I got slapped by an 80 year old woman.
In my dream last night.
We were on a beach. Oregon Coast-ish with some big sea stacks. I was walking with my mom, grandma, some cousins.....then we realize there's a "traffic jam" on the beach and a long line of cars is particularly irate with my family for standing in "the road." An old lady gets out of her car, walks up and gets in my face about the fact that my grandmother was blocking traffic. So I think that's ridiculous (we're on a flippin beach. come on.) and say something that -- in my dream -- was "ooooh...rather inflammatory" (something like, "My grandma wouldn't have to get out of the way if your giant ass car wasn't IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BEACH!") at which point the lady reared back and slapped me with everything she had. Which wasn't much. But at that point, cue the Teen Drama Queen in me - I tried to rush the biddy, my entire family had to restrain me - there was much struggling against their hold, shaking my fist, screaming at the old lady that I was gonna shank her - nice stuff like that. Eventually, they calmed me down enough to pursuade me that the better plan was to get very dressed up - like evening gown dressed up - and parade with the rest of them across the beach, through the waves across a sandbar to "the hottest nighclub on the Oregon Coast" (I know, I know....) which really felt more like a country club turned funeral home (we had to be VERY QUIET inside or we'd "disturb the other guests") and eventually my dream ended after my sister found someone's FINGER on her chair (no hand, just a disconnected finger) and we decided this beach town was for suckers.
And all of that happened between snooze buttons this morning. Wowee-wow-wow as The Continental might say.
So, ummmm:
Waaaaaay back in the distant 2009 past, I wrote about the fact that Chuck Klosterman was absolutely right: any woman who has a John Cusack crush is actually just nursing a misplaced Lloyd Dobbler hang up....I'll re-quote the "Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs" bit that I quoted back then:
"It appears that countless women born between 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn't the number-one box-office start in America, because every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherf****er. For upwardly mobile women in their twenties and thirties Cusack is the neo-Elvis. But here's what none of those upwardly mobile women seem to realize: They don't love John Cusack. They love Lloyd Dobler. When they see Mr. Cusack, they are still seeing the optimistic, charmingly loquacious teenager he played in Say Anything, a movie that came out more than a decade ago. That's the guy they think he is; when Cusack played Eddie Thomas in America's Sweethearts or the sensitive hit man in Grosse Pointe Blank, all his female fans knew he was only acting...but they assume when the camera stopped rolling he went back to his genuine self...which was someone like Lloyd Dobler, and someone who continues to have a storybook romance with Diane Court (or with Ione Skye, depending on how you look at it). "If you want to read my whole "Lloyd Dobbler is actually a first class wimp" post, here's the link. If you love the Cusack and don't want your Dobbler adoration monkeyed with: don't bother -- I decided he needed to grow a pair.
But let's flip that phenomenon on its head with another celebrity that most of us ladies love, even while loathing the character we can't separate him from: Jon Hamm. We all went through the same Phases of Don Draper anguish.... Our "oooh, why aren't there men as dreamy as Don in real life?" infatuation morphed into "Oh....so he's an ass. But he looks so good in that suit!" and then became "Put a pillow case over his head and beat him with a tire iron," ire right before we finally found some version of "He's a pitiful, weak little excuse for a man who doesn't know how to love AND looks good in a suit" acceptance.
Maybe that's what makes it that much more delightful when The Hamm proves he's more than just the sum of Don Draper's parts. He popped up on SNL and nailed it. Twice. He seems generally gracious and un-Draper-esque in "real life." He's been seen out and about with less than well-coifed hair. AND, he's gallant and manly and witty and fantastic when he sounds off in interviews as he does in this month's W cover story alongside Rebecca Hall (the purported Kate Winslet/Sam Mendes homewrecker). It's unusual that we like the actor as a human being more than we like the award-nominated characters they play.
BUT, when The Hamm (who plays off of Rebecca Hall pretty well in this interview) say things like this, well....we wish a little bit of him would rub off on Don Draper:
W: Rebecca, would you label Jon a man’s man or a ladies’ man?
Hall: I don’t know. He’s proper manly, like Gregory Peck, old-school. He hangs around with the boys and does sports. But can he talk to women about emotions and shoes?
Hamm: Absolutely. Can and do. I was raised by a single mother. I think the definition of a man’s man has shifted in recent times to this sort of fratty bro, different from the older version, which was aloof and distant—Gary Cooper or Cary Grant or James Bond. Now it’s a little vulgar, kind of lowbrow, adolescent. I’m not that guy. Part of being an adult is treating women like women.
Hall: The grand pendulum has swung backwards a little bit. Women are allowing themselves to be objectified as “empowerment.” I suppose to some degree you have to go through that phase of, like, “Look, I can make myself a sexualized object.” Still, I just hope that it’s okay for women to read and be bright and talk about interesting things and be sexy.
Hamm: To be able to read and talk about complicated things is sexy. It’s not just having a pair of bolt-on tits.
W: Jon, the old rule is if a man wants to flatter, he tells a beautiful woman she’s smart and a smart woman she’s beautiful. What does one say to Rebecca?
Hamm: That she’s very funny.
W: Rebecca, in stories earlier this year about the breakup of Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet—
Hall: Oh, you’re going to do that, are you?
W: —your name was mentioned in a way that implicated you in the breakup of their marriage. Is there any accuracy to that perception?
Hall: No.
Hamm: The reality is that I broke them up.
Hall: Jon Hamm was sleeping with Sam Mendes.
W: Wow. Does a sex tape exist?
Hamm: Does it? He directed it. It’s beautiful.Not bad. He jumps in and deflects the uncomfortable interview direction away from the home-wrecker conversation with a little chuckle-worthy misdirection. He prefers a girl with brains. He's not all about low-brow vulgarity.
Aw gee: he's perfect.
Except for all of that hair.
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