--has ever made. Here's the sequence:
During breaks in the Skins-Hawks game, I was flicking over to "Beverly Hills Cop" on one of the HD channels, and maybe it was seeing Jenny Summers' come-hither smirk in high definition for the first time, but how did I never notice the smoldering sexual tension in the scene when Axel brings his old friend Jenny back to his Beverly Hills hotel room and she lays down on his bed and bats her eyelashes at him for a couple of minutes? For God's sake, she did everything but take her clothes off and assume the missionary position, and yet Axel was more interested in ordering room service for Taggart and Rosewood. I don't get it.
Which leads me to my $64,000 question: Was Axel Foley secretly gay?
In the first two "Cop" movies (I refuse to admit that "Cop 3" happened), Axel didn't have a girlfriend, and we never saw him hook up with a single girl. In "Cop 1," he convincingly pretended to be Victor Maitlin's lover in a public restaurant. In "Cop 2," he ruined what could have been a fantastic time for his buddies at the Playboy Mansion by starting a fight for no real reason with a suspected bank robber. In "Cop 1," he made Taggart and Rosewood follow him to a strip joint, almost like he was overcompensating, then spent more time looking around the club than looking at the girls. In both "Cop" movies, he ably served as a platonic friend for Jenny and Lt. Bogomil's daughter (without ever making a move on either of them); he clicked with two obviously gay characters (the ones played by Damon Wayans and Bronson Pinchot); and he loved playing a perverse cat-and-mouse game with Taggart and Rosewood (two guys). And he was willing to risk his job and his life to avenge the murder of his old "buddy" Mikey, who just happened to be coming back to "crash" at Axel's apartment on the night he was murdered. We're sure Axel Foley was straight? We're sure?
(Here's how we'll get an official answer once and for all: If Logo starts running either "Cop" movie. That's how we settled the "Was Bull Durham a chick flick?" argument years ago, when it started running on Lifetime. As far as I'm concerned, the ball is in Logo's hands. They would know better than me.)
As a person who has also viewed the "Cop" movies in excess of 300 times, I must applaud Simmons for bringing all that up. I mean, it's got to be in the "Movie Minutiae Great Call Pantheon," right? First ballot, if you ask me. Sort of like the way I felt when someone (I forget who) once mentioned to me that Martin Scorsese's mother, Catherine, played the role of Joe Pesci's mother in GoodFellas: "Yeah, I knew that already, dumbass" was my reaction [ed. note: remember, this was 1992 and I was nine years old]. He responded with, "but did you know that Scorsese's dad, Charles, played 'Vinnie' in the movie?" That totally floored me. Especially because I was so obsessed with the film that telling people I was Sicilian ("Sis-eeeel-yan," was how I'd intentionally pronounce it) and rhetorically asking "If you think I'm actually Jewish, then why the hell would mama and papa name me 'Anthony?'" was commonplace. Imagine my nine-year-old reaction to learning something new about a subject I felt I had mastered. "What a great call...I can't believe I didn't think of/know that!" pretty much sums up the feeling I had.
Anyway, back to Simmons. That deduction he made about Axel Foley's latent homosexuality is great. I rarely gush about a member of the MSM, let alone one who works for The Worldwide Leader, but it was a fantastic call--and one I never put the pieces together on. As with the Charles Scorsese revelation, shame on me.
Now, the above-referenced column was written about a week ago, on January 11 to be exact. So picture my surprise when just yesterday my friend 'Joncheeeler' [ed. note: this is someone who knows his Simmons cold] suggested, apropos of my Ted McGinley "jumping the shark" reference, that Bill Simmons might have done the same with his sports columns--as evidenced by this article about some contrived NBA theory he calls "Chemacterility." Read through the whole column if you wish, but here are a few high-, er, low-lights:
These guys eat dinner, hang out, work out and play video games together. They don't care about stats, acclaim, shots or minutes. It's a team in every sense. Even better, Boston's future is protected for years to come: Allen's contract expires in 2010, Pierce's in 2011, KG's in 2012. The Celtics are good, and they will continue to be good. What more can you ask for? When you can mix talent with chemacterility, you have something substantial.
That passage came midway through the piece, yet I was still asking how it explained 1) what "chemacterility" is, and 2) why, specifically, it is the end-all-be-all of NBA success strategies? Or, perhaps it is just a convoluted, off-base theory the Sports Guy talked himself into believing? I'm leaning towards that conclusion. Otherwise, get me and my friends on an NBA roster immediately. We eat dinner, hang out, work out and play video games too.
He then goes on to say this:
Now, if you're a Blazers fan, you're thinking, Wait, that sounds familiar! After enduring the debilitating Jail Blazers era, the locals despised the team so much that Portland's suits targeted chemistry guys...
Chemistry guys, eh? This is such an amorphous term. A player could be a 'chemistry' guy on one team, and a cancer on another. Take Stephen Jackson's sudden uptick in 'character' and 'team chemistry' upon joining the Golden State Warriors as a prime example. Before departing the Indiana Pacers midway through the 2006-2007 NBA season, he was the antithesis of a 'character guy,' known almost exclusively for his role in the infamous "Malice at The Palace" mele of 2004. He was branded a pariah and subsequently sent packing. Then he landed in Oakland and everyone expected chaos [ed. note: it is Oakland, ya know], not the perfect storm of character and intensity that propelled the 8th-seeded Warriors to an inexplicable first-round triumph over the Dallas Mavericks in the 2007 NBA Playoffs. In fact, the series-clincher against the Mavs saw him establish the franchise record for most three-pointers made in a playoff game (going 7-of-8 from long range), including makes in his first seven attempts. So where's the beef? Is he a 'chemistry' guy or not? Well, if you can't answer that question (like me), then perhaps the Sports Guy's "chemacterility" logic should be printed on toilet paper for people (like me) to wipe their ass with.
["Aaaay!"]Yikes. I love reading his work. I really do. But I'm sure a ton of people still loved the Fonz during, and even after, his infamous cartilaginous-fish-jumping scene. Just because you admire someone or his work does not rule out the possibility of him having made the leap, as it were. It just means you are probably too deep in the forest to see the trees. That being said, I'm going to reserve judgment for a bit. But it's something I'm definitely keeping an eye on.
UPDATE (12:19 PM): After reading this post, my buddy Joncheeeler (as mentioned earlier) and I had a quick exchange on Gmail Chat:
Joncheeeler: I still think the primary reason that column is a piece of shit is that he tries to say that there's this new trend where u get character guys to build a winner, while completely ignoring the fact that u need to have a total stud bigman on your roster [ed. note: like Tim Duncan or KG] before u can operate on the "chemacterility" premise
Me: good point
Joncheeeler: and the only way to get one of those guys is to luck out and have the #1 pick when one happens to be in the draft, or make an unfair trade with your butt buddy
Me: like Ainge and McHale
Joncheeeler: exactly
Good stuff there.
