March 30th: Manliness!

(from backyard) Good morning, John. It’s Friday, March 30th. I can’t believe I sent you that email. You know, I guess you try to do something nice and this is what happens. (sigh) To console myself for my idiocy, I’ve come over to my friend Joel’s house. Joel is a hunter and a fisherman, and he has dogs and he has guns and he’s just a manly guy. And he’s having a venison steak dinner tonight, and he’s invited Katherine and I over to partake.
(music begins: “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson) Manly times await. (shot of a deer head on ground) This is the head of a deer! It’s being used to fertilize Joel’s garden. I wonder if there’s any other deer parts in here. (two dogs, some deer antlers hang over a mantelpiece, Joel rubs venison steaks around in a cooking dish, a beer sign, some more deer antlers, some more venison cooking clips, Joel bench-presses a large antler, then opens a beer with it and does bicep curls with it)
(back at home; Hank looks shocked) If there’s anyone out there who didn’t quite get what just happened, Joel just opened that beer bottle with an elk antler. This is a man who is very experienced at opening beer bottles with whatever is nearby. I mean, I’m not being manly, but that was a lot of manliness all packed into one thing, with an elk antler and curling and drinking beer and opening beer with an elk antler. I really don’t think you could get much more manly than that.
Now, I’m not saying a woman couldn’t do all of those things because absolutely they could. But in a stereotypical world, that was very stereotypically manly. We then continued to do manly things like talk about shooting deer and eating shot deer. It was really a very nice evening. About halfway through dinner I asked Joel about the meat we were eating. I didn’t turn on the camera quite in time, but I got most of what he said.
Joel: Mule deer, and a little white tail. They're both in a mixture. They're both little deer. They’re both eaters; nice, young, tasty. Lived a short, unfulfilling life. (general laughter, comments about Joel "you just follow the mommies around" and "Dark side of Joel")
Hank: Just so everyone knows, after I turned off the camera Joel started discussing the ethics and also the ecological impact of hunting and whether or not it was more sensible to shoot young deer or old deer. According to Joel, and Joel is an ecological scientist, it’s actually healthier for a herd to lose its younger animals. But really, I think what makes the most difference is that the young ones taste a heck of a lot better.
Joel: (at the dinner table) It’s like flaky, fall-apart, just, tender. It’s tender! (Hank takes a bite out of a steak) It’s just very flavorful.
A woman: So good.
Hank: It really is very good.
Woman: That’s good.
Hank: (at home) Chuck, I hope you’re satisfied that the manliness factor for Brotherhood 2.0 has increased substantially. If anybody was disturbed by the images, keep in mind that I live in Montana and that people have guns and they shoot animals, and that’s just how we do things here. John, I’ll see you on Monday.