After finishing up one of the most stressful weekends of my life (which carried over to Tuesday), I decided to settle in and watch something truly entertaining - something comic-bookey with lots of special effects and other wonderfully mindless spectacle. We popped Constantine into the DVD player (after pressing Open about 8 times) and got ready for a nice ride.

At first, I was like, “Oh great…this is one of those foolish Catholicism-based supernatural “adventures” in which good battles evil and everything non-Catholic gets to of course be evil.” About 20 minutes into the flick, I was happy to find that I had been too quick to judge. Constantine is not your typical altar boy, and Satan ends up being one wicked mutha f&^%er.

While the special effects were quite bad ass and the story line held my interest, the best aspect of this movie was the way Keanu interpreted the character as a sort of Demon-battling Clint Eastwood with a non-Western look. He delivered his comic book one-liners to perfection, my favorite of which was the title of this entry. When he said that line I thought, “w00t! Someone who thinks like I do! (Never mind that he’s doubly fictitious in that he’s a movie character based on a comic book character - he still rocks!)

That line was so apropos of my weekend because that is precisely how I feel about the world lately. It’s all one big cosmic joke, and some dude up there is laughing his ass off at all us chickens-without-heads as we completely and totally screw everything up. In fact, whoever’s up there probably wants us to screw up so he/she/it can laugh even harder and tell his/her/its friends on the way home after a drink.

I figure that this theory would make more sense out of how people behave down here most of the time. Sure there’s the random self-sacrificial act or the just-plain-nice-thing people do every once in a while, but all too often it’s losers in SUVs cutting the little car off in traffic, men saying lewd things to young women, corporations laying off people who’ve given up having a life to work for them, and friends turning their backs on one another—or outright stabbing them in the back.

So I tell my Dad today about all the people who have turned their backs on me, and how it makes me feel like throwing in the towel. “These are people I treated like family, Dad. Not people to whom I showed any disrespect,” I said.

He began his response with his mellow philosopher’s voice, calm and understanding. “Listen,” he says gently, “you did what you did for those people because you wanted to—not because you expected or wanted something in return. So don’t give up, and don’t become cynical. Just keep doing what you’re doing, because on some level, you’re blessed and one day you’ll reap the rewards—I promise.”

I replied dutifully with, “Okay, Dad. I won’t give up.”

Then after a short pause, and with a slight change in tone (and the return of his Brooklyn accent) he said, “And besides, it might not always be a bad thing when people turn their backs on you. You know—some people have terrible fronts.”