From the Editor's Desk: Shoe Store Brawl
Filed under: From the Editor's Desk
This past Saturday, I was almost in a fight. A real fight with, like, fists. It's been almost 12 years since I was last in a fight (or, well, almost in a fight). Back then I had just started college, pretending to be this macho New Yorker (even though I weighed 100 pounds soaking wet) and knew how to act tough. I couldn't beat up a six-year-old girl, mind you, but I knew how to talk like a guy who grew up on the streets, with a hunting knife in my mouth instead of a baby's bottle. Now, however, I'm a laid back guy who writes about movies. That's it. I'm a quiet gent, and you'd have to try real hard to get me going. While shopping in a shoe store this past weekend, there was this guy (late 20s) standing with two older people who didn't speak English. They were situated right in front of the shoe I needed to look at. They stood there for a good 15 minutes, not moving. And so I patiently waited as long as I possibly could before saying "excuse me" while sliding in between them so I could look at the shoe.
That's when I heard it: "A**hole." Then again. And again. Until finally I looked up at this dude and asked if he was talking to me. He was ... and he didn't stop: "You're an a**hole," he said with a smirk. I replied, "I've been waiting 15 minutes for you folks to move and you haven't. I have a right to look at this shoe too." Then he goes, "F*ck you a**hole. I'll be waiting for you outside." "Waiting for me outside? Dude, you're in a shoe store. Calm down." Only he didn't calm down, he kept at it. He decided to go from cursing to personal insults: "Baldy. You're going bald. Ha! Baldy, baldy, baldy ..." He was not the first person to point this out; I'd been losing my hair for several years and have been made fun of numerous times by friends, family members and even random people on subway platforms. So I told him this: "I might be going bald, but at least I'm not unoriginal." And suddenly I felt like I was Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting -- only we were in a shoe store, and instead of fighting a guy from Harvard, it was a guy who learned English from watching the Jerry Springer Show.
I tried my best to keep it cool, and when I complained to the girl running the fitting rooms, she just looked at me like, "Um, I control the fitting rooms. This wasn't in my job description." My wife convinced me to take a different exit because she didn't want me getting arrested for fighting in a shoe store, and I never saw the guy again. But it made me wonder: How many of you have ever thrown out a random movie quote in the middle of an argument and passed it off as your own?
Check out the video of that classic Good Will Hunting scene after the jump ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-12-2007 @ 3:37PM
bovious said...
I use movie quotes whenever I can. I think in movie quotes.
Unfortunately, however, I have no movie quote that fits this comment.
My wife wouldn't have even let me argue with the guy. And I wouldn't have been inclined to do so, anyway. Who cares if some mook is calling me names?
It might have been fun, however, to call the police and let them know there was a guy waiting to attack you outside of the store, and give them the address. Who knows, maybe they would show up and witness this guy assaulting you. That would have been sweet.
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11-12-2007 @ 3:37PM
techstar25 said...
You should have bought the shoes, then held them up the window and said "How do you like them apples". That would have been cool. Or tremendously geeky.
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11-12-2007 @ 3:54PM
Erik Davis said...
techstar -- ha, I should've totally done that. Problem was I was in an outlet mall and I really needed more clothes at the time. To potentially get bounced would've pissed off my wife to no end. Next time though ...
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11-12-2007 @ 4:14PM
Cincinnati Mike said...
Haven't the movies taught you anything? Every fifth person is a hair-trigger psycho (and they're all Vietnam vets!) You get all smug and Good Will Hunting, and he will go Travis Bickle on your ass!
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11-12-2007 @ 4:14PM
Christmas Jones said...
That guy needs to look in the mirror! He's the a-hole and whats really sad is x-mas is here already so we have people like that to deal with. How scary it would be if everyone did this to us. People today are so rude and it's only getting worse. I hope you have better shopping trips in the future without the idiots getting in your way.
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11-12-2007 @ 4:42PM
The Addict said...
If I needed to out of self defense, I would have totally fought the guy. (I've got the New Yorker fake tough guy thing too, but I'm 5'11, 225 lbs.) Then if he's finally sitting in the back of the cop car, I would've brought the shoes over to the window, knocked on the glass and said, "Do you like apples?" Then, I would have walked away leaving him really puzzled.
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11-12-2007 @ 6:45PM
max aldahondo said...
you're prbobaly trying to be funny Cincinatti but not all us vietnam vets are psycho.
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11-12-2007 @ 7:35PM
Cincinnati Mike said...
Hey, no offense, Max. I was referring to the fact that in just about every bad movie (and some good ones) from 1975-85, it seemed like the villain was a "crazy Vietnam vet."
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11-12-2007 @ 8:33PM
KMF said...
I can't say that I have done that in an argument. However I once shouted out "I've gone on holiday by mistake!" a line from the awesome film, Withnail and I, at actor Paul McGann ('I' himself.)during a panel discussion at a convention in respose to a question for him about what his epitaph would be. He had a good laugh, so did everyone else.
Yeah I know pretty dorky.
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11-13-2007 @ 12:12AM
diego said...
I've uttered, "Have you ever seen the devil? Look into my eyes and you'll see the devil..." when I was a kid. It was tremendously cheesy, worthy of a B movie or perhaps a bad Lifetime special of the week. But point is, you stood up to them, right?
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11-13-2007 @ 5:35AM
Movie Jay said...
Personally, I like either of these:
Snatch
"Do you know what 'nemesis' means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible c--t... me."
Pulp Fiction
"Well, I'm a mushroom-cloud-laying motherf--ker, motherf--ker!"
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11-13-2007 @ 9:05AM
jaCK said...
I tend not to movie quote (generally sounds good to no-one but yourself), but I have had an honest to goodness dust-up in a cinema, so it kind of counts. A gang of 17 year-olds were annoying the fuck out of everyone in the place and a woman (with kids) tells them to be quiet. She was met with "Fuck-off, bitch" by the "main man" of the gang. I got up and told him to firstly apologise and then shut the fuck up. He stood and tried to attack me, so I dragged him by his ear to the end of the aisle and smacked his face right of the wall. I was actually applauded, and thanked by the woman, while he returned to his seat in tears. Motherfucker.
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11-13-2007 @ 9:15AM
Cincinnati Mike said...
Damn, jaCK--you're Batman!
So...did you get any appreciative MILF action?
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11-13-2007 @ 11:43AM
mainfr4me said...
The movie theatre is a great place for that. I've always seemed to pick the night all the middle schoolers go see any movie so they huddle in the front rows giggling and dancing around. My friends and I usually let is slide for a little while, but after about 15 min we've gone down and called them out for it. Usually the stunned response of someone much taller and older yelling at them in public in front of their friends is enough to get them to be quiet.
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11-13-2007 @ 12:05PM
Richard von Busack said...
Oh, I hate stories like this. My condolences. Well, as Sadaam said about Rumsfeld, this person deserves to be hit with shoes. Your wife did you a favor by getting you out of there. One thing the movies regularly lie to us about is the idea that our wives really want to watch us pummelling some jerk. This is actually the last thing they want to see. They seriously don't want us hurt, and they don't want to clean up the financial, legal and physical mess of a fist fight.
Although if there actually was a different exit and you knew about it, you could have wound this psycho up with a bunch of baroque threats and then made him wait around like the fool he was in front of the shoe store. And that's where the movie threats come in:
my favorite would be the incredibly baroque threats in the short film "Red" by Chris Gore, starring that titan of wrath Lawrence "Reservoir Dogs" Tierney. And if you've never heard the "Tube Bar" tapes Gore based this on, find 'em and down load them: the prank telephone call mockery of idiot macho male wrath is a lesson to all of us peaceable guys who might need something to say to a bully: "I'm gonna put the two 'z's on your cheeks. I'm gonna dig up your mother and f**k her, her skeleton. You're gonna remember me for the rest of your life." Really, find it, it'll make you happy.
Anyone mocks your hair loss, just unleash Reid Fleming, the World's Toughest Milkman on them: "I get my hair cut this way."
And then there's Denis Johnson; I'm pretty sure Tree of Smoke is going to be a film sometime. Haven't read it yet, but the passage they keep quoting is a scene of an admiral confronting a pair of drunken sailors in Waikiki. I'm paraphrasing.
"Are you having a good time?"
The sailors flip him the bird.
"Good. Enjoy yourself. Because hard times are coming for a..holes like you."
A person like the one you met in the shoe store is destined for hard, hard times; he will meet larger and more truculent bullies and be pounded into one of those raving winos you step over on the sidewalk, the ones who uselessly threaten everyone who won't give them a dime. When you encounter him again in 2015, laying on the sidewalk in his own filth, you can give him a kick in the ribs and you'll meet such a lack of resistance, you won't even damage your new shoes.
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