A good man is hard to find

Since my husband is in the midst of trial-preparation hell, the girls and I spent a couple of days after Christmas with my parents, who live very near us. During my sojourn in the Land of Cable T.V., I happened upon a movie called In Good Company, which I'd seen once on the big screen, and which I'd mentioned briefly in the comments to this post about cultural depictions of "real men." I'm going to mention it again, because it held up on the second viewing. It's no masterpiece, but it's a good, solid film, with excellent performances by Dennis Quaid and Topher Grace. There's a moment at the end of the film when all-around good guy and decent family man Dennis Quaid tells essentially-fatherless-yuppie-wunderkind Topher Grace that he is a good man. Grace reacts as if it's the greatest compliment he has ever received, and, more than that, he reacts as if those are words he has hungered all his life to hear -- especially from another man, a mentor, a father. It's a moment that captures the essence of modern real-man-osity.