Billy Bob Thornton Vs. Tealights

The Case For Billy Bob Thornton

We expect good actors to enthrall, confuse, and entertain us when they're onscreen; however, we have a special place in our hearts for those who do so with ten times as much commitment and vigour offscreen. Billy Bob Thornton is just such an actor.

Thornton is a very talented performer who can make a good movie great (as he did A Simple Plan) and a bad movie bearable (as he did Intolerable Cruelty). We don't know yet how good this week's remake of Bad News Bears will be, but the open, frank disdain he exhibits toward the losers on his Little League baseball team is promising; in a time when all children seem to be coddled and indulged like The Last Emperor, society requires the counter-balance of a healthy dose of kid-centric misanthropy.

But we never have to wonder whether Thornton is going to impress us offscreen, since we already know he is stone crazy. If you're not affected by his aversion to foods that are orange (which could account for his mysterious manorexia a few years back), then perhaps we can show you something in a phobia of antique furniture? Although both of those eccentricities are rather dwarfed by his habit, during his marriage to Angelina Jolie, of wearing some of her blood in a vial around his neck. Since their breakup, it's not clear whether that was his idea or hers; who knows if he's graduated, now, to keeping a whole moonshine jug of blood from his current girlfriend, Connie Angland, in the fridge, or has had a dressing gown woven out of her hair? And you know, Thornton's probably sick, by now, of having the blood-vial factoid repeated in every story ever written about him, but the time to think about whether he'd want that particular bit of trivia associated with him for the rest of his life was before he started going around. With a vial of his wife's blood. Around his neck.

Billy Bob Thornton's a pretty great actor, but more to the point, he's a freak whose weirdness manifests itself in utterly unpredictable ways. And since he doesn't appear to be hurting anyone -- all blood is drawn consensually, we're certain -- we have to applaud him.

The Case For Tealights

There's nothing more flattering to every skin tone and age bracket than candlelight. As the flame waxes and wanes, it smooths out imperfections and bathes those near enough to it in a beatific glow. And because the light it casts is so faint, it draws us closer to each other so we can still see one another's faces. In short, it's an important element in any seduction.

In order to achieve the positive effects of candlelight, you don't need to break the bank at the Yankee Candle Co. with a clutch of two-inch tapers infused with jasmine reek. Instead, you can go to Ikea and spend three dollars on a whole bag of tealights that will do the job just as well. Tealights are as simple as they are practical, illuminating lovers' faces for an extremely affordable price.

The Decision

As the city in which we craft this debate lies in the death grip of an apparently interminable heat wave, its hydro resources drying up under the pitiless sun, we're being advised to reduce our consumption of electricity. This forced economization may very well force us to convert, very soon, to lighting our home solely with tealights, since we'd sooner cut the power to our dishwasher and washing machine and to our very television sets and cable boxes (God forbid) than turn our air conditioner down even one notch. However, until our local governments forbid it completely, electric light is still a viable option for us, and the light cast by a tealight a vastly inferior substitute, never mind the tealight's usefulness as a romantic catalyst.

As we escape our cooled house for the downright glacial cinema, we need something on the screen both to distract us from the steaming heat outside, and to remind us of his intriguing real-life strangeness. And no tiny candle, no matter how messed-up its Arkansas upbringing, can compete for our attention against the likes of the new millennium's Buttermaker.

The Winner

Billy Bob Thornton