Ryan Reynolds Vs. Wine Stoppers

The Case For Ryan Reynolds

We've been watching Ryan Reynolds. We admit it straight off: We like him. We've already pitted him in a 2S1S against Zach Levi (who? Exactly), a little tomato can he knocked off without breaking a sweat.

Now, he's not quite ready for a Fame Audit -- what are we going to judge him on? Van Wilder? Waiting...?? -- so the next step is to measure his worth against a common household item. But something not too useful. He's not ready to face the egg-timer, the toilet brush, or the miracle of dental tape. But we're betting he can hold his own against a wine stopper.

Reynolds, for those who haven't noticed, is a delightfully volatile mixture of puckish charm and teen-idol good looks who's just waiting for a smart producer to put him in the right cocktail shaker of a movie. Blade: Trinity wasn't it, though it was close. Maybe the next, Wesley Snipes-free Blade or Whatever movie we keep hearing about will do it. Because Reynolds has a knack for delivering one-liners that recalls a young Bruce Willis. Unfortunately, none of his movies have yet recalled Die Hard, or even Hudson Hawk. At this point, he'd be happy for a Look Who's Talking.

Waiting... is, by all reports, no exception. And the real problem is that, while we find his charm puckish and his looks good and teen-idoly, not everyone's so taken with his particular brand of frothy, high-calorie smarm. Some people find him...well, annoying. And the more bad movie's he's in, the more annoying he's going to seem to those people, and some other people as well. He could, in other words, go off. Sour. Pass his expiry date.

Which brings us to...

The Case For Wine Stoppers

Hmmmm. The dinner's cooking and it's starting to smell good. Let's open a bottle of wine. It's always nice to have a glass while we're cooking. But we're not going to finish this whole thing, are we? I don't know about you, but I don't want to drink a half-bottle of wine -- not if we're going to try and watch Amores Perros on DVD. I'll never make it through without dozing off.

I'll tell you what. Let's have a glass each and then recork the bottle. What? The cork's in the garbage? No sweat -- I've got these decorative wine stoppers. I don't remember who gave them to us -- my mother, I think. Here's one with a little jester's hat on the top. Just shove it in and voila! Nothing.

Because wine stoppers don't work. Or, they work in some fundamentally literal way, in that they stop the wine, which presumably wasn't going anywhere anyway, unless you're drinking it in zero gravity. And maybe if you knock the bottle over very gently, the wine stopper will keep the wine from spilling out. But who cares if it spills out? It's gone off anyway. It's ruined. Because wine stoppers are useless. They just offer a way to put a silly jester's hat on your half-finished bottle of wine like an idiot. And, seriously, you don't need to do that.

Step away from the jester's hat.

Now, those pump-vacuum-action stoppers? They work pretty well. But then again, why not just finish the bottle? Life's short and that movie's long. Trust us, you'll enjoy the nap.

The Decision

Which world do you want to live in? A world of moderation and not even the tiniest chance that one day Ryan Reynolds will find that perfect project, because he doesn't exist at all? Or a world where you finish the bottle every time and then watch Waiting... on video, and don't even care that it sucks because you're drunk anyway.

Yes, that's what we thought. Hey, we told you it was fixed.

The Winner

Ryan Reynolds