My good friend Marc Murray recently reminded me of what an odd fellow he is. During a conversation about his daily alcohol intake he brought up a movie called 28 Days staring Sandra Bullock. 28 Days is apparently about a woman going through rehab. I think Marc was attempting to relate his situation to the main character or something, but I cut him off before he could get too far. Here's how the conversation went:
Me: "Wait a second. You're a huge Sandra Bullock fan aren't you? I totally forgot about that."
Marc: "Well, I was until she started making the Miss Congeniality movies."
Me: "You didn't actually see the Miss Congeniality movies, did you?"
Marc: "Only the first one. I was too disgusted to see the sequel."
Now, as far as I can tell, Marc is not gay. Despite having seen Miss Congeniality willingly and not because some chick he was dating made him see it -- because he truly thought it would be an entertaining movie to watch -- Marc is not gay, as far as I can tell.
Marc has actually dated more than his fair share of women over the years. I say "more than his fair share" not because Marc is a bad looking guy but because of his remarkable and almost sadistic capacity for honesty when a white lie is the only reasonable option. During college Marc dated a girl named Nicole. One day Nicole was in our room and Marc, out of the blue, said, "You know, you're starting to grow a little bit of a mustache. You should consider waxing that." It was a jaring statement for both me and Nicole.
Not to mention -- can you imagine being told that you need to wax your upper lip by a man who grows foot long beards? Yes, Marc grows foot long, caveman beards. And he surfs and plays the electric guitar. And he's Christian...and I mean he's a real Christian...not like the Sunday morning Catholics I grew up with. And when Marc's not bossing people around at a contruction site, he's watching Sandra Bullock get married over and over again. It's all very confusing to say the least.
In attempting to understand Marc, I think it's imperative to note that Marc is the son of a beautician. My guess is that because of his mother's profession, Marc is more apt to notice and be bothered by things like unibrows and a couple days worth of leg hair on a woman. But at the same time, he feels the need to rebel against the carefully groomed neck lines of his youth and so he grows long caveman beards.
Does that begin to explain his taste for Sandra Bullock chick flicks? Of course not. I'm still trying to figure that one out. But some people would probably say that Marc's just a contrarian. And indeed there is support for this hypothosis. When everyone else in college was huffing drano and getting blasted on Special K, Marc was a good, sober Christian. And though, during our four years of college together, Marc could have gotten more tail than the proverbial toilet seat, he generally preferred to play chastity mind games with his confused female counterparts.
And when everyone else decided to sober up and settle down, Marc picked up binge drinking.
So maybe "Miss Congeniality" is just Marc being the constant provocateur, the perennial contrarian. I sure hope so.
Because otherwise it seems pretty gay.
(Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
