how the world has been taken beneath my feet

i've physically trained myself to automatically change the channel whenever i hear any of the fifteen thousand "this is our country" ads that come on during an nfl game. i'll usually find something worth watching in the meantime and set my remote so that channel is "last". i need to do that, so i don't throw my sofa through the nearest window. which i'm sure is not the response chevy was looking for.

anyways, while i'm watching the giants-bears game tonight, my alternate non "this is our country" channel was spike tv, which was showing a rocky marathon. i turned the channel during the second chevy ad during the fourth quarter, and it's the scene in "rocky III' when rocky's got nothing on the beach, where apollo tells him that he's lost it, and then adrian convinces him that it's okay to be afraid of clubber lang, that he's gotta do it for himself. and that turns the tide for rocky, as the best music score ever chimes in, and we're treated to a montage of rocky picking up his training. and although it looks superhuman, it's great stuff.

my point is that the scene culminates with rocky finally beating apollo in a foot race down the beach, and then they begin celebrating in the pacific ocean. they hug, and the tides' splashing around them, and it's in overcranked slo-mo, and the music hits a crescendo, and...well, i gotta say it, that i never realized how off the charts that scene is in the flamingly gay scale. in fact, it's the freddie mercury mustache of unintentionally gay scenes - almost topping when maverick and iceman hugged after fending back the migs in "top gun".

i've must have seen those rocky movies a million times each, and i never noticed how "fabulous" that scene was.

san francisco, san francisco.