· Contrary to what some of you might think, just because I'm a raging commie pinko liberal doesn't mean I'm all that different from you. At the end of the day, I'm just a man. I like my beer cold, my chicken wings hot, my football loud, and my boobs D-cup or bigger. Yet there's one thing I've never gotten into: hard-core porn. Why would I want to watch two people have sex if neither one of them is me? Don't get me wrong, I'll watch naked women 'till the cows come home, but you throw a dude into the mix and suddenly the only thing I can think about is all the sex I'm not having. (That and the fact that I'm looking at another guy's dick. I really don't like looking at dicks, period, and more often than not that includes my own. But I digress.)
So it was with trepidation that I clicked this link, sent to me via Twitter by Jerry of The Joe Cribbs Car Wash. Don't blow a gasket, Jerry's married, for crying out loud, and that link is completely safe for work. But it's about a pornographic parody of "30 Rock." Here's the safe-for-work-except-for-some-naughty-words trailer:
I was prepared to hate everything about this film, based on, among other things, my revulsion at the mere thought of Liz Lemon (or a Liz-Lemon-like character) getting twisted out by one or perhaps multiple cast members of the show. That mental image still makes my inner child cry, but here's the thing: The trailer's really funny. Being a screenwriter for a porn flick has to be kind of like being Orrin Hatch's vice chief of staff for LGBT relations, but whoever the writers of the "30 Rock" parody are, they've nailed the show's comic sensibility. ("I bought this table with the money I made from my hit movie 'Little Black Baby, Cracka-Ass Parents.' ") The dude who plays the Jack Donaghy stand-in, Herschel Savage, sounds so much like Alec Baldwin I don't know that I'd be able to tell them apart with my eyes closed. Someone clearly did their research and put some effort into this, and I'm glad to see it.
It's all enough to make me seriously consider buying a copy of the DVD . . . but my mom specifically told me not to.
· Last week's Friday Random Ten+5 got me thinking about Flo, the Progressive Auto Insurance Salesgirl -- not that I shouldn't think Flo is hot, just as none of you should, but anyway, WSB News tracked her down and uncovered some interesting info about her in what I can only guess was an EXCLUSIVE interview. Among them: Her name is Stephanie Courtney, and she's 38; she's a member of the L.A. improv group The Groundlings; and she has a recurring role on "Mad Men." And it's apparently not easy being Flo:
"They tease my hair, spray it and stick the headband in it," Courtney explains. "And the makeup is like painting a portrait on my face," she says, laughing. "It's insane. It totally changes things on my face. It's like having a mask on."
I think you mean it's like having an adorable mask on. But Flo isn't bad-looking in real life, either, as evidenced by the picture with the article.
· Who is the richest fictional character in the world? Apparently it's Scrooge McDuck, whose mining/manufacturing/treasure-hunting empire is valued by Forbes magazine at around $29.1 billion. I'm not counting Uncle Sam in this ranking, because he's not so much a fictional character as he is a generic symbol for a government that can print basically as much money as it wants. I was surprised to find Princess Peach off the list due to a revolution within the Mushroom Kingdom. I have no idea how they calculated any of this, but it's still a fun read, and yes, it includes Jabba the Hutt's interstellar criminal empire.
· I've said it before on Twitter, but it bears repeating: If you're not following shitmydadsays, you're missing out on a real opportunity to maximize your Twitter potential.
· One more inuendo-riffic embedded video, courtesy of faithful reader Matt, to amuse you on a rainy Thursday: the "Shake Weight," which lets women achieve toned, shapely arms and presumably acquire some other valuable talents in the process.
· First of all, I want to thank everyone who e-mailed or commented or text-messaged their kind wishes in the wake of my granddad's death last week. The family's been taking it really well, and I think we've all been extremely lucky to have big groups of people to rally around us when we've needed it.
Incidentally, while the process of "settling affairs" is still ongoing, I was granted what I guess you could call my piece of the "inheritance" while I was up in West Virginia with the family: an unfinished bottle of Glenlivet that had belonged to Granddad. We don't have many Scotch drinkers in our family, but he was a big fan. That bottle is one that will never be finished -- I'm always going to keep a little bit sitting there in the bottom, for Granddad -- but I'm proud to have it on my shelf.
· OK, enough with the seriousness; time to get back into this "blogging" thing, which I have been extremely slack about the last few weeks. I won't say anything dumb like "It's what Granddad would've wanted," because I frankly have no idea whether he gave a crap about this blog or anything on the Internet period, but -- if I let this unfortunate event stop me from blogging, then the terrorists have won, or something. Let's bring out the Legos.
· Those were so good, let's have some more. Cakes! My favorite:
· The other day I noticed an interesting confluence in my Twitter feed -- two Twitterers I follow, one ultra-liberal and one ultra-conservative, linked to the same snippet of video from Glenn Beck's appearance on "The View." And they both agreed that Beck pretty well got his ass handed to him. See for thyself:
First allow me to stipulate two things: 1) I don't like Glenn Beck. 2) I don't watch "The View" and, thus, do not find it to be an especially stimulating venue for political debate. But with all that said, allow me to ask: What kind of fucking idiot is Glenn Beck? You know you're going on "The View," so you decide to mock (and, demonstrably, lie about) its two most recognizable stars on your radio show? To call that "bush league" would be an insult to both bushes and leagues, and to call Beck a "buffoon" would be an insult to the many people throughout history who have managed to make perfectly productive careers out of buffoonery.
Right-wingers, you can take me at my word or not, it's up to you, but your already tarnished political brand is doing itself no favors by its continued association with a whining bumblefuck like Glenn Beck. Rush Limbaugh is an asshole, and avowedly so, but at least he's occasionally an asshole in the service of some greater point or idea; Glenn Beck is just a dork who fell bass-ackwards into a TV gig and who serves no current purpose other than to give sarcasm a bad name. Cut him loose and move on.
· Conspicuously not on the list: CNN money/financial reporter Poppy Harlow. Happened to glance at her on the news the other day above the chyron "Tips for Servicing Your Hybrid" and said, out loud, "I'd service her hybrid." You know when's not a good time to say something like that out loud? When you're on the phone with your girlfriend.
Be that as it may, she's a live one, all right. But don't think for one second that I'm making her the new Hey Jenny Slater Official Future Wife or anything like that; I'm not getting my heart broken like last time.
· Let's face it, people: Statistically, 95 percent of you out there are probably disappointed to some degree with the bowl bid your team did or didn't get. So what better way to salve that disappointment than by participating in further competitive endeavors requiring you to predict the outcomes of bowls far more prestigious than yours?
Yup, Hey Jenny Slater is sponsoring an official Yahoo! College Bowl Pick'Em group, and you're all invited. (Except you. Yeah, you. You know who you are.) To join up, go to this link and enter group ID number 25595 and the password "croomtastic." And ta-da, you're part of an exclusive group consisting only of the millions of people who have nothing better to do! You pick each bowl and assign a confidence number from 1 to 34, you accumulate points with each game picked correctly, whoever has the most points after the BCS National Championship Game is played wins absolutely nothing. Sign up today!
· While you're ruminating on the bowl matchups, you can also take a look at every ballot submitted in the last coaches' poll here and see exactly where each coach ranked each team. The only voter not to include Georgia anywhere in his top 25? Oregon State's Mike Riley. Weirdly enough, though, Mark Richt didn't include the Beavers in his ballot, either. Maybe Richt and Riley hated each other as children; your guess is as good as mine. Other balloting follies can be read about and mocked openly at Simon on Sports.
· A commenter to my Christmas-list post pointed out that the link to my Amazon wish list was incorrect, so here's a new link that should do the trick. I'm not one to place an inordinate amount of emphasis on material goods, but if you were really my friend, you'd buy me stuff. Just saying.
· Josh has a highly insightful guide as to what you should do and not do when conjuring up a Facebook status update. I think J-dog is being a little dismissive of MySpace, though. It's not just "for preteens and Pedobears"; it's also for bored housewives who want to drive their daughters' middle-school nemeses to suicide. Durrr!
· Video 'splosion! First, bumper cars with real cars, otherwise known as one of the main reasons I don't live (or drive) up North:
And here's a highly overcaffeinated (and profane) TV producer using some highly inappropriate (and, from the looks of things, highly on-air) language toward MSNBC's Contessa Brewer, my new future TV newsanchor girlfriend now that Melissa Theuriau done had to go get herself murried and whatnot.
Whooooaaa, you f%$# with Contessa Brewer, you bring down the full force of the entire Hey Jenny Slater p.l.c. global conglomerate down upon you. Check yourself, bitch.
It's Thanksgiving, and Arnold T. Pants is servin' it up for the first time in quite a while. The main entree, the big preview of the Georgia-Georgia Tech game, will be along later on today for y'all to carve up at your leisure, but here's some stuff for you to nosh on until then:
· Need some bad gambling advice? Err . . . I mean, need some gambling advice, bad? My weekly picks column is up over at Dr. Saturday's joint, and not only do you get another round of stab-in-the-dark picks, you get a brief look into a family once again gripped by the Cavalier-Hokie rivalry. Virginia-Virginia Tech: It's just like Texas-Oklahoma, only without the offensive firepower, "SportsCenter" highlight-reel-making hard hits, or national-title implications! Not that any of it matters, because win or lose, my dad will still brag that UVA was founded by Thomas Jefferson, and you can't take that away from him.
Dammit, I was talking about a wall of separation between "church" and "state," not "Virginia's offense" and "the end zone."
· I didn't think anything could be tastier than Thanksgiving dinner, but thesecomments,collected by Andrew Sullivan, from right-wingtools (and a few out-of-touchDemocrats) about how Obama couldn't possibly win the presidency, are pretty delicious, if only in that ironic, Montgomery Burns "deliiiicious" way. Eat up, but not too fast, or you'll get a tummyache.
· Last political item and then I'll quit: All my peeps in Georgia, while you're out there tomorrow tearing your hair out with frustration amongst the Black Friday crowds at the malls, how 'bout you swing by your local polling place and give a very simple gift to the entire state of Georgia by voting for Jim Martin in the U.S. Senate runoff against Saxby Chambliss. Chambliss, you'll recall, is the guy who ran ads against incumbent Max Cleland in 2002 juxtaposing Cleland's face with that of Osama bin Laden and saying that Cleland, who left three limbs behind in Vietnam, was soft on national security; since then, he's done absolutely nothing of note in Washington except attempting to shield Imperial Sugar from any culpability in a February explosion at a Savannah plant that killed 14 people. Now Chambliss basically has nothing to run on this time around except for "Elect me or the Democrats will be in control over everything ARP ARP SOCIALISM ARRGGGHHH," which you can basically interpret as "I'll stand in the way of every last thing Obama tries to do to turn the economy around." Please, Georgia, for all our sakes, send this guy packing,
Oh, and Georgia fans, if you needed any further evidence that Chambliss is not to be trusted, consider: Both Martin and Chambliss attended UGA for undergrad and went on to law school, but Jim Martin got his law degree (actually, law degrees, plural) from Georgia; Chambliss shunned his alma mater to attend law school at Tennessee. And that is unacceptable.
· OK, one more political item, sort of. Last night I was watching Olbermann and Maddow on MSNBC, and both of them were giving George W. Bush the business for screwing around with the annual "Thanksgiving turkey pardon" while Obama was arranging his economic task force and looking, you know, presidential and shit. And yeah, the contrast between the two was kind of embarrassing, given that the only meaningful work was being done by the guy who isn't even president yet, but . . . you know what? Whatever else you can say about him, George W. Bush is certainly in his element with the goofy, meaningless ceremonial aspects of being president. I don't trust him to direct foreign policy and I sure as hell don't want him anywhere near a budget, but when he was pardoning the turkeys, all I could think of was, Awwww, little guy's having fun out there. His approval rating is in the tank and he's probably going to go out as one of the least popular events in American history, but for right now, at least, he's got a smile on his face.
And that made me think, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to keep Dubya (or a guy like him) around as, like, an executive-branch jester or something like that, to handle the turkey pardons and White House Easter-egg hunts while Obama tends to the serious country-saving matters. I mean, as low as Flavor Flav has sunk with all his reality-show appearances and whatnot, people forget that he really was an integral part of Public Enemy back in the day, because people might not have been able to handle all the heavy science Chuck D was dropping if Flav hadn't been there to lighten things up with the occasional dose of comic relief. That's how I see this president/president-elect relationship playing out over the next couple months: You've got Barack Obama in the Chuck D role, kicking it about the serious issues and making sure the American people know what's up about what's going on in their society, and Dubya can be the one jumping around in the background, pardoning turkeys and dancing around with visiting music/dance groups with the clock hanging around his neck. Seriously, what's the harm? Wouldn't that be a nice way to be, you know, bipartisan and stuff?
· By the way: I know I mentioned this in an earlier Dr. Saturday column -- and I know y'all read it, RIGHT?? -- that I'm headed off to Los Angeles on Friday to watch Jimmy Clausen get dismem . . . er, I mean to see the USC-Notre Dame game. I'll be in L.A. until Tuesday, so we've got some time to kill; a good chunk of it will be spent at Legoland down in Carlsbad, another chunk will no doubt be spent stalking Tom Selleck, but we'll surely have some free time beyond those two activities over the course of the weekend. So if any of y'all live in L.A. or have spent any substantial amount of time there, and know of something that we just HAFTA see/do, holla in the comments thread.
· And, finally, some side dishes in the form of YouTube videos that have made me laugh over the past couple weeks.
Flight of the Conchords' loving tribute to David Bowie:
The "pre-taped call-in show" sketch from Mr. Show:
And while not technically a YouTube, this "Daily Show" segment from the height of the Tom DeLay scandal a couple years ago is one of the funniest things I've seen on TV. Ever.
• The Sarah Palin bandwagon is beginning to unload, as right-wing columnist Kathleen Parker comes forward to say Palin should step down from the ticket. Well, there are plenty of equally qualified replacements out there . . . how does McCain/Upton '08 sound?
• Apropos of nothing, a writer for knoxnews.com in Knoxville, Tennessee, read some comment I made on this blog about Tennessee fans' tacky gameday attire and was actually inspired to solicit my opinion for an article he was writing on that very subject. I think it says something about Volunteer Nation's current mental state that they didn't immediately fill up the comments thread with angry questions about why anyone would solicit some pansy-ass Georgia fan's opinion on Tennessee's fashion sense; the first comment ("fitting, considering our team plays a relaxed style of football") pretty much sets the tone.
What this means for Georgia? Precisely dick, thanks for asking, since UT fans were (if memory serves) just as demoralized about this time last year right up until the Dawgs strolled into Neyland Stadium and got Keyser Söze'd by the eventual SEC East champs. (Keenan Ivory Wayans pops his head in through the window: "Message!")
• In other adventures in cross-promotion, my Dr. Saturday picks column is up. Trying for a perfect 4-0 after a pretty nice 3-1 record last week.
• In the Georgia preview I did for Deadspin over the summer, I made reference to the informal headline contests we'd have back in college whenever the Dawgs beat up on the 'Cocks of South Carolina. Well, the headline possibilities are certainly just as boundless whenever the Beavers face the Trojans, and even more so when the Beavers come out with a shocking upset win. ESPN's own headline ranks pretty high on the Unintentional Hilarity-O-Meter, but something like this calls for a little intentional hilarity as well, so . . . take it away, Holly:
Trojans Can’t Pull It Out
Hungry Beavers Suffocate Trojans
Trojans Can’t Get It Up For Big Night With Beavers
Sanchez Dirtied By Beaver Attack
Trojans Can’t Come From Behind, Fall Short
22 Trojans, No Protection
I would say "It gets even more out of hand in the comments," but that would imply that it was ever in hand to begin with. My personal contribution, "Trojans Break Under Pressure of Too Much Jacquizz," pays tribute to freshman RB Jacquizz Rodgers's 186-yard, two-TD performance; I welcome your suggestions in the comments.
This is as good a time as any to reiterate my support for a home-and-home between South Carolina and Oregon State. Intersectional Game of the Century? I don't think that's too much premature exaggeration, no.
· First things first: I need tickets. Three Four of them, to be exact. I'm hoping to take my family to the Georgia-Georgia Southern game this weekend so they can see a) what will hopefully be a resounding ass-whupping to kick off Georgia's title run with a bang and b) Uga VII's coronation, so if anyone's got a trio quartet of tickets they're looking to unload, I'll be willing to go $50 apiece. In fact, if you have a whole bunch sitting around that you need to get rid of, a couple of my Tent City co-residents are hunting for them as well, so that'd make . . . six? Whatever. If you've got extra tickets, holla.
I've also got a Facebook friends who's got two Alabama-Clemson tickets ready to move for face value plus 20 percent, whatever that adds up to. If you're interested in those, you can e-mail me at the above address.
· Now then: You diehard college football fans have no doubt followed Sunday Morning Quarterback's move to the cash-money-earning promised land of Yahoo/Rivals.com with his new blog, Dr. Saturday; as of tomorrow (in theory, at least), I will be a contributor to said blog. I will be writing a weekly picks column from the point of view of a schmuck who's never actually had enough money to bet on anything, CFB-related or otherwise; if you don't read it for actual wagering advice -- and you probably shouldn't -- you can at least read it so that you can pat me on the head later and say, "That was good, honey! I'm so proud of you!" OK, maybe only my mom is going to do that. But still. Boost my ego a bit and check it out.
· Nothing I write at any point during the season, however, will be as funny as this:
Imagine showing up for work and your boss saying:
“OK (your name), what we need you to do today is to go to a college campus full of hot pussy and be good-looking on national television. Oh, and be sure to watch plenty of football, talk about plenty of football, and hang out with plenty of uber-famous football coaches. Anyway, here’s your hotel key and a few extra copies for any big busty sluts that happen to throw themselves in the general vicinity of your cock during the upcoming Thursday-Sunday time frame.”
You love you some Herbstreit. And please, no comments about the gelled hair. You aren’t fooling anyone. You’re jealous. You’d gel your pubes with hot kitchen grease if it meant taking Kirk Herbstreit’s job for 15 minutes.
Why do you think your girlfriend lets you watch College Gameday, you dense fuck? Because while you’re busy geeking out over which cartoon-animal-face Lee Corso is going to put on top of his head, she’s going for an imaginary ride on Kirk Herbsteit’s pelvis.
If I'd been drinking any milk when I read that this morning, it would've been sprayed all over my keyboard. Read the whole thing, and say a silent thank-you to my college buddy Kevin W. for having directed you to it.
· Also hilarious, "The Top 10 Chick-Repellent Items of 2008," made all the more wonderful by the comforting realization that I don't currently own any of these things. Not even a Bluetooth headset, which, I swear to you, is one day going to be looked back upon as the Members Only jacket of the 2000-aughts.
"They tease my hair, spray it and stick the headband in it," Courtney explains. "And the makeup is like painting a portrait on my face," she says, laughing. "It's insane. It totally changes things on my face. It's like having a mask on."
