Whaddup, Phoenix?

Remember when you first saw Joaquin Phoenix, barely a man, playing weedy bad guys or off-to-the-side characters? You kind of knew who he was, maybe you put two and two together and figured out he is River's brother, then you saw Gladiator and thought, hmm, he makes a great bigger-than-life bad guy. Then you saw Quills and never looked at a man in a cassock the same way after. Then he did Walk The Line and sealed his fate as a charming leading man forever.

It's a tragic day when this slow cultivation of a man-hero gets suddenly deflated. As I trawled through my early-morning-no-one-around-to-bother-me gossip and fashion sites, I come across this nugget, though definitely not of gold:


thanks to the Fug Girls for this pic

Joaquin. Joaquin! What happened? Where are the green grey eyes, the chiseled chin, the run-your-fingers-through-my-hair-baby hair? You look like Peter Russell Clarke (Ozbies should remember him), except he looked better!

Where did all this go?


And this?


Your people haven't been very observant, or else they would have noticed the tell-tale signs. The growing of the beard, the non-brushing of the hair, the sunglasses, the whole thing. It's a short step from this:

-which is kind of below-the-radar yuckiness, a little ashton kutcher-y, but acceptable in a casual, slightly slick sort of way - to the mug shot you see above.

But obviously your peeps didn't catch you at the moment you went over the edge, and now it seems there is no turning back. Don't throw it all away, JP, we need you! There's only so many times I can rewind and flash forward my Quills DVD, dude.


Can you tell I have absolutely nothing to do today?
C