Sean Kleefeld's post about his lack of love for Iron Man brought up the topic of "hating" certain superheroes.
I really cannot think of any superhero I "hate." But I did, at one time, hate Will Ferrell. And he's sort of a superhero.
I remember the distressed look on my friends' faces as I announced, during a discussion of Saturday Night Live, that I hated Will Ferrell. They looked at me as if I killed a puppy. A very cute, oversized, especially hairy puppy.
Why do we hate on certain figures? What drove me to use the word "hate" in conjunction with Will Ferrell?
Well, for starters, that damn cheerleading sketch. Not funny, never was funny, not even when David Duchovny was on it. And David Duchovny makes everything funny.
Also, I never quite cottoned to his character "Mustafa" from Austin Powers, though I have substantially more sympathy for his many trials and misfortunes now.
Furthermore, while he was ostensibly the co-star of the SNL movie Superstar, it was the oft-ignored Harland Williams who really deserved more credit in that film. If it wasn't for Ferrell, Harland Williams might have been America's top bumbling funnyman. Things like that just keep me up at night.
What turned the tide for me on Will Ferrell? His depiction of the loveable manchild in the movie Elf. With Elf, I realized that only bad people hated Will Ferrell. Ferrell was indeed this generation's Dick Van Dyke, or even Tom Poston.
After that, thanks to comedy classics like Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and that ice-skating film with Napoleon Dynamite, I became officially converted to the Cult of Will. I felt ashamed of the hate I once expressed for Ferrell, and that anonymous Wordpress blog I used to write called "Why I Hate Will Ferrell" where I obsessively focused on his body hair and close-set eyes. I took that blog down right away; if I could have burned it, I would have. St. Paul in Damascus much?
So that is how I stopped hating and learned to love Will Ferrell.
Now I hate John C. Reilly, because he is a punk-ass.
