Finger Waggle
[X-rated movie, bacherlor party, Toronto (1990)]
While in Toronto for a bachelor party, a group of geeks decides to watch an X-rated movie in a hotel room, since, well, it’s a bachelor party. The subject of the film is a young man who is apparently having difficulty maintaining an erection, or perhaps he wants to ejaculate faster, it’s been so long and I care so little. Anyway, the female lead is some sort of sex therapist who is attempting to help him overcome his problem. She has a stopwatch to clock his spurting, and while they’re squirming away we are occasionally afforded close-up shots of the stopwatch. And the hands on that thing are just all over the place, it’s pointing straight up and then seven seconds later straight down (group of geeks, remember?). It’s clear that the original footage was generously padded with repetitive cuts, to make the hot sex even longer and hotterer. Meanwhile in the background the beginning to “Planet Claire” (The B52s) is playing, and that’s all chopped up as well. Choice. Used to call in question time-based problems, the gesture is usually performed by sticking the index fingers on both hands out and moving them jerkily in a random fashion near each other to simulate that fucked-up stopwatch while humming a continually restarting version of “Planet Claire.”
– Jeff Stendec (2005)