In my humble opinion, ladies and gentlemen, we have been deprived of Ed Norton for too long. We have shunned him, and it is time to right past wrongs.

Did he skirt the fringes of douchebaggery early in his career? He certainly did. Did he skim the accretion disk surrounding the black hole of Courtney Love? You betcha. But Norton persevered, emerging as an actor’s actor.

Over the past decade or so, he’s had a few more stumbles. Keeping the Faith. The Incredible Hulk. And of course, Death to Smoochy, which was like watching Paris Hilton cover your testicles in chalkboard paint, then letting her scrape her fingernails across them for an hour and a half while she belts out her rendition of “I’ve Got the Music in Me”. That may sound like a party to some of you, but you are in the minority.

We seem to have forgotten the wonders of Norton in Fight Club and Everyone Says I Love You and American History X, with its rape scene that made many a gay man recalibrate his own moral compass. As a nation of moviegoers, we have kicked Norton to the curb and subsequently curbstomped him.

But thankfully, we have the chance to make things right, because El Norton is still around. He still haunts our nightclubs, our craft services tents, our internets, and, yes, even our beaches, where he was recently spotted with his fiancee. Shirtless, might I add:

Despite the wax job and the board shorts, you know you’d hit that, right?