Thursday, September 18, 2008

The increasing need for the wide-angle lens

The other night while flipping through the cable channels, I landed on National Lampoon’s Animal House. I remember watching that in the theatre 30 years ago (hard to believe, huh?) and laughing my head off. The movie has held up well; I’ve seen it many times over the years and still I laughed out loud.

One thing that struck me, though: I’d always thought of John Belushi as being a heavy-set guy, but as I watched this time, he didn’t seem that big to me. I couldn’t believe how small he looked! And you know, I saw a Bonanza rerun not long ago and thought that Hoss Cartwright didn’t look as hefty as I'd recalled, either, and he was supposed to be enormous. You don't earn the nickname "Hoss" for nothing!

Chris Farley and John Candy, I think, were way, way bigger than Belushi and Hoss. And look at Tony Soprano! Has there been a trend over the past few decades? Are today’s fat guys, like, super-fat compared to the fat guys of days gone by? Is that why they’re making all the TVs with wide screens?

What do you think? Do you see this, too, or might I just have an astigmatism problem?



(No value judgments here; I’ve made no secret of my preference for the hunk-of-manliness of the husky gentlemen. Just wondering.)

1 comment:

Lori Biker said...

Where does John Goodman fit in? Maybe Hoss was as big as Little Joe was little. I think we are looking at the same concept of how the back yard you played in as a child was so big and is now "postage stamp" size.