I like that sentence — even though it uses the verb "to pooch" (which I find very annoying) — from "The Great Sadness of Ben Affleck" by Naomi Fry in The New Yorker.
I already railed against "pooch" back in 2013, so I'm not going to do it again.
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I've never heard or read the word "pooch" as a verb. Weird.
Apparently you missed the hilarious (and timely) Poochie episode back when the Simpsons was relevant.
Was that a waste of time to read? Is America engorging itself on a crap media diet, filling and unfulfilling? Is The New Yorker irrelevant, relying on what its writers perceive and imagine what America is thinking in lieu of reportage?
Or are they screwing the pooch.
Sad Ben? What about Sad America, gazing at a guy who has an ordinary family and an ordinary divorce, has done some fairly ordinary work, has an ordinary tattoo and an ordinary belly...and Sad America is thinking...what? What is Sad America thinking? I wish I were at the beach.
I hope Ben is thinking, "At least I'm not a journalist."
"Fitness-fascist America"
I think we've reached peak fascist
He's been down this road before, post-Sum of All Fears.
Is it the gay influence, that male Hollywood actors have to always be pumped up and buff? Compare to the old days when they had normal bodies.
I always thought of a pooch as a sag of skin and fat outside the abdominal wall, usually around the crotch area.
Not a jut, bulge or protuberance like the "virile" visceral fat underneath the muscle wall that's arching out starting at Affleck's upper abdomen.
Oh, that's about Ben Affleck? When I had just read your title line I took it for granted it was about Trump. . . .
Maybe it's a tumour. Or is that just a rumour ? Humour me.
The article wasn't such a waste of time. It was fairly short, not like that article on Donald Glover which went on forever.......To the best of my knowledge Affleck has made one good movie--Gone Girl. His underlying creepiness neatly dovetailed with the character he played in that movie. You would think that his creepiness would add depth and something sinister to his portrayal of Batman, but it doesn't. He's just dull......I think he should become the spokesman for Aflac. He could do pratfalls and that would warn people of the need for insurance.
I take it the writer is not svelte.
"I already railed against "pooch" back in 2013, so I'm not going to do it again."
Althouse railed against the pooch in 2013.
Affleck screwed the pooch in 2015.*
By getting PBS to censor his slave-owning family story for him.
From the NYT:
"Mr. Gates, a Harvard professor and public intellectual, had just finished an interview with the actor and director Ben Affleck for the second season of his PBS show, “Finding Your Roots.” The show investigates the ancestries of celebrities like Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson and Jessica Alba, and Mr. Affleck was apparently a dream guest.
"Mr. Affleck became frustrated that his interview on “Finding Your Roots” included a discussion about a slave-owning ancestor of his named Benjamin Cole. Mr. Gates worried that if they cut that detail, it would be perceived as censorship.
By the time WikiLeaks posted a trove of hacked Sony emails two months ago, Mr. Gates’s correspondences were revealed, and his worst fears came true. Mr. Affleck had lobbied Mr. Gates to omit the part about the slave-owning ancestor. Mr. Gates had chosen not to include it. And one blatant omission had managed to hurt the reputations of a prominent academic, a Hollywood superstar and an esteemed public television broadcaster.
On Wednesday, PBS said that an investigation into the controversy showed that Mr. Affleck had exerted “improper influence” over the editorial process and that the producers of the show, Mr. Gates included, had erred by not informing the network of the actor’s “efforts to affect program content.” PBS said it would postpone the third season of the show until a fact-checker was hired and an “independent genealogist” was added to the show’s staff. PBS also will not show Mr. Affleck’s episode anymore and removed it from its online archive..."
*Re: "Affleck screwed the pooch in 2015." You probably thought there was going to be a Jennifer Garner joke here.
Followed by a joke about the word 'garner'.
But I would love to see the OED on 'screw the pooch.'
Curious how THAT became a saying.
Maybe I'll just make it up in a later comment.
The Germans have a word for this.
"Pooch" or "pooched" usually followed by "out" has always been a common usage in my (red)neck of the woods.
"Screw the pooch" seemed to come to prominence in Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff". But I thought it originated as a genteel version of"Fuck the Dog". Oh well -- always trying to lick the outside of the envelope.
Good for Jennifer Garner... "Am I the ashes in this scenario? I refuse to be the ashes."
I hope his time of reflection is fruitful for his children's sake.
to the best of my knowledge Affleck has made one good movie--Gone Girl.
Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms, yo.
I think The Town was very well done....
Affleck is like Tiger Woods without the athletic ability.
Garner married Affleck. He was a douchebag before she married him. She isn’t the ashes, she’s the ashtray. And a foolish ashtray. Affleck played her and she let herself be played. Wise up, Garner. And don’t fall back on idiotic southern sayings.
Why is this in The New Yorker?
I hate tattoos worse than shorts.
If a tattoo could be covered up by a pair of shorts, I guess that's OK.
L'ennui.
New Yorker says sad, white man. I say sad, divorced man.
Once and done, eh?
Not a fan of Affleck. I've found him merely tolerable in most of his roles and his politics are the predictable brainless and hypocritical standard Hollywood sort.
All that said, this little piece makes me almost feel bad for him...almost.
Affleck’s was the kind of middle-aged-white-male sadness that the Internet loves to mock—a mocking that depends, simultaneously, on a complete rejection of this sadness, as well as a hedging identification with it.
It's perhaps no surprise that the middle-aged-white-male demo has a very high suicide rate. It's the only demo that our culture deems it's OK to openly mock, and such mockery can feel righteous.
Isn't that kind of pathetic, for one-time middlebrow publications like the New Yorker to be writing about movie stars' physiques, and for Wisconsin law professors to be weighing in? Harold Ross and Robert La Follette would turn over in their graves at these respective events.
So, from the Same Mouth that says that No Women are Fat in France, we hear that Fat Men are Sexy over there.
Good Lord.
God, can you imagine having to live Ben Affleck's life? What deprivations that must involve.
As an actor, I thought well of Affleck. He was very good in his one turn as Jack Ryan, and I really liked his performances in Changing Lanes, Gone Girl, and Paycheck. As for Daredevil, the failures of that movie weren't his fault. I also really liked The Accountant much more than I expected to. I haven't seen either of his outings as Batman, and don't expect to.
I saw him head-on yesterday in the Daily Mail. A beer gut wasn't prominent, but he's noticeably wider, head and torso.
Yes, that is an appealing sentence.
Forgive me when I don't accept, make that care, that Affleck is greatly sad. Though it is a win if she made it through the article without blaming Trump in some way.
-sw
...in a more enlightened country like, say, France...
I like that. Just toss that out there, like it's a given, like nobody could possibly disagree that France is more enlightened.
Yeah? Sez who?
Geez. "All cultures and all countries are equal. Except America. America sucks."
Morons.
Maybe he should pooch kick the author down the street.
Might cheer him up.
Many men are fat, but that doesn't mean that fat is virile.
Ben Affleck with a Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack is hilarious.
If they want to improve the Academy awards, they should have that duck announce his name the next time he gets an award.
Affleck!
We need The Crack Emcee. He can tell people about "enlightened" France.
Or just get Gilbert Gottfried to say it.
He was fired for bad jokes.
Pooch is a a good, if nonstandard, word. It brings to mind "pouch", which it probably came from, and "paunch", but perhaps a less ponderous version of it.
The Affleck "Bridge Over Troubled Water" video is appropriate, since he always seemed like a Garfunkel to Damon's Simon.
Affleck's girth, although prodigious, looks to me like simply the bulking phase of a bodybuilding program for the next Batman. Many bodybuilders take it further, getting obese and flabby months before trimming to contest weight.
Taking a potshot at his potbelly is fair game of course, now that Affleck is no longer the earnest young Hollywood liberal, but now just a middle-aged whitey. In a few years we'll probably be laughing along with some young, or formerly young, starlet ridiculing him for wanting to have sex with her, with or without the pooch.
I meant "Sound of Silence", of course.
First heard the “p” word used used by a woman to describe her stomach fat in 1986(and it was in an optometrisy’s office on State St. by the Raffskeller(sp).
How odd to use the word that is slang for ‘dog’; it’s like finger nails on a black board to me.
Any one know how it came about?
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