"Cars" for White Trash

Against my will, I took my daughter to see Pixar's latest release, "Cars". What can I say? She's a 3 year old with a powerful smile. Anyway, for whatever reason, since she first saw the commercial, she has been fixated on the "low-rider" with the hydraulics (Cheech Marin), who I might add, was not in the movie much at all. Now, everyone expects Pixar movies to be huge successes but I really thought that this would be more of a "niche" audience and would ultimately make less than "Toy Story", "Monsters, Inc." or "Finding Nemo". Well, low-and-behold, it raked in a whopping $62.8 Million Dollars in it's opening weekend. *Gasp*

As I got a glimpse of the inhabitants of the theater, it dawned on me. This movie was made to appease the growing mass of beer swilling, NASCAR watching white trash that is plaguing our great country. The audience was a sea of mullets, t-shirts soaked in motor oil and eyes spread peculiarly far apart from one another. I was privy to hear such conversation as "Yer daddy's gonna git a car like dat one day", "I'm-a-bettin' that lil' fellar has a hemi under his hood" and of course, "That ther Larry da Cable Guy is one funny sum-bitch!" I didn't know whether I had died and went to White Trash Heaven or middle-to-upper-class Hell. Either way, it was a frightening experience.

Thank God! The lights dropped, taking away the horrors.

The movie opens with another classic short offering from Pixar Studios called "One Man Band". It was intelligent, witty and made everyone laugh out loud. Unfortunately for us, it stopped there.

The movie had it's moments. Some of the scenes with Larry the Cable Guy were actually funny, though in my opinion, Luigi (Tony Shahloub) and Guido (Guido Quaroni - a Pixar artist) stole the movie. Sadly, that's it! The rest of the movie was horrendous. The visuals were absolutely amazing, as always with Pixar, but the story just wasn't there. My daughter had to wait a good 1/2 of the movie before seeing the jacked-up low-rider and the other 1/2 wanting to leave after seeing it. (One of my rules as a parent. I'm paying for the movie you wanted to see, so you are watching the whole thing. No if's, and's or buts.)

Now, as if having to watch this drivel wasn't bad enough, about halfway through I feel kicking on the back of my seat. The first few minutes I manage to tolerate it, but when it continued on, I turned around and to my surprise, it was not a kid. It was one of the many mullet-having white trash folk that flocked there. He was there with two boys, probably in the age range of 12-15. Being that he had his kids there, I swallowed my anger and kindly asked that he please stop kicking my chair and for the first few moments, he did. That is, until I heard his kids say "You gonna let him tell you what ta do, daddy?" "Yeah Dad, I thought you was tough? In my head, I'm saying "you kids are gonna get 'yer daddy" killed".

I'm already pissed that I spent $30 to go see a crappy movie about a crappy white-trash sport, so I certainly don't need a mulleteer edging me into violence. Thankfully, he sat there, quiet. That is, until his son said "Uncle John wouldda done somethin'." I could almost hear the guy's chest swelling up behind me as he brought his foot to the back of my seat and intentionally kicked it. I leaned over and told my daughter to cover her ears. She knows that's for when Dad is about to use a bad word. Once she had cupped her ears with her hands, I stood up and turned around.

"Look you white-trash piece of shit. I am sitting here with my little girl trying to enjoy a movie about this bullshit you people call a sport. Personally, it would be much more entertaining for me to reach across these seats and rip your fucking heart out."

*he started to stand*

"Sit the fuck down!"

*he rested back down*

"Now, I am certain that you don't want your kids growing up without a father and I certainly don't want to be the reason for them having to, so you have two choices at this point. Either keep your fucking feet off my chair and go home normally or kick it again and go home in a box."

I sat back down and watched the rest of the movie, undisturbed and uneventful. At the end of the movie my daughter asked me, "Daddy, why did you yell at that man?" I simply explained that he was being "very bad" and when grown-ups are being bad, they need to be yelled at by other grown-ups. She shrugged and let out a simple, innocent "Oh" and never paid it a second thought.

I guess the moral of the story is, "It's OK to be a shit-kicker just as long as it's not my shit your kicking." LOL