men's butts

What do the following three movies have in common?

Just Like Heaven
Failure to Launch
Space Cowboys

All three have at least one scene where they show some old guy's butt.

In Just Like Heaven, the audience is treated to some old codger's rear end exposed through one of those peek-a-boo hospital gowns. That was funny the first 800 times over the years, but now it's really starting to lose a lot of its charm.

In Failure to Launch, we get to see more of Terry Bradshaw than any guy, sports fan or otherwise, would ever want to see.

In Space Cowboys, the audience gets to enjoy not one but no less than FOUR sagging, aging butts splashed across the screen. (I'll pause as you recover from that visual.)

How this came up was, as would be happenstance, these three movies were the most recent DVDs my wife and I rented from Blockbuster. In no manner were we deliberately seeking to rent flicks which explicitly showed the hind quarters of retirement-aged and beyond actors.

Now don't get me wrong, I like men's butts just as much as the next guy. (Sound weird? Not really, when you consider that the next guy and the guy after that probably really don't like men's butts all that much.)

But what happened to the day when you actually might have gotten a glimpse of a female bottom or two? Apparently, it's still taboo in America to show any skin of the "she" variety, but it is considered fun, amusing, and dare I say humorous to show a man's butt, specially, (or perhaps only,) if it is plastered to the back of an antiquated geezer.

Going Postal

The other day, I had the need to send a package via the US Postal Service. I walked into the Post Office, waited my turn in line, and stepped forward to the desk clerk.

"I'd like to send this to New York and insure it for a thousand dollars, please," I stated, in what I thought was relatively clear English.

"It would be cheaper to send it 'Registered,'" was his response.

"oh-kaaaay ..." I began, "if I send it REGISTERED, can I insure it for a thousand dollars?"

"You don't need to insure it," he iterated, "all you have to do is register it."

At this point, I was tempted to say, 'Look. I want to send THIS PACKAGE to New York. If this package doesn't REACH New York, I want THE POST OFFICE to give me ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Is there any way YOU can make it happen like that??"

That's what I wanted to say - but I am typically not that rude. What came out instead was, "I don't understand."

That is where he explained it to me, in a manner that seemed somewhat "down-putting." Apparently, if I sent the package "registered for $1000," the total cost of the postage would have been a bit less than sending it "insured" for $1000. The cost difference? Less than a dollar, of course.

There was nobody behind me when I entered the Post Office, and there were four people behind me when I left. Draw your own conclusion.