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 from the wildfires heart with plenty of aloe.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
Father and son love the same woman, but in different ways for different reasons. A haggard man, long ago becoming one with his recliner, discovers Uncle Rico’s steak toss has aged like Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac. 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, pockets plump full of nature’s naughtiest candies, strolls into a small theatre. He has no idea he will become a love seat addict in the distant future. 82 minutes later, the mischievous munchkin crowns out of the theatres birth canal in an obnoxious blaze of new found quotes with loud, indiscernible impressions. Unfortunately, the theatres Neo natal nurses were unlocatable (probably ripping some heaters, they deserve it!) leaving only sleeps draining spell benevolently rescuing the persecuted ear drums of the innocent. Pre internet afternoons brought countless subsequent boyhood viewings.
In the 21 summers since, the boy converged with growths painful realisations whisking him far from the Dynamites of Idaho. He had discovered life was more of a wrestling match than a French kiss. Though able to shake the handsy bounty hunter stalking him through hell and back since the fire, I mean divorce, the mother’s son is about to learn you can only outrun the moustached truth that is Uncle Rico for so many harvest moons.
This cloudy afternoon 21 years later, the boy now turned man’s 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 only the spoiled mouth in the penalty box his titillating tongue understands precisely 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.
Rico shows up on screen so lonely, the sex machine almost seems broken. The foul smelling fella 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.
Abutting, the boy’s favorite scene of Rico using his Stafford-esque sidearm to bullseye a pristinely rustled up tenderloin squarely into Napoleon’s visage results in one of memories robust dams breeching. Memories powerful current whisks the man back to an unprecedented in-theatre gaggle which may have caused his boyhood self to soil himself all those years ago, there is really no telling. His smaller, happier, stupider self never noticed Rico’s souls unique nudity in the sultry Idaho afternoon heat. Most people he now knows cloak their soul in masks, expensive clothes, fake responses or all 3 at the same time if you are his ex wife. (He understood the dressing up and infidelity. The deepest wound came from never being invited to observe, not discovery.)
Speaking of which, Rico seems to be only yearning for discovery, never pity.
The man on the recliner knows that anyone willing to sweat out the truth is someone worth passing out naked in the sauna with because you just both refuse to quit or hydrate. The man feels blood returning to areas of his body he long thought dormant as his prodigal uncle ganders toward the horizon on screen, inhaling their great beyond like a terminal lung patient enjoying one final Marlboro Red. Uncle Rico is ill-equipped to befriend the cold truth of existence but musters brawn to confront our species oldest adversary.
The weeping windows of Rico’s soul meticulously scrutinise an unfathomable distance between reality and desire.Gravity takes course with restless mind’s potent cortisol cocktail storming what is left of the Salisbury slingers pensive organs of vision.
The mysterious unc’s beautifully astray twin abyssal oceans of sadness garnishing weather beaten pigmentation rendered tumultuous by time’s tempest demand the man’s undivided attention despite not asking for the boy’s.Rico refuses to give in to life’s unending blitz, despite loosing his left tackle of love long ago. Rico’s one man rebellion soldiers on each day by slinging life’s pig skin despite being down double digits to a superior opponent which paid off the crooked referee who likes to wear his whistle a little too tight after clocking out.
The limping umpires 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 sobbing clouds of Rico’s weathered soul. His only hope for survival is establishing a death grip on the arm rests of his putrid recliner that has long been infested with the fleas of an expired love he cannot seem to throw away despite the stench.
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 cakehole long ago mastered the painful habit of bulwarking any of the minds tricks that lead to a grin.The small one here that tries to sneak onto his mustached kisser never had a ghosts chance against undefeated muscle memories impenetrable barricade.
Rico’s mind conversely, holds onto hope like an abandoned toddler to his trusty blanky. The mind screams to the operator, 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?”
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.Blinking is a mortal sin when you have the eyes of an angel but the heart of Bezebul. The man on the recliner is starting to wonder if he never really knew Rico, or himself, at all.
An oversleeping amour choosing to stay in dreamland as the sun reaches the top of the sky after an after-hours rendezvous as neighbours begin to chatter.A pregnant pause overstays its welcome.
Rico begins to search for the key to his inconspicuous prison. 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. He just needs a little overtime, brother!
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.
Originally with hope.
Finally 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.His well trained twin soldiers of vision mirror the settlers of plight that camp deep in Rico’s inner wilderness.
The time machine betrays him like his Abe Lincoln eyes during a moustached 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. Rico’s impossibly vacant yet mysteriously overflowing eyes ooze through the screen blending reality with whatever the hell kind of four dimensional experience consuming the man on the love saturated recliner is.
Rico extends his life sentence of self-destruction 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 idiomatic abyss Rico is forced to call home.
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 operate his ever expanding fuselages auto pilot feature in heavy turbulence. “That’s what the ejecting seat is for” he could hear her whisper, knowingly. The man has since lost the coordinates of his own body’s runway.
As the film becomes more end than beginning, Rico limps into the horizon once more.Only a king Chimpanzee who was ripped away from family he swore to protect, later awaking in the zoo, shares Rico’s aching gaze. 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 his inability to outrun the revelation that his plums are less desirable with each passing harvest. Man and primate doggedly dredge forward on 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 whose pedals whisper, then bellow “we can be each other’s state championship trophy.” The uncles long broken lamps start to flicker as they feel their cold collision with the well earned skeptic muscle memory dimming 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’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, tears flood the keyboard on my pheromonal recliner as blubbering fueled electrocution serves the penance the sins of a boy deserved.
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 souls grass stains of time with the all powerful bleach of love, finally back in stock.
Uncle Rico’s Oscar worthy truth de force hid 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 wonder if it is time to leave childish notions drowning in steak juice.
Rico slowly dissapears from the screen of the reclined mans life to hibernate once more but only after leaving the man with enough berries and fruits to escape his love chair’s endless winter.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 as the credits roll.
Right…on.
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