Queen Latifah

Matt accused me of exaggerating "just like" I "always do."

This was offensive. Not because I consider "exaggerator" to be an insult, but because he said it in the same tone he uses to discuss youthsss on Instagram.

This all came about because I was telling him about this time in 2012 when I was living with Daniel and we were supposed to go somewhere but then suddenly the American classic Just Wright starring Queen Latifah came on TV.

Daniel told me that it was important that we stay home and watch this cinematic masterpiece in its entirety rather than do anything else in that moment.

This was back when we were too poor for DVR so we really had no other option.

I hadn't seen the movie before, but Daniel apparently had. Which is why he had no excuse for his decision to suggest that we watch it.

Look. It's been so long that I might be mixing up the plot I'm about to explain to you with about 9 other movies. So don't use this blog post as your exclusive source of knowledge on Just Wright, especially if you have a test on it coming up.


But my memory of the movie is that Queen Latifah has some job or something or other and I think she might be a physical therapist or a sport's agent or maybe she works at Blimpie's and she's obsessed with the NBA. She ends up encountering an NBA player professionally and she can't believe that he's dating some bimbo when Queen Latifah and the NBA player clearly have chemistry because she likes basketball. At some point she's all "when you're good to mama . . . MAMAAAAAAAA'S GOOOOOD TOOOOOO YOUUUUUUUUU!" Then there's a misunderstanding and she's hurt and she writes an article in the local paper and says that she'll be waiting on the baseball field for her first kiss and there will be a countdown clock and that's where she finds out that he's the secret person she's been emailing after meeting him in a chatroom but none of it mattered because SHE WAS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME.

The point is, within the first few minutes of this movie, something happens that made me laugh so hard that I'm surprised we didn't get a noise complaint.

I was trying to explain this scene of the movie to Matt because we were talking about our least favorite kinds of jokes.

I said that my current least favorite joke is the "said no one ever" jokes. I loathe them. At my most recent triathlon there was a huge hill on the bike course and I was riding next to a man who was wearing tube socks and we'll talk about that later and when we got to the top he said to me, "that was fun . . . said no one ever!" and I almost pushed his bike all the way back down the hill and to this day I'm still so full of hate over this that I definitely can't go to heaven.

"Said no one ever" jokes are the 2008 version of "Not!" which was the 1991 version. Both should be illegal and you should be serving jail time if you've ever said them. We should revoke the First Amendment if we have to to make this law a reality.

The "said no one ever" rant eventually turned into a general conversation about overly-long joke setups. We were commenting about how in movies and TV they always have these really long joke setups that often require the other person to respond in a very specific way in order for them to work and this never happens in real life and these kinds are jokes are so eye-rolly that I want to scream.

And as we were talking about this I remembered this part from Just Wright so I tried to explain it to Matt. I was going off of my memory of something I saw six years ago and so I knew that I may have been remembering it incorrectly. But I explained that Queen Latifah is at an NBA game, where as it turns out she is an incredibly vocal fan. Queen Latifah says "ring ring" and then holds her hand up to her face like she's answering the phone. Then she says "hello? Hi? Who's this? What's that? I'm sorry. I can't talk right now. BECAUSE I'M JUST WATCHING MY TEAM DESTROY THE COMPETITION!" And I remembered that she had basically done this in response to another fan in the audience who was trash-talking Queen Latifah's team.

When this joke played out in 2012, Daniel and I were both silent for about 5 seconds, just processing how ridiculous it was. Then Daniel said something to the effect of "WHO IS WRITING THIS CRAP?" And that's how I knew it was really bad. Because Daniel is otherwise inexplicably defensive of Queen Latifah.

After I told Matt about this scene, I admitted that I knew I wasn't describing the scene or quoting Queen Latifah very accurately but that what I had said captured the spirit of how bad the joke was. Then I told him I would try to find the actual scene so we could watch it.

This scene did not exist on the Youtubes or seemingly anywhere else on the internet. After a long search, I programmed my TV to record the movie if it ever happened to come on.

That was like a month ago and I totally forgot about this whole thing.

Then on Saturday I turned on the TV and saw that I had a new recording.

Just Wright had been shown just that morning.

You would have thought it was Christmas at my house the way I reacted to this revelation.

I quickly fast-forwarded to the scene in question and saw that I had not accurately quoted it at all. But you guys. I think that what Queen Latifah actually says is worse than what I remembered. 

You be the judges.

I sent the video to Matt and he did not think it was funny at all because he was too preoccupied with being upset with how badly I described the scene and that's when I got accused of being an exaggerator but in the negative way.

At least Daniel still appreciates it.

~It Just Gets Stranger