C'mon, Dad.

Last night I dreamt that my dad was Steven Seagal and we were frying eggs. I stood next to him by the stove as he flipped his eggs over easy, trying to explain to him, quite earnestly, that the world is at the exact right moment for a new Seagal renaissance, if only he could rediscover himself and return to the kind of classic movies that launched his career, like "Hard to Kill" and "Out For Justice." However, Steven was very depressed, and I worried that my encouraging words weren't getting through.

I woke up this morning wondering if I actually believed anything I said in my dream. So, I imdb'd my Dream Dad for the first time in a while, and was slightly surprised to see that this man has 7 movies coming out in the next year.

All of them are clearly horrendous and will only come out on video in the States, but it is kind of awesome to see how there is a large enough base of Seagal fans on this planet to keep him making these amazingly stereotypical movies until he dies. I definitely don't agree with the Jeff in my dream; mainstream America will never accept this man into its heart again, but at least we can take a look at his filmography and laugh very hard.

If any of you are wondering where the action movie stereotypes come from that fuel most sketch comedy parodies, it's Steven Seagal without question. To begin, here are the names of some of the protagonists that he's played, ranked in order from ridiculous to equally ridiculous:

Mason Storm
John Hatcher
Forrest Taft
Casey Ryback
Lt. Colonel Austin Travis
Travis Hunter
Jack Cole
Jack Taggart
Jack Miller
Jake Hopper
Jonathan Cold

And slightly more surprising but at least as unbelievable [complete with me making snipey commentary in brackets]:

Dr. Wesley McClaren [No. Sorry.]

Prof. Robert Burns [What? Professor is even more unlikely than Doctor. Also, if Steven Seagal's name is Robert Burns in a movie, you know for certain that Robert will be burning something or someone at some point.]

Chris Kody [This name isn't that crazy, but I'm including it here because it's basically the name of one of my best friends from high school, Chris Coady, except made much more extreme via hip spelling. Congratulations, Chris! Did you know that you are "the world's best mercenary, freed from prison. But there's a catch-- (you) must use (your) lethal weapons and fighting skills to stop a group of terrorists who have taken over a nuclear sub"?]

Cock Puncher [This would definitely belong on the first list if it weren't self-aware. Apparently, Steven's playing a small role in the forthcoming Onion movie, where he mostly likely doesn't have a name but punches someone's cock.]

Detective Gino Felino [In the aforementioned "Out For Justice", Seagal defines the role that he played for the first half of his career - tough-as-nails detectives that went to Japan to train in martial arts and are also Italian for some reason. It's such a weird and strained combination, yet he played this part in several movies. And when I was young, I thought it was the coolest thing EVER and I wanted to be a slick Italian cop that learned Aikido from the masters.]

To finish off this Seagalebration, I figured I would list some of the more preposterous titles of his many films. In most of these, I'm pretty sure he played tough-as-nails detectives, mercenaries, and retired/discharged Army/Marine/CIA officers. Linguistics experts take note: most of these titles have the exact same syntax, which apparently is the perfect action movie title formula. Nearly all of these titles can be pronounced with the same syllabic emphases.

Above the Law
Hard to Kill
Out for Justice
Out for a Kill
Marked for Death
Fire Down Below
Half Past DEAD [my capitalization]
Into the Sun
Out of Reach [has anyone had more movies beginning with "out"?]
Belly of the Beast
Today You Die
Mercenary [doesn't match the others but my oh my is it ever direct]
Clementine [in a rare change of pace, this is a romantic farce about the owners of competing fruit farms who fall in love against the background of a worldwide martial arts competition. psyche! it's just an asinine title.]

Lastly, I would like to point out that since Seagal's character in "Hard to Kill" is named Mason Storm, and that he, a tough-as-nails detective, falls into a coma for seven years only to wake up and kill everyone, the studio chiefs originally wanted to call this movie "Seven Year Storm."

HAR HAR.

I've forgotten what this post was originally about. Was I defending Steven Seagal? I don't think so. If I was, I changed my mind. Please don't bring him back into the spotlight. Please have him continuing to make little ridiculous movies like this forever and ever.