Easy to Outrun

Let me ask you this. What in hell is going on with Steven Seagal's hair? The other day I needed something to watch while I gave the birds their "out" time, and I had the misfortune of landing on a channel playing the movie Submerged. This is a 2005 Seagal effort. Well, "effort" may be the wrong term, given that he showed up weighing more than the rest of the cast combined, and someone else obviously dubbed a bunch of his lines.

Think Sean Connery looked old and fat in Diamonds are Forever? Compared to the Seagal of Submerged, Connery looked like a baby. I halfway expected Seagal to eat his enemies.

Remember the orange makeup John Kerry wore during the University of Miami debate? My theory was that he was saluting the school by painting himself with its team colors. Well, he apparently donated his leftover buckets of makeup to Seagal. In the movie, Seagal's skin tone fell somewhere in the unnatural notch between "day-glo" and "Cheez Doodle."

The makeup wasn't enough. He apparently painted his head black. Have you ever seen Ron Popeil's commercials for spray-on hair? I'm positive Seagal was wearing that stuff. It has a way of making everyone look like Gene Simmons. In normal hair, a little skin color shows through, at least in a man's sideburns. Spray hair isn't like that, because it paints the scalp as well as the hair shafts. Seagal's hair was as black as tar. It looked like he had glued carpet remnants to his face. Seriously, it was as though someone had cut out stencils in the shape of his remaining hair, held them up to his head, and let fly with a can of Krylon.

In the past, I have sometimes described Seagal's signature garb as a giant black "maternity kimono." He wore it again in Submerged. I don't know if you're familiar with this garment. It's a long coat that buttons down to the thighs. My theory is that the lining is made from woven strands of stainless steel, and that he buttons it using one of those things they use to boom down chains on logging trucks. He puts around a ton of tension on each button, and the coat closes, and his fat is pushed around to his sides and up into his skull and down into his legs, and the compression enables him to enter normal human doorways. Of course, if a button came off, it would probably leave his atmosphere at several times the speed of sound and pass through several supporting actors before slowing down enough to become visible.

Dude, okay, you're not getting millions per film any more. Maybe you're not exactly pumped for these roles. But you're still making a much better living than guys with similar qualifications. You're no longer forced to accept T-shirts labeled "Security" as part of your pay. Don't you think you could lay off the doughnuts long enough to shrink down to the point where other actors could be in the same shot with you?

Have you noticed he never kicks anyone any more? That's because if he lifted one leg, the other one would snap like a matchstick.

I'm not the only one who thinks he looks like a botched embalming. The film editor figured it out too. Submerged is one of the few films in the history of movies in which the director AVOIDED showing the face of the main box office draw. Every so often, you get a quick look at him, as if the studio is saying, "Look, there he is. No refunds." But most of the time the camera is whipping around in every which direction, as though they're afraid that looking directly at Seagal will turn the audience into stone.

I don't get it. I realize the man has made movies so bad Pia Zadora makes fun of him, but he also made a few where he proved he could act well enough to be successful. He was perfectly fine in The Glimmer Man, Under Siege, and the one where he beat up the fat guy from Renegade. Hell, if he hadn't discovered Little Debbies, he could have been the next Schwarzenegger. Arnold got old and grew tits, Van Damme got beat up in a bar and turned out to be a bipolar crackhead...the competition is not that tough. You know it's a seller's market when people pay good money to see Jackie Chan and that fat bald guy who can fly.

It amazes me sometimes, how lazy people can be when success is trying to climb up their pants leg. But then I am a Republican.

Do not watch Submerged. Like I have to tell you. The bob-and-weave camera work is so annoying, it's painful to watch. It's so awful, it's not even fun to turn down the sound and sit around with your drunk friends, making up better dialogue.