Obama Is The New Black

My friend used to subscribe to Time Magazine, but never actually got around to reading most of them, so I'm always picking up old issues whenever I'm at his house.  Anyway, I quickly glanced at last August's issue and saw that the cover said, "Hail to the hip-hop President."  And I was like, "Holy shit.  That's so racist!" . . .

Then I realized it was written under the heading "Haiti," and it was about Wyclef, the famed hip-hop artist, wanting to be President of Haiti, and not about President Obama being called "hip-hop" because he's black.  Oops.  Who's the racist now?

Hang Loose, Old Chap!

I was leaving a restaurant I'd just dined in, and my waiter said, "Cheers, brah."  Cheers, brah?  What're you, a British surfer?  To quote Forgetting Sarah Marshall, "That does not make you a citizen of the world; it makes you full of shit."

(And no, he wasn't Australian.  He was American.)

Going Robespierre...on Hipsters

If you actually have a mustache tattooed on your index finger, it should be required by law that you have that finger amputated.  I'm voting we usher in a second Reign of Terror in which cigar cutters replace guillotines in the befingering of these people in the public square...or the mall, by the Jamba Juice...whatever...

10 Most Masturbated-To (by Me) Girls of the 90's

So, excluding some girls from the one Playboy Magazine I managed to procure, whose names I don't remember, these 10 angels made my already-great teenage years significantly better.  Maybe you enjoyed a similar, intimate experience with these ladies...but don't tell me if you did.  I can get jealous...

First, the classy broads:

1. Cindy Crawford - One of my first loves.  My friend and I were so in love with her that we actually pooled our money to buy her workout video on VHS and set up a schedule in which we'd alternate weeks with possession of said video:

2. Claudia Schiffer - I pretty much had every one of her calendars.  She helped me begin the healing process of forgiving the Germans for the Holocaust.  And like the Holocaust, I will never forget her:

3. Elle Macpherson - Probably my favorite of all time.  She dominated Sports Illustrated's swimsuit editions.  She dominated my masturbation schedule.  And ultimately, she may be responsible for me eventually dying alone, because no one will ever match her beauty:

4. Christie Brinkley - Possibly my first object of affection...other than my stuffed koala bear which was fucking adorable and soft as hell.  Christie marked the beginning of a long-lasting love affair with blondes.  A real no-no as a Jew:

A woman of film:

5. Kim Basinger - Oh, Kim, if you were mine, you'd never leave the house...because you're agoraphobic.  Psychological disorders aside, we'll never forget her nude scene in The Getaway:

Now the TV dames who never really found their way on the big screen:

6. Nicole Eggert - Forget Charles in Charge, this lady peaked in the oft-played-on-late-night-Cinemax cinematic masterpiece Blown Away; there was nowhere to go but down from there.  Rip it!

7. Alyssa Milano - Basically the brunette equivalent of Nicole Eggert, and no less lovable.  She had a chance there with an appearance in Fear, alongside Marky Mark and Reese, but it didn't stick (see Charmed):

8. Tiffani-Amber Thiessen - I keep the "Amber."  Fuck that.  Only good thing about Saved by the Bell:

9. Aunt Becky from Full House (Lori Loughlin) - She feels out of place amongst these sluttier TV types, but I didn't think she quite attained the classy, supermodel status of the first four girls.  Bonus points for her appearance in an episode of Seinfeld:

Miscellaneous:

10. Vanessa Williams - Aside from her brother dominating possibly the best-ever episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as a Proactiv commercial, she was hot.  Very hot.  Her Penthouse spread was legendary:

The Psychology of Porn

I came up with a theory about why German porn tends to be so over-the-top sadomasochistic and disgusting: it's a form of self-flagellation that stems from a deep-seated sense of post-Holocaust guilt.

My friend argued that it's more a result of repression in every day life and pointed to bizarre Japanese porn as further evidence for his theory.  Thoughts?

Footprints in the Sand...

Here's a Robert Fulghum quote:

"Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is IT goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found. Medieval theologians even described God, in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end."

This is why religious people are dumb.  Shit like this actually counts as a legitimate argument for God's existence just because it makes their balls tingle.  Ugh...

We Suck At Commercials

Other countries are so much better than us at making commercials.  Actually, to be honest, commercials in other countries manage to suck even worse than ours, hard as that may be to believe, but their good ones are so much ballsier than our good ones.  Exhibit A (video):

Speaking of Overcompensating for One's Demographic's Shortcomings...

So like I was saying in the previous post, sometimes individuals have to take it upon themselves to undo the damage done by other, more visible members of their group.  This reminded me of a story...

I was hostel-hopping up the east coast of Australia with my brother a few years back, and at one particular stop, there was a nice little communal fire pit by the beach.  My brother and I sat there one evening, and it wasn't long before several other sweaty, thrifty vagrants like ourselves joined us.  We all ended up talking and introducing ourselves.  One of the others was a 6'4" beast of a German, named Olaf.  Blond crew cut, blue eyes, broad shoulders, weighed about a deuce-and-a-half... If this guy's grandfather wasn't a Nazi, then I'm not a complainer. 

Anyway, my brother's name is Yoni, which is short for Yonatan, which is the Hebrew version of Jonathan.  But rest assured, his name is Yoni.  That's what he's always gone by, that's what everyone knows him as...you get what I'm saying.  So Yoni's turn comes to introduce himself, after we've already seen Olaf and heard he's from Germany, and Yoni chickens out because his name is so Jewy and says, "My name is Jonathan, and--". 

Of course, there was no "and," because I'm a confrontational asshole and couldn't just let it slide.  I instantaneously cut him off and said, "His name is Yoni.  It's Israeli."  Olaf tensed up immediately, and awkwardly plunged into a long story about how his best friend at work, in Germany, is black, and one day a customer called his friend a nigger, and he stepped in and yelled at the racist offender, etc...

So I guess my point is, Olaf felt he needed to be extra vocal about his personal lack of prejudice in order to stress that not all Germans, especially those born post World War II, are genocidal maniacs with leather boots and funny mustaches.  And while I don't think he should be held accountable for what his grandparents or even parents may have done, I do appreciate his effort to be clear that he didn't think the same way, without explicitly saying something trite like, "Yeah, sorry about that whole 'thing' there.  Our bad.  We're totally different now."  We ended up hanging out with big O for a bunch of hours, and he was a really good guy.  I'm glad I broke the superficial ice by being momentarily prickish...