If Nicolas Cage Were an Ultrarunner

The bride and I watch a fair number of movies, and probably my least favorite A-list actor is Nicolas Cage.  Flipping thru the channels, I just saw him again a couple weeks ago in Windtalkers, the WWII flick about the war in the Pacific and him protecting the Navajo code talkers.

To me, it always seems like he's acting, like I can never suspend my disbelief enough to think "That's a real character."  I always think, in this example, "That's Nicolas Cage pretending to be a Marine."

It wasn't much of stretch to imagine him--acting poorly, of course--in an Ultrarunning movie.  You wouldn’t be able to believe that he's a real Ultrarunner; you'd know that it was Nicolas Cage only pretending to be an Ultrarunner. Imagine that Nicolas Cage syrupy voice saying lines like these:

"You run up the trail.  You puke your guts out.  Then you wipe your mouth and keep on running."

"Your manners are terrible [cocks pistol, points it at a rude runners head, at an aid station]. You say "Thank You" to the nice volunteers because it's the right thing to do, because nobody's holding a gun to their heads like I am doing to you, making them stand out here for hours handing you water."

"I stopped wearing shoelaces.  Now I just ziptie my shoes on my feet and keep the same shoes on the whole race.  If I die during the run it'll be like the ultra equivalent of dying with my boots on."

"Pissing in the woods?  Crapping?  That's for wussies.  Real men can hold their stuff."

[channeling Steve Prefontaine] "A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts."

"I don't use Body Glide or any of those products on my junk or anywhere.  Lube is for wimps.  I want the total experience, pain and all."

"Buckles?  You mean those shiny trinkets you get for finishing a 100 miler? I keep my buckles right up here, where it really counts [taps head]."