Oh the irony of being Ving Rhames
A disclaimer: this article is not strictly about stuff that is ‘online’. The information, however, was sourced entirely from the Internet, so perhaps that counts for something. Anyway, since only two people read this column (who are, incidentally, also the people who write it) we can do whatever we like. If you object to the lack of online content, we suggest you turn to the page which has pictures of web sites on it, and have a good stare. Or else go on the Internet or something.
Anyway. The not-strictly-Internet-related topic of this column is the crazy news that Ving Rhames, of Pulp Fiction and Mission Impossible fame, has lots of dogs, and they mauled this servant of his (assistant/housekeeper, whatever) who has just died. And Mr. Rhames’ new movie, due to come out on DVD on September 4 is called…..Animal 2. More interestingly, the tag-line for this poorly-timed movie is “It’s Hard Not to Kill”. Which is true, we guess. If you keep murderous man-meat hungry dogs as pets.
Jesus. What a blow for Mr. Rhames. He has to find a new assistant and deal with irony so heavy it could break a man.
Celebrity know-it-all blogger Perez Hilton posted a link to an interview this week with Ving (by the way what the hell kind of name is Ving?) from back in 1999 about his dogs in the Los Angeles Times in a piece of foreshadowing that couldn’t be any better than something out of the screenplay of a really awesome movie such as of course, Animal 2. Apparently he had this dog called ‘Kong’ (among others with original names like ‘Storm’, ‘Scorsese’ and ‘Cage’ – as in Nicholas) which was ‘actually bred to guard slaves’ because ‘it could be around you every day, but if you tried to run away, it would deal with you like it never saw you before.’ Hey cool, that sounds like something you really want to have in your house. So as you can see, his servant probably never even had a chance.
And oh my God, in the synopsis of Animal 2 we found on the page of an eBayer who was trying to hock off DVD’s, it actually says that Ving Rhames’ character is a convict that meets some guy who manages to ‘cause a seismic shift in the world-view of the hard-bitten criminal.’ Hard-bitten? Seriously? Did they not think another adjective like oh, we don’t know, maybe ‘tough’ or ‘staunch’ or something might have been less irony-laden to the point of ridiculousness?
But to move on to another point, by all accounts, Ving Rhames is a pretty good actor – imdb tells us he is Julliard trained and that he is “strikingly featured and muscular”. He says cool stuff in real life like: “I must say that some things some men are born to do. I think I was born to kick ass” and “be careful: The toes you step on today may be connected to the ass you’ll be kissing tomorrow”.
He sounds like a stand-up guy. In view of this, it is the opinion of this column that it is very sad that the only time people have really taken notice of Ving Rhames is when his dogs ate his servant.