Slip 'n' Slide

There was also the swanky soul-fusion throb of the music, to which some heads wagged. We couldn't help but imagine another cut in which the director gamely confronted the film's gay-porn subtext head-on, as it were. Had this occurred, who knows how it might have affected the candidate in the long run, but Dog Bites sensed that the Roxie audience giddily would have gone there.

All of this was summarized to answer Banning's question. "That's good!" he finally said, sounding relieved.

As he left the screening, Sam Neira's eyes were brighter than they'd been going in.

"It was an awesome movie!" he said. "I never knew even a small amount about bodybuilding." But the real subject of his education, of course, was the star.

"If he brings even a 10th of the determination and focus to solving California's fiscal problems that he showed in there, there's gonna be another golden age. If he can un-fuck California's political situation in the way that he did that, I mean, look out."

It is, Neira admitted, a formidable task. "Politics is a blood sport," he said. "Here, at least grown men can stand naked in the shower together, admiring each other's biceps, and it's OK."

Neira said he would entreat his Republican friends, most of them McClintock supporters, to see the film. "If you just see the intensity ...." He shook his head, astounded.

Others also shook their heads, astounded. They were less pumped. They hesitated in the lobby, no longer sheepish but now resigned, all but conceding the governorship. As with bad blockbusters, there is a certain sickening to be had after the indulgence of guilty-pleasure politics.

The candidate could also be seen on nearby street corners in newspaper boxes, where headlines still referred to him, reductively or hyperbolically, depending on your position, as "actor." Perhaps his 14-letter last name had consumed too much ink, or his first name had become too cozily familiar to read well in the stilted voice of daily journalism.

From somewhere across the street, someone shouted, "Ahh-nold! Ahh-nold is so hot right now!"

With glum resignation, the moviegoers sealed their coats against the night and ventured out, ready, finally, to hit the voting booth, and then maybe the gym.
-- Jonathan Kiefer