Last Friday I found myself in my most repeated conversation in my life.  I found myself, once again, deeply embroiled in the unsolvable (and yet, socially relevant - more on that later) argument over who was the greatest Bond.  I swear, I have been in this same conversation over fifty times in my life.  This time it was with the other guys on my team, all of whom I respect greatly and find to be most excellent in the ways of argue, although in completely different ways.  This particular argument drifted from gadgets to subplots to prissiness to ‘adherence to the original Ian Fleming ideals’ to ‘who did their own stunts’ and everywhere in-between. 

This is always a highly charged and entertaining conversation and one that I assume happens all over the country if not the entire world.  I have to believe that’s true because to think that I and my goober friends are the only ones arguing this issue is just too sad a notion for me to entertain.  I also noticed that this argument tends to be among boys.  I’m sure that there are a lot of women out there who care about this burning issue (my great friend, ls, for example (even though she’s always wrong)) but it seems like boys tend to be way more obsessed by it. To be frank, however, I have no real data to back that up.  For all I know, there are women groups out there that talk about nothing else, but I kind of doubt it.

The beauty of arguing Bond is that everyone is right.  And everyone is absolutely wrong.  There is never any hope of convincing anyone to change their mind.  Never.  Everyone knows where they stand and everyone knows that they are correct in their stance.  There is no faltering in this.  It is one of the few things in this crazy, mixed up world that we can hold on to.  We may not know what happened to all of our 401k money and we may not know how or when we can stop fighting this war that we’re in and we may not know what our kids are doing right now but, doggone it, we know how we feel about Bond.  See?  Socially relevant.

I firmly believe that some TV station, TBS perhaps, should become an All Bond - All the Time.  If that were the case, then there would always be something on.  I mean, it’s like porn (not that I know what that is like) in that you can tune into any Bond film at any point in the movie and be ok.  You already know what happened before and you already know what’s going to happen next.  Ahh, the warm blanket of knowledge.  Doesn’t that feel nice?

Anyway, that’s pretty much all I have to say about Bond right now with one exception.  I think that it’s only fair that I let you in on the truth.  And the truth is:

1) Daniel Craig.  Yes, even with only one movie under his belt.  Sorry, that’s just the way it is.
2) Pierce Brosnan.  No, he was not too prissy for the role.
3) Sean Connery.  The popular favorite but only because people are sheep and too afraid to swim against the flow.
4) Roger Moore.  A sharp dropoff from Connery because, yes, he was too prissy.**
5) Timothy Dalton.  Bland.  Tried too hard to be Connery.  Should have stuck to being Dalton.
6) David Niven.  Never seriously considered but was actually Bond in a 1967 spoof called Casino Royale.
7) George Lazenby.  Who the hell is George Lazenby?

And there you have it.

You’re welcome.

** Although Roger Moore is running a far off fourth place, Live and Let Die still remains one of my all-time faves.  Definitely Top Three of the series.  I know, weird.