“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
The man finds Uncle Rico’s steak toss remains his favorite scene but for new reasons than 2004. Father and son love the same woman, but in different ways for different reasons. A boy and man can learn to share but it iss the mothers duty to ensure this does not end in a triple kiss of apocalyptic proportions.
The awkward ten year old with pockets plump full of nature’s naughtiest candies strolls into a small theatre later emerging in a quote filled blaze of annoyance until sleep rescued the poor ear drums of the innocent. Pre internet afternoons brought countless subsequent boyhood viewings.In the 21 summers since, the boy endured growths painful realizations whisking him far from the Dynamites of Idaho. Though able to shake the handsy bounty hunter stalking him through hell and back since the fire, I mean divorce, the boys future self is about to learn you can only outrun the mustached truth that is Uncle Rico for so many moons.
This cloudy afternoon 21 years later, the boy now turned man returns home from fishing. Power washing the bait from his orifices, his conscience whispers:click any program on the boob tube! as it always trounces drifting into the mind’s time thefting abyss of unwritten stories, global conflict, milk and lust.Click on Napoleon Dynamite, he does, like a stubborn toddler accepting the night nurse’s sour breast milk despite being royally cranky due to a mean case of diaper rash combined with a premature grasp of geopolitics. Not to worry, this baby loves spankings.
The film’s familiar opening scenery augmented by the comforting melody “We’re going to be friends” serves as comfort food for nearly every organ in the mans body, leaving the spoiled mouth in the penalty box his titillating tongue knows just how to earn.He surrenders to the comforting dopamine rush warmly washing over his cranium, a pristine bubble bath for daddy’s dirty little boy.
The forgotten uncles arrival lights up the screen as he promptly treats his nephews to his gripping solo highlight reel.Rico shows up so lonely, he almost immediately comes on to his nephew during the viewing, ordoes he?Maybe Uncle R is just used to watching the tape with his ex, Tammy, who was driven away by his fetish for the past. As most of us learn the hard way, this is what the world does to a man like Rico, turning a once promising life to one of confusing borderline attempted incest. The man watching from his soupy recliner begins to notice a third trimester pregnancy of sadness deep in the womb of Rico’s tortured ponderance. Rico lies like an exhaustively love stained shag carpet but his eyes betray a Mariana trench of fathomless truth.
Next, the boy’s favorite scene of Rico using his Stafford-esque sidearm to bullseye a tenderloin squarely into Napoleon’s face brings back memories of an unprecedented in-theatre gaggle which may have caused the boy to soil himself all those years ago, there is really no telling. He never noticed Rico’s soul bearing itself in the sultry Idaho afternoon heat only yearning for discovery, never pity.The man on the recliner knows that anyone willing to sweat out the truth is someone worth being naked in the sauna with.
Our prodigal uncle ganders toward the horizon, inhaling his great beyond. Uncle Rico may not be ready to befriend the cold truth but he finds the strength to confront it. The windows to Rico’s soul meticulously scrutinize the unfathomable distance between reality and desire.Gravity takes course with restless mind’s potent cortisol cocktail storming Rico’s pensive organs of vision.
The lost Uncle’s twin abyssal oceans of sadness rendered tumultuous by time’s tempest demand the man’s undivided attention despite not asking for the boy’s.Rico is still letting the pig skin fly despite being down double digits to a superior opponent whose paid off a crooked referee whose zebra sex addiction rages in concert with Rico’s parched spirit’s inferno. The poor man merely hopes to survive the drizzle transmogrifying into Old Testament cloudburst pouring from the clouds of Rico’s weathered soul, establishing a death grip on the arm rests of his putrid recliner that has long been infested with the fleas of soured love.
Next, Rico offers: “How much you want to bet I can throw a football over them mountains?” making Muhammad Ali envious of a man with no mailing address. The long lost uncle’s lips have mastered the painful habit of pausing any grins including the small one here that tries to sneak onto his mustached kisser. In Rico’s mind, it should have never been an undercooked porterhouse he was letting fly. Hell no man! The fateful autumn of 82 was meant to end with a striped pig skin gracing his since distal best friend’s trusty endzone palms. Rico’s mind’s parasitical eye tortures it’s host with visions of his lost sweetheart hiking her skirt up an extra inch to celebrate eternal victory as destiny’s clock winds down to all zeros, leaving the uncles aging body stuck feeling the hands of time have their way with him in a fashion opposite of consensual.
The man on the squalid recliner’s imagination’s very own deleted scene section conjures up a daydream of Rico sitting on the roof of his Santana, screaming into the star filled Idaho night sky “Why must you be a selfish lover, father time?A man has needs!…..I mean..shit man…why?”
A pregnant pause overstays its welcome.
Finally, an empty whimper “You ain’t no daddy of mine..” delivers Rico from silence’s intrusion.Wiping acid rain tears from his dank mustache, eyes remaining clamped, white knuckling the false hope of finally sleeping tonight. His eyes curtains are cruel only in hiding unplumbed beauty from this cruel, cruel world.Even blinking feels like a sin when you have eyes like that. The man on the recliner is starting to wonder if he never really knew Rico at all.
Down but never out, Rico begins to search for the key to this invisible prison. Be it another solo video of him slinging the rock beside his trusty Santana mobile home to catch the NFL’s attention, or the perfect get rich product to pitch, the game is never over. He just needs a little overtime, brother! When told Time Travel is “easy” by sweet Kip, his eyes become so piercing they silently tell the story of a man whose life has inexplicably (to him, at least) amassed a losing record. Eyes that trudge on despite painful maiming lacerations from life’s horror circus freak show repeatedly rejecting closet invitations during seven minutes of heaven.
Rico delivers a biblical “Right on!….Right…on” emanating deep from his loins with sultry eyes swallowing them distant mountains whole.Rico says the phrase twice.
First with hope.
Last with grit.
Rico’s naked soul ventures into a breathlessly out of body experience usually reserved for the avid nudist. Rico may repeat the same words, but the implication of each utterance could not be more different.Twin soldiers of vision mirror the settlers of plight that camp deep in Rico’s inner wilderness.
The time machine betrays him like his eyes truth during a mustached fib. Rico exits his shelter in a wing hormone deficient caterpillar’s adult cocoon of sadness.Rico’s winglessly ginger yet hardy whisper permeates the Dynamite’s dominion of half truths with a mortician’s precision.
The uncle never cast blame onto Kip nor delights in Napoleon sharing testicular fission’s gelding.Rico’s impossibly vacant yet mysteriously overflowing eyes ooze through the screen blending reality with whatever the hell kind of four dimensional experience the man on the love saturated recliner is now experiencing.
Like the aforementioned referee, Rico is deeply flawed.Rico, however, never speaks of fame or fortune without prioritizing this soulmate ideal.Rico simply wants to be in a hot tub with his singular, once imminent soulmate with no interest in a booze filled casual affair in a heart shaped tub. Instead, a beautiful love making session between soulmates patiently ascending on life’s flight complete with a smooth, lengthy take off and feathery landing a man knows he needs. The boy’s underdeveloped frontal lobe dreams of free pretzels in a mile high restroom while the hefty stewardess teaches him to use his growing body’s auto pilot feature.
Rico’s sentence of self-destruction is extended by his latest crime of entering Rex Kwon Doh’s home and being far too friendly with Rex’s powerlifting wife, Starla. Another painful reminder for our dear Rico comes when Rex breaks his throwing arm with ease, banishing him to the abyss once more. Electrically bruised plums in concert with a broken arm does not sideline a soldier like Rico.He plays hurt every day. What nearly breaks our uncle’s spirit is the fact that his plums seem to be less desirable with each passing harvest.
Rico limps into the horizon once more, accepting his lonely sentence as the film draws to a close.The king Chimpanzee who was ripped away from family he swore to protect, later awaking in the zoo, shares Rico’s aching gaze. Both continue their excruciating march, refusing to embrace our final soulmate:the grim reaper.
When Rico least expects it, a beautiful woman pedals up to his Santana on a bike that whispers, then screams “we can be each other’s state championship trophy.” His eyes light up in a way that not even the promise of time travel could allow.Well earned skeptic muscle memory dims his inner night sky to a speckling of stars.The tortured minds smoke stymies the ignition of Rico’s inner kindling, still damp from the lashings of perpetual winter’s punishing ice storms.
Rico digs deep one more time, mustering everything he has left to give. Cloaked in gothic beauty, the uncle’s broken arm painfully heaves one last Hail Mary towards life’s EndZone as time expires, daring this new receiver to welcome his pigskin’s macabre spiral into her loving hands. The same hands could scour the grass stains of time with the all powerful bleach of love, finally back in stock.
Rico’s eye’s scintillating analysis of the ‘82 state championship football game we all find ourselves playing is owlish enough to render the voluptuous Hemingway Madden forbidden love child ghost grinning green eyed.Sparks fly, as tears flood the keyboard on my pheromonal recliner.The tear fueled electrocution serves as penance for the sins of a boy.
Rico is stagnant but the man typing realizes the boy’s jolly thoughts of tether ball during the closing credits are nowhere to be felt. Rico’s truth reveals itself only when father time’s lasso violently yanks the facade of Napoleon’s eternal youth from beneath his bicycle, leaving his afro melting into the flames of a phoenix. As the third degree burns of puberty set in, Rico’s mustache emerges deep from the blaze with plenty of aloe.
Uncle Rico’s Oscar worthy truth de force hides in plain sight to the giggling child. The man has learned the hard way that adult hide and seek leads to extensive moral and legal difficulties.The same man only now brave enough to leave childish notions drowning in steak juice.The uncle’s daring choice to lock eyes with the beast within when looking anywhere else would have been far easier leave the man in a warm, damp shiver while Uncle RIco’s shrewd eyes gently lure us into an abyss so bottomless, even the life jacket wearing man fears drowning in the undertow.
Right…on.
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