Project Stallone: "Tango & Cash"

Tango & Cash
By Peter John Gardner

Stallone's first foray into the buddy cop genre is a doozy. Right from the get go, there's a scene where Stallone's character, Ray Tango, receives some smack talk from a fellow cop.

"Who does this guy think he is? Rambo?"

"Rambo's a pussy!"

Ooh...burn.

Crappy one liners aside, I really do like this movie. It pairs Stallone up with another 80s action icon, Kurt Russell, a man that Quentin Tarantino has proved to the world is still a badass to this very day.

What you get with Tango and Cash is a typical 80s buddy cop in the vein of the Lethal Weapon movies. Two cops are pulled together by a common bad guy that wants them both taken out. The cops are polar opposites on the surface, but they overcome their differences and realize they have a lot in common and work well together. There's also the damsel in distress played by Teri Hatcher who also happens to be Tango's sister.

Not to mention the totally random nudity typical of 80s action movies. Russell is escaping the bad guys in parking garage. One of the cars slams into a pole causing a loud noise. Cut to a car where a couple is having sex and and a bare breasted woman looks up with complete confusion and bewilderment. Wha...?

The movie is predictable and probably wouldn't do much to impress anyone that doesn't love a cheeseball action flick. It's good, though. I think Stallone and Russell's friendship is easy to buy. They're guy's guys. It's natural. I could see them throwing down a few beers together.

This being a movie about friendship, and tomorrow being Thanksgiving, I'd like to hijack this piece into a little "thank you" and "what I've learned from you" for my two best friends. It's not that I don't love any of the rest of you enough to write a piece for you. I'm just lazy right now, and two's enough. If you really need to know why I value you as a friend, just give a little chirp.


I think that every one should have two best friends, one of each gender. It helps to balance things out in your life and to give you different prespectives and advice on situations. Kim is my girl best friend.

No, we've never dated. We've never fooled around or done the nasty, but we do get a kick out of making people think that. In actuality, Kim plays very well to the sensitive side of my personality, and she provides a calm nurturting voice towards me. Make no mistake, she's no softy. She can make a semen joke with the best of them. Thing is, Kim has a very realistic outlook on life, and I always turn to her for an honest opinion when I'm unsure of something.

"Are you fucking kidding? DON'T DO THAT! Ugh!"

"Peter....are you sure about this?"

She acts as a conscience of sorts. She's the Tango to my Cash. She keeps on tabs when I'm making foolish decisions in life. Our relationship isn't exactly the normal path towards friendship. Officially, she's my ex-girlfriend's, ex-teacher's ex-wife. Now she's the wife of one of my friends and the mother of his child. Somewhere in the middle, we struck up a friendship when we realized that we were nearly male and female versions of each other. Over course of our friendship, we shared a night shift at bank for a few monthes, and we just spent every night alternating from movie critiques and sex jokes to really deep conversations about our lives, our pasts, and our needs.

Kim is such a good friend that despite her tireless mother duties, as well as being an awesome wife, will still be a good enough friend to call you for no reason just to see how you are, or listen to rant about something at 2am that turns out to be irrelevant at 8am. She also knows how to make a single guy not feel isolated on Valentine's Day by going out of her way to make mix cds and presents. She also grabs my butt when needed. Trust me. That's important in any friendship with me. If you grab my butt, I'll love you forever.

Everyone should have a friend like Kim. She's led an extrodinary life, and she's very accepting of people despite their differences.



Abel and I have been best friends for over twelve years. We met shortly after I moved to Florida when my parents split in 1995. We sat on opposite sides of the room in Spanish class until I was moved next to him because of a flannel shirt fight I was having with this kid named Jamal. Initially, I thought Abel was a dork. He looked kinda like Angus, and he wasn't very good with Spanish (once he accidentally told the teacher that he wanted to bathe her with a rubber ducky in Spanish). It wasn't until I noticed the band names scraweled on his backpack (Nirvana, Local H, Soundgarden, Marilyn Manson, Butthole Surfers, Tad) that I started to think he was alright. We eventually bonded over huffing markers. True story. They smelled fruity.

We became inseperable for years to come. The effects of puberty wore off by the time tenth grade started, and we started to look and feel good about ourselves. More importantly, we had girlfriends. Most people around the high school didn't think of us without thinking of the other, and we were constantly referred to as Abel and Peter, instead of just Abel...or Peter ("Where're Abel and Peter? I know her. Isn't she friends with Abel and Peter?"). Our senses of humor meshed incredibly well.
Abel is an extremely outgoing guy. If you've met him, you'd feel like you've known him for years. He's incredibly charming, clever, funny, good looking, and knows how to get people to feel good about themselves. He definitely plays to the male part of my personality.

"Go talk to her."

"No way. She's no interest in me."

"Shut the fuck up. Look at you..." *goes into inspirational speech about how awesome I am ending with a joke about pussy farts*

He's also extremely loyal. I know he would unconditionally take my side no matter what. He would tell me when I fuck up, but do it in a way where he shows that he understands why I fucked up. Out of all the friends that he's lost contact with over the years, I wonder why he still keeps that pimply faced dork from 9th grade as his best friend. I love him dearly though. Although the three or four years since we left Vero have caused our own personalities, separate from one another, to emerge, we still think of each other as brothers. As blood. Abel's the brother I should've had. No matter how much shit we've gone through on both ends, we still manage to shrug it off and go right into riffing about whatever we think is funny at the time. We've had some amazing adventures that warrant their own tell-all book, and I will always cherish those years of my life. He's the Cash to my Tango, always entangling me in some wacky adventure.

Friends become a part of your personality that is hard to shake off when the friendship is a strong one. I hold all of my friends close to my heart, and I thank everyone for putting up with a shmuck like me.

Project Stallone: "Lock Up"

Lock Up
By Peter John Gardner

Prison isn't such a bad place to be. In the world of "Lock Up", if you're in the "normal" prison that Sly is being held in at the beginning of the filmyou can leave on the weekends if you want and bring back cigarettes and other treats for your fellow inmates. If you're serving hard time in a maximum security prison, you're still allowed to work on vintage cars (the movie never explains why there's a garage with vintage automobiles in a PRISON) without any kind of supervision and granted access to flammable subtances and tools that could easily be used as weapons.

Lock Up tells the story of Frank Leone, a man who is quietly serving out the remainder of his sentence when he is moved into a different prison with an ex-warden of his with an axe to grind. Leone made the ex-warden (played by Donald Sutherland) look like an ass, so now the tables have turned, and it's now time for payback.

Too bad for Sutherland; they fucked with the wrong Italian.

Watching this, you won't feel any suspense. In this film, the supposedly hardcore prison seems pretty damn tame compared to other movie prisons and looks like Disneyworld compared to real prison. There may be mandatory lockdowns, some beatings by guards here and there, and a brutal delousing, but that's about it. These guys seem to spend more time outside of their cells than inside. They work on cars at leisure and play football outside unsupervised. Some of the inmates try to rough up Stallone, but you won't care because Stallone is cut like a bodybuilder in this movie. I never thought I'd say something like this, but this movie needs a good rape scene. Otherwise, the inmates and warden don't seem like any threat at all.

There's not much to be gained from this movie. It deserves its place in Wal-Mart's five dollar bin. A better movie would've shown me the horrors of prison, and my lesson learned would've been something about how I'll never break the law again because I wouldn't want to end up in a prison like Lock Up. Instead, I vow to stay out of trouble from now on only because I don't want to be forced to work on cars or play football. I really don't like doing either one of those activities.

Project Stallone: "Rambo III"

Rambo III
By Peter John Gardner

Let me just say right off the bat that I'm going to get somewhat off track on this one because as far as Rambo III is concerned, there's nothing more I can add besides some more Cold War commentary that I've already covered in Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV (these films are classy because they use Roman numerals).

Rambo III seems to forget that it should actually be called First Blood Part III but who's keeping track? Anyway, it takes its cue more from the second film than the first, which means instead of exploring the effects of PTSD on a Vietnam Vet (which would've made a far more interesting film), we get another movie with Rambo planted in the middle of a foreign country and ordered to blow things up, which he does a lot. The plot itself finds Rambo on a mission to rescue his former commanding officer who happens to be in Afghanistan being held captive by those pesky Russians.

It's easy to see the parallels between the film's depiction of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 80s and America's occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq in the 00s. Yes, America provided Afghani rebels (see they're not terrorists unless they're against us) with aid and arms to fight the Russians. Yes, Afghanistan ended up using those very same resources on us when we went in there after 9/11 on our "BIN LADEN: WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE" mission.

By the way, weren't we supposed to catch that guy? What happened with that?

I don't want to go on an anti war rant because most of us are all on the same page about Iraq now. There are those such as myself that were against it from the beginning, those that are against it now for the right reasons, and those that are against it simply because we're not "winning" (wrong reasons, but at least they're on our team now). Yeah, our administration purposely misled the public (sidenote: Kudos to Kucinich for finally having the cajones to file an impeachment against Cheney). Yeah, Iraq is starting to look like Vietnam. Yeah, we're about to do the same thing with Iran. We all know.

What I'd like to address here is the apathy that I've gained towards politics over the years. 2000 was the first election that I was eligible to vote in, and hot damn, I was excited. It was Bush vs. Gore, and I remember the general feeling that Gore was going to win. Bush was not qualified enough, he seemed kind of...dumb, and Gore was coming off as vice-president during one of the best presidencies of the twentieth century (Argue all you want about Clinton. It's true.) So, I voted for Nader that election. In hindsight, it was a very foolish choice, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was certain that Gore would win, so I was in the camp of people that wanted Nader to get enough votes so that a third party would receive federal funding during the next election and Americans would be able to have more palpable third party choices for the presidency.

We all know how that one turned out.

2004, I was fed up with everything about the Bush administration, as was half of America (or at least ones that read the newspapers). Bush stole the first election, proved himself to be a downright inept leader, and made Reagan look like Steven Hawking. At this time, I was at UCF and election fever was unavoidable. I joined in, thinking that I could make a difference. I helped register people to vote. I handed out information regarding why Bush was a failure. In the end, it didn't matter. The morning after the election, I lost my faith not only in the American people, but also my ability to make a difference in politics as well.

No matter how much concrete facts and information people had, they still voted for Bush. "He's going to end terrorism!" Sure, he's also going to end racism too. Just watch. Not only that, but so much sketchy stuff happened in Ohio and Florida that day that I believe the election would've gone to Captain Asshole regardless of the actual results of the election.

Here we are now with the 2008 elections right around the corner. Save for Ron Paul, all of the Republican candidates, while more articulate, are just as sketchy and misguided as Bush. The Democrats seem to be more concerned with slinging mud at each other instead of dismantling any chance the Republicans would have to keep the White House. I've got my favorite, John Edwards, but as it stands now, I highly doubt that he'll get the nomination.

Even still, I'm finding it harder to care. Does my vote make a difference if the teams are going to play dirty and rig the results? Why should I bother when all the candidates are just making empty promises in order to gain public favor? Why should I care when whoever gets elected is just going to run into a bunch of roadblocks once they get elected due to all of the partisan infighting and instead of making substantial progress with things that need to be addressed (our health care and education system, social security, reducing our deficit, ending the damn war already), and instead just coming up with a series of lame compromises that would appease the two parties in Washington, but not one single American voter.

Holy shit. This was supposed to be about Rambo. Ok, I'll try and tie the two together. Right now, America is in a "Rambo III" phase, where we just blindly go into other countries, wreck things, and expect to be regarded as heroes. Instead, America should be more like "First Blood". We have the capabilities to fuck shit up, but it should only be used when pushed too far. America should be fixing problems within its own borders rather than worrying about what Iran is doing or whatnot.

Or America could be more like "The Party at Kitty and Stud's" where we all look kinda stoned and just enjoy the fruits of life. Wait, that's Amsterdam. Maybe we could just get drunk and play soccer like in "Victory". Oops, that's Ireland.

I'll stop with the stereotypes now.

It's going to be a long jump down from this soapbox.