Friday, January 9, 2009

LOL: Forever Youngman

Hey is Henny Youngman and he defined the one-liner; the short, simple joke delivered, in his case, as fast as humanly possible.


Hatin' On... Photoshop Morons

Somewhere along the line, "photoshop" became a verb. It also became a way for women's magazines to make already unrealistic beauty standards even more outrageous, since anyone with a computer can now be an "expert" at making eye bags and fat disappear. Then again, sometimes, "expert" doesn't exactly describe the work. We dug up these photoshop nightmares from collections like Photoshop Disasters, and didn't change a thing. As far we know, they're all authentic screw-ups and deserve every ounce of your scorn.

This is what the kids used to call a "record player." If you are old enough to have used them before Hip Hop, you'll know what's wrong with this ad.


"She was not born like other people..."


The eyes have it.

Fergie is missing something on her paw.


That crowd is full of clones!


The worst of the worst. Either someone screwed up or Jessica Simpson has a very odd growth on her shoulder.

Celebratin'... Jimmy Page

For a while, it looked like Jimmy Page was going to ruin Led Zeppelin. But, mercifully, the idea of touring as "Led Zeppelin" without Robert Plant on vocals seemed to have been permanently scuttled. Jimmy Page's manager Peter Mensch is quoted in Music Radar saying, "Led Zeppelin are over! If you didn't see them in 2007, you missed them."

That's a relief. Zeppelin might be the only band of the album-rock era that hasn't destroyed their legacy on endless "farewell" tours, with fewer and few original members each time. With memories of the Led Zep we loved from "Hammer of the Gods" still in tact, we can wholeheartedly wish Jimmy Page a Happy 65th Birthday.

Here are ten solid, unrelenting minutes of nothing but Page guitar solos. These all go to 11.

Textual Healing 01.09.2009

Buy silver! Scientists in Australia and Amsterdam think they have found way to make solar cells more efficient using silver. When struck by sunlight, electrons in a silver atom vibrate, radiating small amounts of light. If the atom is on a piece of silicon, the result is a "surface plasmon," an electromagnetic wave that runs parallel to the surface of the material propagating it. Duh. Who didn't know that?

Okay, actually we have no clue what any of that means. But the upshot is solar power might soon become more affordable.

AP reports that a Texas death row inmate pulled out at ate his only good eye. Andre Thomas, 25, was arrested for a triple murder in March 2004 and plucked out his right eye while in jail, awaiting trial. Just a few weeks ago, a death-row officer in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice found Thomas in his cell with blood on his face and took him to the infirmary.

"Thomas said he pulled out his eye and subsequently ingested it," agency spokesman Jason Clark said Friday.

Crazy old Nobel Prize® winner Paul Krugman has a new coinage, the "output gap." Given sufficient demand, he says, America would produce more than $30 trillion worth of goods and services over the next two years. But a "huge gap" is opening between what the American economy can produce and what it’s able to sell. Krugman's solution, big shock, is federal spending -- far more than Obama is proposing. Krugman says Obama's stimulus plan, "is nowhere near big enough," and thinks the US government should make up the difference.

Funny, for a couple of centuries now, the nation has been through economic ups and downs, panics and booms. But now we won't survive unless the government borrows from the future to smooth everything out? Forget individual institutions like AIG, or whole industries like car companies and National Home Builders Association, the Nobel Prize® winner now Krugman thinks we should simply bail out the entire country.

David Brooks takes a much more nuanced look at what Obama has proposed, including; tax cuts, state aid, road repair, broadband projects and a new power grid. Brooks says it will "be the most complex piece of legislation in American history." As if the policy wasn’t complicated enough, he says, Obama promised to pass it through a legislative process that will "transform politics," with no earmarks or pork.

Brooks calls the plan "daring and impressive," but fears the task will be hard, as Obama is asking Congress to "submit in a way it never has." By this time next year, Brooks says, Obama will "either be a great president or a broken one."

Let's all hope for "great."

JockSniffing 01.09.2008

Does anybody feel like college football has a national champion? Of course not. That was a rhetorical question. Now that the season is all over, it's time for the "Oklahoma lost to Texas, Texas barely beat Penn State and USC crushed them, so USC would beat Florida" arguments begin. We'll stay out of it.

You also won't hear the Grind joining the cacophony of those calling for a playoff, including the President-elect and Congress. We aren't among those who want all the rich guys on bowl committees strung up by their multicolored blazers. No, it's not because we love the bloated BCS, but because a playoff system will ruin college football's regular season.

Of all the big spectator sports in the country; MLB, NBA, NHL, NCAA hoops, NHL and even NASCAR, only college football has a regular season where every single week counts -- where even one bad performance is enough to dash a team's title hopes. Add a playoff and all that changes.

The question is how we define "best"? Do we want to reward the team that plays well all season, or one that gets hot at the end of the year? In the NFL, as the Giants showed last season, a middle-of-the road team can squeak into the playoffs, suddenly click and win it all. In college football that can't happen, so the regular season is much more important. Right now any loss for a contender, like Penn State falling at Iowa this year, is a bone-crushing disaster. With a playoffs, teams could lose even a few games and still be in the championship hunt.

Here, an inescapable dynamic of competition would come into play: When losing isn't a very big deal, winning becomes a lot less fun. Making NCAA football's regular season less important, changing something that makes the sport unique, would inevitably suck a lot of the drama out of those glorious afternoons in the fall.

In non-college football news, Chris Carter said something mean about Terrell Owens on TV, and TO blogged a response. Wake us when recess is over.

Sports by Brooks has the story on fútbol mega-star Cristiano Ronaldo totaling his Ferrari in the always embarrassing single-car wreck. Thank goodness. Without insanely overpaid athletes buying cars they can't drive, exotic makes like Ferrari would have to close up shop.

Corky Simspon, a grown man with a child's name, admitted he made a mistake by not voting Rickey Henderson into the Hall of Fame. The 70-year-old Simpson, who writes a weekly column for the Green Valley (Ariz.) News & Sun, relegated Henderson to a list of also-rans. ESPN.com's Rob Neyer wrote about it and started an uproar in sports blogdom.

Fellow Green Valley News sportswriter Nick Prevenas said several hundred people posted comments under Simpson's column at the newspaper's website

"Usually, we're lucky if we get one comment on a story," Prevenas said.

GearMania: Dogtown

You've got to be careful about buying stuff for your dogs. There's a very fine line between clever and cute, and it isn't one a man should cross. If it's cold outside, for instance, and you have a short-haired dog, there's nothing unmanly about throwing on a dog-sweater to keep him warm -- preferably one that's emblazoned with the insignia of your favorite sports team. Just be careful, it's easy to slip from being a guy who takes good care of his animal to being a guy who plays dress-up. Here's a good rule of thumb: If you buy your dog hats, seek help immediately. In the entire history of the species, there has never been a single dog that likes wearing a hat.

What dogs do want is a task. They love having a job to do, which is what makes this saddlebag-style carrying pack so effective. The dog gets something useful to do, and you get a beer cooler with four legs.

This country produces an enormous amount of dog crap each year. We started to search for exactly how much poop is produced, but decided against it. The number has got to be in the millions of tons per year and that's not an image anybody needs in their head. Somebody, somewhere must be working on way to put that stuff to good use.

If you want to use dog-power more directly, you have two choice, rollerblade with a pack like Caesar Millan, or get the Dog Powered Scooter system. The harness and adjustable metal rig runs $250, shipping included. You can hook it up to a bike or buy the specially-built Willy Scooter seen here. Next tie this year, you'll be in the Iditarod.

The simple things in life are best, and there is no simpler dog toy than Kong. When nothing is left on earth but cockroaches; when the moon turns red and stars fall from the sky, the Extreme Kong will yet endure. Too bad there won't be any dogs around, because throwing the King send them into spasms of indescribable joy.

BabeWatch... Salma Hayek

The first season of 30 Rock was so dazzling, largely, because it was about a TV show. That is, the show followed a single woman, Tina Fey, running a weekly, live, late-night comedy show, dealing with writers, actors, bean-counting suits and, occasionally, her personal life. There was political and corporate satire, delicious tension between Liz and Jack, Alec Baldwin's character, and the sense we were getting a lot of thinly-disguised tidbits about life behind the scenes at Saturday Night Live. Like "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "Mary Tyler Moore," "SportsNight," and others, "30 Rock" looked destined to join the pantheon of great TV shows about TV shows.

Then came Sarah Palin, and the Wink Seen 'Round the World. Fey went from critical darling to national cover girl. Great for her, but the show went sour.

This season, crying for ratings, the character-driven comedy has given way to manic plotlines and stunt-casting, notably Jennifer Aniston, Steve Martin and Oprah. Thus far this season, we have watched Liz fall for a reclusive millionaire, give Christmas presents to poor kids, try to adopt a child, go to a high school reunion and hallucinate on a plane. The only thing she hasn't done is exhibit any interest in putting on a weekly comedy show.

Anyway, last night's shark-jumping guest star was Salma Hayek, who is still insanely hot.






Today in Sex 1.09.2009

Reuters reports that Australian police are looking for a sex-doll bandit. A man in Queensland has apparently broken into three adult shops, had sex with a blow-up doll named "Jungle Jane," and dumped them afterward. The owner of the sex shops told police, "He has been taking the dolls out back, blowing them up and using the dolls and leaving them in the alley." Police told the Cairns Post that officers had taken DNA samples from the crime scene.

In other words, this guy not only has a sex-doll fetish, he has a fetish for a very specific brand of sex doll. He also seems to want a fresh one every time. We can't say that we blame him for that. It must be the "new sex-doll smell."

A new book chronicles the kinky life of the designer who came up with Barbie dolls. Yale-educated Jack Ryan, who started his career as a Pentagon missile engineer, was a "full-blown seventies-style swinger" with "a manic need for sexual gratification," says author Jerry Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer's "Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel" delves into Ryan's marriages, orgies and his life as a closeted homosexual.

Deep in your heart, you always really know that ken ways gay.

The Great American Condom Campaign wants to distribute a million condoms to colleges and universities around the country. Individuals or groups who submit an application with a distribution plan will be eligible to receive a box of 500 condoms for the spring 2009 semester.

Only 500? At the Grinder, we go though that many in a week. Then again, we mostly use them for water-bomb fights.

Research at Emory University says more than a third of teens who say they use condoms every time are either not telling the truth or using the condoms incorrectly.

In a survey of about 700 sexually-active girls aged 15 to 21, almost 200 said they had had sex in the previous two weeks and used condoms every time. Vaginal swab tests indicated at least 34 per cent were either lying or using the condoms wrong. Eve Rose, research director at Emory's school of public health, says the young women "may have responded with socially desirable answers." "With condom use specifically," she said, "We just don't really know if they're being accurate, so I think this is very helpful to have bio-markers to validate."

That's doctor-speak for "everybody lies about sex."

Las Vegas Weekly, reporting on the annual Adult Entertainment Expo and Adult Movie Awards, says Pink Visual wins for the cleverest marketing gimmick of the year. In at least one of the men’s rooms at the Sands Expo Center, the standard urinal cakes in the men's rooms with a motion-activated speakers that set off sexual moans and groans when a guy unzipped.

Because nothing says "erotic" to a man like being in a public restroom while a dozen other guys are taking a whiz. Sexy time!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Celebratin'... Awards for Awards

If they gave out trophies for acceptance speeches, and someday soon they probably will, we'd give the first one to Russell Crowe winning the Best Actor Oscar for "Gladiator" at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards®. (Sorry it's just a link. Those rascals at the Oscars® blocked embedding. Doh!)

Hatin' On... The Peoples' Choices


Last night we watched the Peoples' Choice Awards. Why not? Everybody needs to get their hate on, and the PCA provided opportunities galore. Even by the standards of awards shows, this one was stupefyingly unwatchable.

First, let's address the constant harping on the word "People." Speaker after speaker said, "This is the peoples' trophy," "The people decided, and "This one is for the people!" It all sounds vaguely Communist. Anyway, "the people" didn't decide Jack Squat. The awards were really picked, as the pre-show disclaimer clearly explained, not only by online polls, but with "market research." In other words, the trophies were given to whoever was willing to show up.

Need more reasons why the PCA's stunk and we are mad at ourselves for watching?

The Best Talk Show nominees were Ellen, Regis Philbin and Letterman. How does that work? We're not Jay Leno's biggest fans or anything, but it's hard to understand how the talk show which has the highest ratings every night wasn't even nominated for the trophy.

Dakota Fanning. She looked suspiciously like a 'tween, in her powder-blue satin, off-the shoulder gown. Two or three more years of playing precocious kids, and Fanning will be ready to take her rightful place in the firmament of Hollywood stardom. By which we mean she will play a character who has sex on-screen.

Jewel's breasts. They're here. They're gone. They're back again. Those things go up and down like the bladder in a an old pair of Reebok Pumps.

















Dumb, made-up categories reminiscent of the MTV Movie Awards. Take, for instance, "Best on Screen Match-up." What an awful, awful title for a category. How about calling it "Best Pair," "Best On-Screen Duo," or "Best Chemistry"? Seriously, did 9th Graders write this crap?

Hugh Laurie. In his acceptance speech, he joked that "even if you didn't vote for me, I'll still be your favorite TV actor." It was a play on Obama's "Even if I didn't win your vote...," the funniest line of the night and almost no one in the audience laughed.

Debra Messing did a good job and it made sense to have her present for Best Guest Appearance. "Will & Grace" had more than their share of great guest stars. Still, she is Debra Messing, and so we are endlessly annoyed by her mere presence.

Gavin Rossdale's sleeves were about three inches too long for him. Hey, remember when people made fun of his band, Bush, because Rossdale was the punk rock teddy bear that Kurt Cobain never would or could be? My, how times have changed. Listen to the whiny crap that passes for rock on the radio today and you'll long for anything as hard as "Everything's Zen."

Finally, Best Leading Man was one of the categories where the winner was read off, rather than the trophy being awarded in person. Brad Pitt won. We bet they would have given him the trophy live if he'd agreed to actually show up. Ah, well. Brad must be saving all his best red carpet poses for the Golden Globes.

LOL: King of the Road Signs

As The Five-Man Electric Band sang, and Telsa famously covered, "Dude, WTF with this sign?" Oh, well, it was something along those lines. Here's the song:



Now check out some of our favorite idiocy from the road.

Well, geez. We'd hope there would be more than one.













Hey, who knew those things also had wheels?













The Spirit lives here?























Um... We might have already had too much.

Textual Healing 01.08.2008

Rather than start with what's in the New York Times, we start with news about it. The Paper of Record, the Old Gray Lady, badly in need of Botox, has started selling ad space on the front page. The paper is also considering selling their stake in the Boston Red Sox to stave off impending bankruptcy. This should surprise no one. The Times has been heading down this path for more than ten years with the effort to market the paper nationally, as the intellectual's alternative to USA Today. This, from the outset, was dumb.

The Times could never be a truly national newspaper, simply because half the stories, even in the "national" editon, have to do with the the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metroplex and don't matter to anyone else. A scandalous borough president in Brooklyn just isn't going to matter much to people in Dallas or Pittsburgh.

Secondly, any business model based on distributing old school, paper-and-ink newspapers across North America every morning was doomed to fail, which has been obvious to anyone with a computer since 1996. But the advent of Craigslist was the true disaster, ensuring newspapers will simply never again have the kind of revenue stream they once enjoyed.

The Times, and most other failing publications around the country, will continue to exist -- at about a third of their present size As the Christian Science Monitor did last year, more and more newspapers will go digital only, employing plenty of content creators, but far fewer printers and truck drivers. Big deal. In the long history of capitalism's creative destruction, the supposed Death of Journalism looks lot more like a minor shift in distribution.

Speaking of the Monitor, the have a nicely balanced piece on almost-erstwhile President Bush, noting Bush gets "little credit for ridding the world of Saddam Hussein." Nor is there "much praise for his oft-voiced calls for democracy among the presently unfree peoples around the world."

What went wrong? "First, there was resentment at the manner of the demands. They were interpreted as an imperious diktat from a powerful America." The successful invasion of Iraq was succeeded by a slew of post-war political and economic blunders that "made it a poor example of American nation-building." Finally, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, rightly or wrongly, became "tragic symbols of what was perceived to be inhumane American treatment."

The author has salient advice for how the incoming administration might improve America's image: Give a major speech in Muslim capital. To us, that sounds like a fine idea. A gesture of trust and goodwill towards the Muslim world, a speech like that could be seen live by hundreds of millions, maybe billions. We'd sure watch. Whatever the country does and doesn't know about Obama's policies, the man clearly, in Emerson's phrase, is "fit to stand the gaze of millions," with a magnificent grasp of his own symbolic power.

JockSniffing 01.08.2009

Ready for the BCS "championship" tonight? We've bet the mansion on Oklahoma; too much Sam Bradford. Or was it Florida, and too much Tebow? If you'll be at your computer during the game (poor you), Deadspin will be blogging live, using some fancy new RSS feed.



Washington DC is also ready for the BCS, reports CNN. With nothing more important to worry about, the Federal Government is gearing up to battle the lords of college football. The College Football Playoff Act of 2008, introduced December 10, by Rep. Joe Barton, (R-Texas) would prohibit, "the promotion, marketing, and advertising of any post-season NCAA Division I football game as a national championship game unless such game is the culmination of a fair and equitable playoff system."

Oh, goody. It's ever so reassuring to know that our elected representatives are diligently at work, ensuring the safety and prosperity of the Republic.

Deciding what constitutes "a fair and equable playoff," in college football, of course, will be only slightly less complicated than perfecting cold fusion or finding peace in the Middle East, but we're sure that Congress can get it done.

USC's Rey Maualuga is sorry for his playful dancing with Erin Andrews before the Rose Bowl. After an uproar on the internet, Rey decided to send an email and call Ms. Andrews to apologize for his pre-Rose Bowl shenanigans. Good man.



Adam "Pacman" Jones, released yesterday by the Dallas Cowboys, is denying ESPN's report that he arranged for someone to shoot at three men outside a Atlanta night club. A Cowboys Blog says Jones is so mad about the report, which (probably) got him fired, he is planning legal action against the network. "It will be a lawsuit in a week against ESPN," Jones said.

Good luck there, Adam. You do know that ESPN, owned by ABC/Disney, has entire buildings full of lawyers just waiting to destroy anyone that tries to sue them. Trust us on this, kid. Just shut up, save your money, play in the CFL for a while and fade away. We'll see you in about five years on "Celebrity Rehab."

Oh, and Drew Magary? He's just a little bit peeved about NBC hiring of Matt Millen as an analyst. Just a little bit.

GearMania: MegaChair



The biggest hit so far at the 2008 CES isn't some crazy new laptop that runs off methane, or a cellphone that pays your bills, starts your car and makes popcorn. It's a chair. Specifically, the new Inada Sogno robotic masseuse chair. With 120 square inches of massaging surface, it's more like something you get in, than sit on -- kneading your back, neck, butt, arms and legs. With a price tag of $6500, this masseuse should also give a happy ending.

BabeWatch... Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway is busting out all over. She has a new boyfriend, a new movie with Kate Hudson, and is receiving all kind of awards for "Rachel Getting Married." We are still waiting for a sequel to "Havoc." In the meantime, these shots will have to do.





Today in Sex 1.08.2009

A leading Chinese search engine has apologized for providing links to pornographic content. Following an official internet crackdown, the owners of Baidu said they felt "deeply guilty" for any "negative effects" such sites had on web users. Baidu was among 19 sites criticized by the government for failing to get rid of material deemed unsuitable. The sites have been told to clean up or face possibly being shut down.

You've got to love China; No fun at all for 5,000 years and counting.

Reuters reports that a senior London police officer who admitted to having sex while on duty has been fired. Inspector Masood Khan, 41, who worked for the British Transport Police, was dismissed over his tryst with a 43-year-old woman in a room at Gatwick Airport railway station.

Sounds like he was just doing his job-- to protect and serve. With an emphasis on "serve." Or maybe the officer was just checking this woman for contraband. Terrorists are getting so tricky these days.

Adult-entertainment mogul Joe Francis said Wednesday he is asking Washington for a $5 billion federal bailout, claiming the porn business is suffering from the soft economy.

"The government's handing out money to the auto industry," Francis, producer of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series, said on the phone from his Santa Monica office. "Why shouldn't it hand some to an industry the nation could not live without?"

The request, Francis said, was being made in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Francis insisted in a phone interview with reporters that this is no joke or publicity stunt, though his tone suggested otherwise.

Bravo! Francis, trying to make a point about bailout madness, clearly understands how capitalism should work better than anyone currently in Congress.

Paris Hilton insists she just kisses the majority of her suitors. She told Glamour magazine, "I've only done it (had sex) with a couple of people. People make up stories, but mostly I just kiss. I think it's important to play hard to get. Nobody wants the fake Prada bag; they want the brand new bag that no one can get and is the most expensive."

Did she just compare herself to a bag? We know "a couple" of guys Paris has had sex with on tape, let alone in general. She must define "kiss" much, much differently than most women.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Celebratin'... The Midnight Ride

The blog servers are acting funky today, not letting us post pictures or video, so we'll have to celebrate something besides music or comedy. How about an American Patriot? January 7th is Paul Revere's birthday. Does anybody know the real story behind his famous "Midnight Ride" in 1775? What Malcolm Gladwell called the "most famous historical example of a word-of-mouth epidemic."

Revere and William Dawes were instructed by Dr. Joseph Warren to ride from Boston to Lexington. They men were to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the movements of the British Army, which had been stationed in Boston since Boston Tea Party. At about 11 pm, Revere crossed the river to Charlestown, on where he could begin a ride to Lexington and warn the leaders of the revolution.

Riding through present-day Somerville, Medford, and Arlington, Revere certainly did not shout "The British are coming!" because the mission depended on secrecy and the countryside was filled with British patrols. He did warn patriots along his route, though. Many set out on horseback to deliver warnings of their own. By the end of the night, as many as 40 other riders were carrying news of British advance.

Revere arrived in Lexington around midnight, with Dawes arriving a half hour later. After warning Adams and Hancock, Revere rode on toward Concord, where the militia's arsenal was hidden. He was joined by Samuel Prescott, a doctor in Lexington "returning from a lady friend's house at the awkward hour of 1 a.m."

On the way, Concord. Revere, Dawes, and Prescott were captured by British troops. Prescott and Dawes escaped, but Revere was taken at gunpoint back toward Lexington by three British officers. As morning broke, they neared Lexington Meetinghouse and heard shots fired. The British officers, eager to fight, confiscated Revere's horse and rode off, letting himto simply walk back the house where Hancock and Adams were staying.

Revere's ride was not particularly noted during his life. It was over 40 years after his death, when the ride became the subject of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride," that Paul Revere, our birthday boy, became revered.

LOL: "Just Got Email from an African Prince"

What if old people got all their news from forwarded email? You mean they don't? If you enjoy making fun of folks who don't understand the Interwebs, check out the spoof Old People News from Atom.com.


Hatin' On...the Girl Pose

Way back in the day, when cellphones with digital cameras first came out, the Grinder got one of the first models and was mercilessly mocked for it by friends.

"What good is that thing?!" They laughed. "You'll never use it."

Then, just a few weeks later, the Grindmobile was hit when a crazy/bad driver ran a red light.

"There's no damage!" she screamed while jumping out of her car, before even looking at the fender she just smashed.

The woman had wild eyes and was obviously going to be a jerk about paying for the damage. What a comfort, and a revelation about the power of technology, to whip out the camera phone and document what happened. Who knew back then, in the early 2000's, cameras would become omnipresent? Okay, everyone knew. But that doesn't mean cameras haven't also become hateful in many, many ways.

Of course, the Grinder is glad to laugh at pictures of athletes getting drunk and ogle celebrity nipple-slips. Obviously, we are delirious that sexting has become fashionable among high school cheerleaders. Still, we can't help but think our collective national obsession with cameras is sucking some of the fun out of American nightlife.

One the most basic level, cameras suck because they keep people from acting like morons. There was a time, dangit, when a man could get publicly drunk and not expect pictures of his stupor to show up on the Internet the next day. Today, you take one dance-floor pratfall, you wear one lampshade on your head, you pass out once a friend's house where friends draw on your face with magic markers, and your shame becomes immortal.

Even worse, than the loss of privacy, is the nefarious Girl Pose -- a symbol of everything wrong with American photo-philia. You know the Girl Pose if you have left the house within the last decade. A pack of young women press their cheeks together, scream and pretend they were having a fabulous when someone with a camera just happened to walk by.

The Girl Pose, as well know, is a sham. Immediately before most of those pictures are taken, the women in them are doing absolutely nothing of interest. Usually, it's just a group of girls standing around bored until someone gets a camera out and, bang, suddenly we are in Times Square on New Year's Eve. They will hug, kiss, smile, laugh, vamp for the camera, and, in extreme cases, flash gang signs and a kissy face; a whole separate category of evil we haven't time to address here.

We've got no issue with the endless panoply of party pictures on MySpace and Facebook, except to note that no one in them is having as much fun as they pretend to be. But there's an insidious effect at work here. Cameras have gone from a fun addition to a night out, to an essential tool for leaving the house, like keys and wallet. A nation of exhibitionists and voyeurs, we act like nothing is worth doing unless someone else will see it. Soon, no one will do anything but take pictures of themselves. No dancing, no listening to live music, or playing pinball. Just people taking pictures of themselves having their picture taken.

The next time you go out, watch the Girl Pose girls. They are often so busy posing and pretending to have a good time, they never have any actual fun. Take it from the Grinder, many, many things in life are worth doing even if no else knows about them. In fact, some things in life are only worth doing if no one knows about them. Like, for instance, spying, or having sex with unattractive women and some other stuff that we aren't going to tell you because we don't want anyone else to know.

JockSniffing 01.07.2008

Eli Manning got a sweet 28th birthday present; a lap dance from his wife, Abby. The New York Post says Giants teammates Amani Toomer, Brandon Jacobs and Kevin Boss joined Manning at a nightclub on Friday for the soiree. After a few rounds of tequila shots, Eli's wife gave him a special lap dance to Beyoncé's, "Single Ladies." Lucky men. We are excited to see him this weekend, when he dances with the Eagles' defense.

For 2008, Versus saw the biggest viewership gains among cable sports nets for total day programming and primetime, up 20.2% and 23.6%. Sports By Brooks believes the Comcast/Versus conglomerate could be mounting a challenge to ESPN. Don't laugh. It could happen. Suppose that "Global Warming" turns out to be "Global Cooling," as some are suggesting. North America would freeze over and hockey would once more become a popular sport, meaning that Versus' NHL broadcasts would bring in the massive revenue needed to let them to buy broadcast rights for the NFL, NASCAR and MLB. Other than that...Not so much.

Blogger Five Tool Fool has Ten Rules for Broadcasting the NFL playoffs, like "No one may, under threat of immediate execution, comment on how the game has been affected by all of the extra commercial breaks, and "If the game is a low-scoring tie after the first quarter, it must be compared to the early rounds of a heavyweight fight." Check out the other eight rules here.

Via Deadspin and the FOX News affilate in Detroit comes this tale of a man who got an 0-16 tattoo to celebrate the Lions winless season.

Textual Healing 01.07.2008

Alex Golub is an anthropology professor of at the University of Hawaii who usually specializes in the study of New Guinea. But these days, Golub is immersing himself in an even stranger culture; hardcore World of Warcraft players. Golub, who is something called a "level 80 Restoration-spec Shaman," tells WoW Insider (Yes, it exists.) he is researching "American cultures of self-control, efficiency, masculinity and success amongst players of WoW." Thank goodness someone is.

Everyone else in New York State may be down on Caroline, but Maureen Dowd in the New York Times wants Kennedy in the Senate.

John Bolton and John Yoo, also in the Times, say that whoever gets New York's open senate seat, the body needs to reassert its treaty power. The two stress the role of the Senate in avoiding global treaties that "push the nation into quixotic and impractical global governance regimes." They cite President Clinton, who didn't consult congress before singing the Rome Treaty of 1998 (an act that established an International Criminal Court for subjecting American soldiers to international judges.) With the new president, Bolton and Yoo are worried specifically about global agreements on climate change that the Obama might sign and cede control over American energy policy to the UN.

Frankly, we find the hysterical coverage of Israel's action in Gaza annoying. Israel has been fighting for it's existence since it came into existence, and this semi-annual breakout of violence doesn't strike us as any different from last summer's excursion into Lebanon, the West Bank incursions of the last decade, or anything else that's happened in the Middle East since Israel came into being.

It always goes the same way. Muslim fighters, funded by other countries in the region, gradually increase guerrilla/terrorist attacks until Israel responds with massive force. The world accuses Israel of "war crimes" and "massacres," and compares the invasion to the Nazi Holocaust. Israel says it's self-defense. Europe and the UN call for Israel to stop attacking immediately, while the US urges "restraint." The media, keeping track of body counts like fantasy football scores, solemnly warn that Israel is making an already bad situation worse and strengthening their foes. In a few weeks, the military operation ends with a "ceasefire" and, less than year later, we do the whole thing again. Sound familiar?

However, since our job is to provide information, we'll sum up the story of the moment. An Israeli artillery shell hit a UN-run school, killing either 39, 40, 42 or 46 civilians, depending who you believe. Israel contended that Hamas fighters fired mortars from the school compound, using civilians as human shields. The United Nations called for an "inquiry," and then said there were no terrorists in the school. Israel gave the names of two Hamas miltants it says were killed in the attack. And so it goes.

GearMania: Get Wet

Winston Churchill famously said he preferred baths to showers because, "Why stand when you can sit?" But whether you lounge in the tub for hours or shower in seconds, you still need a little privacy will you are there. You also probably need to replace the nasty, moldy old shower curtain you have now with something cool.

The tribute to "Psycho" shower curtain is a whole sub-genre of the shower curtain world. Who knew? Some other curtains we saw captured Norman Bates' silhouette more precisely (he was wearing a dress for the murder). But we picked this one instead, because we like all the blood.


This Map of the World curtain shows people you think globally and care about what happens in the world. Either that, or you just like pretending your member is as big as New Zealand.


There was a time when Harley-Davidson was for rebels, criminals and freethinkers, not suburban dads trying to find themselves. Return to those thrilling days of yester-century with the Easy Rider shower curtain. Lather up while ignoring that genuine bikers don't really like to bathe.


When you really want to pimp out the bathroom, there's just no other choice.





Today in Sex 1.07.2009

A group of Brazilians has created a on online database of prostitutes following the model of the Wikipedia. The site's creators said the goal is to "provide a clear, quick view" of each prostitute, with information about her measurements, sex practices, price, location, and contact information. The data includes details like eye color, shoe size, silicone implants and details about whether she kisses, practices anal sex or gives fellatio without a condom

The only information that's not contained on the site? Whether the girl is really a cop.

Nearly a year after headlines revealed a City Hall sex scandal, the former top aide to ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Christine Beatty, was sent to jail Tuesday to serve the same punishment as her boss: 120 days with time off for good behavior.

As far as political scandals go, the Kilpatrick scandal was just lame. No former Girls Gone Wild-turned hookers, no gay sex in an airport bathroom stall, no trying to sell a Senate seat. These two were busted for sending each other dirty texts. Booooring.

A prosecutor has filed papers asking a judge to ignore Roman Polanski’s request for a dismissal of a 30-year-old child sex case until the director returns to the US. A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 21, but the prosecutor wrote that the proceeding should be canceled, "until such time that Mr. Polanski surrenders to the jurisdiction of this court." Polanski has been a fugitive since 1978, when he fled the country before sentencing after acknowledging having intercourse with a 13-year-old at Jack Nicholson’s house.

But just because he's admitted to banging a 13-year-old, doesn’t mean he can't win an Oscar.


Tuesday, January 6, 2009

BabeWatch... Rachel McAdams

Creamy-complexioned Rachael McAdams played the hot chick in the aptly-named Rob Schneider movie, "The Hot Chick." She was queen bee Regina George in "Mean Girls," and the object of Owen Wilson's affection in "Wedding Crashers," But the Canadian-born actress really broke out in the chick-flick, "The Notebook" which airs tonight on ABC Family. Instead of watching that sappy borefest, check out Rachel here instead.