Total Recall

So Arnold's in the race, and Californians couldn't be happier. Now THIS is the spectacle we've all been waiting for. When you put him next to Gary Coleman, Arianna Huffington (Heh heh, another immigrant. Hey INS, naturalize this!), and various and sundry porn stars, the man looks pretty gubernatorial. And we're all thinking about how Arnold would say "gubernatorial".

But I'm a little worried about the sudden takeover of California by the celebritocracy. Now granted, Arnold looks like Laurence Olivier next to Ronald Reagan, and we made Reagan governor AND president. But still, we're talking about an actor here, and if you saw Batman and Robin, you know that I use "actor" in it's loosest possible definition. I can see the wheels turning in people's minds at the thought of the Terminator in Sacramento, but let me let you all in on something:

Arnold's a lot of things, but he is not a killer cyborg from the future. He does not kill aliens in the jungle. His daughter does not look like Alyssa Milano. Get a fuggin' clue, people.

I know exactly what it is, too. Any of you see Last Action Hero? (Before you say "no", understand that I meant it as a rhetorical question. I see crap like that so you don't have to). There's a funny scene in that movie, in which the youthful hero has a daydream, while listening to some boring Hamlet in class, of Arnold as the melancholy Dane. He strides through Castle Elsinore, machinegun in hand, blowing away supporting characters left and right. "To be, or not to be?"

*KABOOM*

"Not to be."

I think this is what's going on, psychologically, in the mind of the California voter. I think we all actually think that the next time we have a budget impasse (And we will. Last time I checked, no one's recalling the Assembly Speaker, the REAL most influential man in Sacramento.), Arnold will throw a knife through John Burton, impaling him to a door, and say "Stick around." I mean, intellectually, we know that he can't and/or won't , but there's still that fantasy in the back of our heads.

But then again, who knows. Maybe he WILL drop Gray Davis into a vat of molten steel. Stranger things have happened. Like the time Jerry Brown was crushed in a hydraulic press.