Great Moments in The Goon Hand

My oldest friend, semi-regular source of inspiration and sometimes personal annoyance Dan Darragh recently made an intentional suggestion for a blog topic that I thought was amusing enough to explore -- as opposed to his playing an unintentional Zmuda by feeding me entire posts via our IM chats. This could probably turn into a series if I feel like putting any work into it. We'll see...

Great Moments in The Goon Hand

We've all probably seen it, if not in real life -- say at a suburban New Jersey strip mall on a Saturday evening -- then at least in the films of Martin Scorsese. I'm talking about "The Goon Hand," which Urban Dictionary defines thusly:

Taking a firm grip of the meaty underside of a woman's upper arm, making it easy to muscle her around. Most times uttering "you're making a scene" into the woman's ear. If done correctly, it will look like you are softly touching her back and whispering something sweet to her, when actually you are leaving 4 small bruises on one side of her arm and one giant thumb bruise on the other side.

Though perceived domestic violence is not fall down laughing funny, The Goon Hand (at least in concept and when executed for entertainment purposes) has an unmistakable place in popular culture, and is at least worth the chuckle that "Bang! Zoom! To the Moon!" still gets to this very day. If you can't muster that much, then I guess this post is not for you. Doesn't make either of us an asshole, now. If you feel your ire percolating, track back to a post about me running around in my underpants when I was a little kid, or, take a look at a picture of me doing it. We're all friends here.

For this installment, I'm paying homage to Casino, in honor of a two week training program I'll be subjecting myself to for a potential stint as a bartender in a slots parlor. It features one of the Crown Princes of The Goon Hand, Robert De Niro, and is directed by - no surprise - Scorsese. Yes, even when playing a mostly non-violent Jew, it seems that Bobby D can't help himself from dealing out the "Guinnea Squeeze" especially when under the watchful eye of his paisan, Marty.

Watch De Niro administer 40 full on seconds of the maneuver to a shrill Sharon Stone in the clip below:

(Note: The Goon Hand clocks in kinda early (at the 1:03 mark), considering the entire clip is about 10 minutes long... and subtitled in Arabic. In addition to violence, the video also contains such horrors as Stone trying to make out with Joe Pesci, so viewer discretion is definitely advised!)