Five Song Friday: Holding Out for a Hero
This Week: Toothpicks, Eye Patches and Yippee-Kay-Yay Motherfudgers
Please do not call me if the fate of the free world is in imminent danger.
I am formally withdrawing my name from consideration.
I’m not the man for the job.
Especially if that job requires a “very particular set of skills.”
Modern action movies have made it clear that my current talents are not useful for thwarting the evil plans of madmen, terrorists or Nazis.
I missed my hero window.
Times have changed.
I grew up watching Stallone and Schwarzenegger, who always managed to get the job done with brute force and unlimited ammunition.
The requirements seemed straightforward back then: oily cartoon-sized muscles, one ridiculously big gun, and a repertoire of witty one-liners.
Your mission (should you choose to accept it): shoot a hundred henchmen and cause a few million dollars in property damage before cracking wise as you put a bullet in the forehead of a well-dressed, mustachioed man with a funny accent.
No problemo!
Things are more complicated these days.
And so are our heroes.
If you want to save the world, you need to be a Renaissance man AND a killing machine.
You can’t be the Terminator or James Bond, you have to be BOTH.
But you also have to be Spider-Man, Superman and Jackie Chan.
You have to be funny and serious, tough and tender, book smart and street-wise.
You have to know ALL THE STUFF and be good at ALL THE THINGS.
Scratch that, you have to be the BEST.
BEST of the BEST. Nobody BESTER. BESTEST than the RESTEST.
And you must adore sprinting at a full clip on rooftops, roads and runways (not the fashion kind) so much that you can do it for 42 years and not get tired.
Good guys these days set an impossible standard.
Look sharp in formal wear while kickboxing forty dudes at once?
Um, no. Put me in a suit and I’ll do everything in my power not to have to bend at the waist. I go all stiff like a dog in a sweater.
As for fighting? I took a free Muay Thai class a few years ago and almost had a heart attack… and the heavy bag didn’t even hit back.
Effortlessly travel and communicate anywhere on Earth?
I brushed up on Spanish for a month before my trip to Madrid.
The first morning there I confused a local panhandler by telling him, “No habla Inglés.”
Outrun fireballs, bullets and oncoming trains?
I realized early that locomotion wasn’t my thing.
After a few laps around the outside of the elementary school, my body asked my brain to please let’s not make this a regular thing.
Pilot anything with wings?
Well, I took over the stick in a biplane for ten seconds once.
So I think I’d be really good at just holding the steering wheel steady until whatever aircraft I was in hit the ground or the side of a mountain.
Drive anything with wheels?
As a parking valet, I damaged the very first car I pulled into the garage.
And I had to call for backup once because I couldn’t figure out how to start a Volkswagen bug.
Hack government computers and assorted high-tech gizmos?
I keep my master passwords on Post-It notes on my bulletin board.
I also cannot type without looking at the keyboard.
Fire anything with a trigger?
Finally, something I know how to do.
You can put any gun in my hand, it doesn’t matter what kind or caliber… pistol, rifle, machine gun… revolver, auto, semi-auto… black powder, BB or buckshot…
And I will absolutely find a way to shoot myself in the face.
The good news?
Even though I can no longer be your sole salvation in the event all of humanity is held hostage by a sophisticated super-criminal, I am happy to pitch in where I can.
Call me if you’d like help writing responses to ransom demands or drafting a press release to explain why a nuclear sub was destroyed by a head-on collision with a 1970 Dodge Charger.
I’m always available to brainstorm on code names or backstories and dialogue for undercover agents.
And if you need a motivational playlist to get everybody psyched up before the big, dangerous, Hail-Mary-to-save-humanity operation? Something with a surprisingly balanced mix of hard-rock, punk and hip-hop?
I’m your man.
Sincerely,
DJ CrankyPete
Five Song Friday 072
“Suki” - Unrest
“In upstate California, a retired United States Army Special Forces Colonel is informed by his former superior that all the other members of his former unit have been killed by unknown mercenaries. The mercenaries, among them an ex-member of Matrix's team discharged for excessive violence, attack the man’s secluded mountain home and kidnap his young daughter.”
“Drumma Some” - G Yamazawa
“After a failure of negotiations between a lone armed gunman and law enforcement during a hostage crisis at a Los Angeles supermarket, the LAPD summons a member of its elite division. The toothpick-chewing man infiltrates the store, locates, and negotiates with the gunman, who threatens him by speaking of a vague and unknown organization of social Darwinist radicals that despise modern society and believe in killing the weak, leaving only the strongest and smartest to rule the world.”
“Problems” - St. Panther
“In a dystopian 1988, amidst war against an alliance of China and the Soviet Union, the island of Manhattan was ravaged by an earthquake. The United States government elected to let the borough decay and make it a maximum security prison to address a 400% increase in crime. The island is walled off from the outside world and under heavy police surveillance. Convicts are sent there for life, but given a chance to be euthanized before internment.”
“U.R.A. Fever” - The Kills
“On Christmas Eve, a New York City Police Department (NYPD) Detective arrives in Los Angeles, hoping to reconcile with his estranged wife, at a party held by her employer. He is driven by a limo driver, who offers to wait in the garage. The tower is seized by a German radical and his heavily armed team. Everyone in the tower is taken hostage except for the detective, who slips away, and the limo driver, who remains oblivious to events.”
“Soul Flower” - The Brand New Heavies featuring The Pharcyde
“In the Mediterranean Sea, Italian fishermen rescue an American man adrift with two gunshot wounds in his back. They tend to his wounds and find he has no memory of his identity, but demonstrates advanced combat skills and fluency in several languages. They find a tiny laser projector under his skin in his hip that gives the number of a safe deposit box in Zürich, and the man decides to go investigate. He goes to the bank to investigate the deposit box where he finds various currencies, passports and IDs with different names, and a handgun. The man takes everything but the gun, and starts using the name on the American passport.”
“I ain’t got time to bleed.” - Blain