George W. Bush’s Severed Head Makes An Appearance On Game Of Thrones — UPDATED

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEtar1BgI3U&w=600&h=390]

…In news that really should have been covered by Brandon, who actually watches the show, the decapitated head of ex-president George W. Bush has put in an appearance on Game of Thrones, which is a show that possibly has elves in it, or maybe not; I’ve never seen it. ANY-way; George W. Bush, head, severed. …Yes, the head of one of our more-reviled ex-presidentes appears, impaled on a spike, at King’s Landing, which is a place on the show, possibly where kings hang out, I’m not sure.

The head appears on Episode 10 of Season 1. You can see in it the video at the top. io9 explains the rest:

If you keep your eyes peeled when King Joffrey takes Sansa Stark to gaze upon the spiked head of her dead father around 12 minutes in, you’ll notice that one of the heads looks slightly familiar. Show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss explained in their DVD commentary… that the decapitated head is actually George Bush.

“The last head on the left is George Bush. George Bush’s head appears in a couple of beheading scenes. It’s not a choice, it’s not a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had around.”

“We just had to use whatever head we had around”? Seriously? Interesting. …This statement really paints an intriguing portrait of life on the set of Game of Thrones, and life in Hollywood in general; coming to work at 8 a.m. to get an early start on your show-running, stepping out of your Toyota Prius, chugging your soy latte — and then, boom, the gigantic daily trailer full of latex and plastic George W. Bush heads unloads, with the truck making that backwards-beeping sound as it backs up. Thud; the mountainous pile of heads lands, stray heads rolling to your feet. “WILL YOU STOP DUMPING ALL OF THESE HEADS RIGHT HERE?” you yell. “CHRIST WE BARELY KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THE ONES WE’VE GOT ALREADY.”

But yes, it wasn’t a political statement. “It’s not a choice, not a political statement.” Right, using the impaled head of a despised former president doesn’t really mean anything; it just randomly happened! Honest! So many heads lying around; you just grab the first one that is handy… Hoo-kay then, people who create a show that maybe has elves in it or maybe not, I don’t know. “…It just happened, it means nothing” is the lamest excuse and is the type of excuse that bros generally use with their girlfriends: “Yeah, all right, I slept with her, but it didn’t mean anythi… oh, okay, now you’re turning your back and you’re walking away now, FAN-TAST-IC. HEY, WHAT DID I DO? JUST ANSWER ME THIS; WHAT DID I DO? HUNH? HUNH?” …So yes, no hidden political meaning here, on a show that is probably all thinly veiled political allegory; probably, because I’ve never seen it.

Here, by the way, is the longest conversation that I’ve ever had about Game of Thrones, presented in IM form, because IMing is my preferred medium in which to converse:

Nicole: have you ever seen game of thrones

me: my roommate was watchinng it the other day, i was like, enh, looks cool

i’m old

i don’t mean to keep saying that i’m old, but you get like

“enh, looks like lord of the rings, cool, whatever”

i’m too busy writin’ stuff to pay attention

Nicole: youre not that much older than me

i work all day too

me: 🙂

i dunno

i never got thaaaat into TV shows

like, “Lost” looked good, but i was like, ugh, i’ll have to watch it every week, and they’ll just have new mysteries

Nicole: i think its bc my boyfriend really gets in to them

and we talk about them after

me: what do they say on game of thrones, like, “your alliance w/ the outlanders will be your downfall,” like, shit like that?

Nicole: yes

me: mm-hmm

Anyway, sorry about all of this! We’ll get Brandon to cover this type of news next time, what with him actually watching the show and such. But he’s busy right now; he’s busy out being hipster, or something. Or something.

__________

UPDATE: An-nnnd here’s an update that clarifies, well, very little, besides clarifying that Republicans will protest almost any damn thing, including shows which — like me — they haven’t seen. Anyway, here are your requisite apologies from HBO and the show’s creators:

HBO: We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake.  We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss: We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush.

So that’s been HANDLED. HBO will now delete things so that you can’t see a blurry George W. Bush that you’ve already heard about. And also, Game of Thrones rents heads “in bulk,” which probably would be less of an issue if head-renters stopped tossing in those damn random George W. Bush heads into every shipment of heads. It’s like getting a bag of yummy jelly beans except that it’s one of those bags with the gross black licorice jelly beans in there too, dammit, yuck. Or whatever. Anyway, Hollywood!  Land of magic, land of broken dreams, land of random George W. Bush heads.