Press Release of the Week: This one's for the ladies

We here at Barrelhouse have been accused of being too man-centered. A boys' club. Maxim-esque, even. Which is totally unfair: Barrelhouse loves the ladies! To prove it, this week's Press Release of the Week is all about you: the smokey-throated broads, the flaxen-haired beauties, the dames with gams that just won't quit.

Listen, ladies. We men know we're hard to please. We spend all our time on the couch watching sports or sports highlights or shows in which Algonquin roundtables of journalists and ex-athletes analyze sports and sports highlights. Sometimes we also watch The Simpsons, or Miss America. We communicate via a series of grunts and crotch adjustments. To other men, these signals are clear: pass me another beer; this bean dip's giving me the toots; that LaDainian Tomlinson fella sure does run good; is it just me, or is Miss Rhode Island always kind of a woofer? But to you women, these grunts are as meaningless as whale calls or monkey shrieks. We know this. We understand. We feel your pain.

But PROTW is here to help. PROTW is gonna tell you what it is your man wants.

Are you ready for this super-secret information I'm going to pass along to you? Do you appreciate the extreme gravity of this situation? Do you understand how if this information fell into the wrong hands -- the hands of the terrorists, for instance -- it could be used to undermine all the freedoms and liberties we take for granted? Do you have a pen or a pencil?

Here it comes....

Socks.

That's right, ladies: socks. Or, well, not socks, exactly, but the perfect way to buy socks..

"Socks are an absolute essential, yet it takes an hour to purchase a good pair, what with all the travel and the actual shopping," says Jacqueline Grau, founder of MySockService.com. "For the busy man of today, MySockService.com offers the easy solution of buying good socks online."

Socks. Online. Fucking brilliant.

But wait, ladies. There's more. Because you're not just ordering socks online for your man, which is something you could do on ebay, or amazon.com. No, no. This is a sock subscription service. All you do is order once, and every three to four months, your man will receive a packet of fresh black socks on his doorstep.

The idea came from Grau's husband, who worked in the software industry:

While working with numerous industry executives and company representatives, he noticed that they were all dressed very well, but the transition between shoes and suit just wasn't there. Some were wearing torn socks, while others were wearing mismatched colors, such as blue socks with a black suit and or even white socks with a black suit.

The socks get shipped three or four times a year, in packages of three, for the cost of approximately $9. Customers pick between black calf, over the calf, no-show, all in cotton, merino wool or cashmere. The web site also sells socks made solely in the US, since the US hosiery industry is currently taking a hit from socks manufactured overseas.

So there you go. You get your black socks, you avoid the mall, and you get to stick it to the foreigners. What more could a man want?

What's that? Huh?

Christ, you people are never satisfied. Colors? Patterns? Let's keep this simple, ladies. If we men can remember to wear white socks with athletic shoes, black socks with dress shoes and no socks with sandals, I personally think we deserve a high five and a cold beer. Anything more is probably going to confuse us. In fact, maybe we ought to make that one of those "Man Laws" I keep hearing so much about.

Speaking of "Man Laws" -- how's that for a transition? -- here's something else you can get for your man: a date with a bunch of half-drunk former athletes! Via ebay, you can bid on an opportunity to host former players Tony Dorsett, Jay Novacek, Keith Byars and Seth Joyner at your very own house for the Eagles-Cowboys game.

The highest bidder will be awarded a visit from the former players, who will show up at the winner's home to watch the entire game, debate football "Man Law" and discuss plays, calls and strategies. Additionally, the players will bring food, refreshments and a host of other surprises.

The bidding's currently at about two grand, which personally I think is a great bargain. Your man can find out what Tony Dorsett thinks about T.O.'s recent suicide attempt. He can finally settle the age-old question of whether ass slaps and hugs after a big play from your favorite team are appropriate signs of celebration or just kinda gay.

And while the boys are there, make sure you take down their shoe size so you can order them all some nice black socks.

Screech works blue. Very, very blue.

Apparently there is a Screech sex tape. In which Screech has a three-way. And performs a Dirty Sanchez. Or maybe none of this is true. I really, really hope it's not.

Oh, and the name of said video? Saved by the Smell.

I guess that's not a terrible name, as far as mediocre puns go, but I believe my fellow Barrelhousers can do better. So, if you had to name a Screech Powers porn video, what title would you choose?

On Television

The world is following Dave's lead and going batshit over The Wire...the thing is, there is not a backlash possible or Slate would have run a few articles dissing it already. (please note that the Zach Braff backlash is going very, very well.) The Wire is truly a brilliant show.

However, there are a few shows out there that perhaps were once brilliant but are now losing their luster. I speak, specifically, of Rescue Me's 3rd season, really the only one I've watched all the way through. It had moments of awesomeness, which were usually flanked by moments of extreme dumbness. Although the end of the season finale was excruciating to watch...but dramatically appropriate, I think. So it ended on a high note. But throughout the season, the sentimentality sometimes stooped to Ed Burns-level, and the subplots flirted with the ridiculous (I firmly believe that the gay subplot was invented solely because the show's writers realized that the two young firefighters were essentially the same character, and they had to differentiate them somehow.)

Another show that could be going off the rails is Weeds. It is still entertaining, but getting ridiculous in a way that makes the funny parts less funny. As an example, Snoop Dog is guest-starring on the most recent episode--as himself.

Any concurrences or dissents or additions?

Press Release of the Week: You Can't Keep a Good Man Down

This feature's been in semi-retirement for some time, but like Brett Favre and Joe Lieberman, Press Release of the Week refuses to bow out without a fight. Let the critics lob their cruel and hurtful and totally unfair missives our way -- You haven't thrown a touchdown pass since the Clinton administration! You lost the damn primary! You're probably a closet Frenchman! PROTW has thick skin, and knows when America needs it -- not to throw beautiful painkiller-fueled post patterns, or to serve as a tool of the glorious Republican leadership, but to report THE TRUTH.

This week's truth is that immigrants are bad news. Sure, your hippie pinko P.C.-loving friends might whine that we're all immigrants, that America is in fact a country of immigrants. But those people don't understand history. See, the immigration they're talking about happened in the past, and it's done. We're all full-up now, thank you very much. If we let in any more people it's going to be a fire hazard, and you all remember what happened at that Great White show, right? Same exact deal.

Also, this new wave of immigrants isn't made up of peace-loving Germans and Italians and British, but of scary brown-skinned people. And as every good God-fearing American knows, brown-skinned people are a Threat to The American Way of Life. They insist on driving little Toyotas and Hondas instead of SUVs of Freedom, and they won't be happy until they've stolen all of our sub-minimum-wage jobs and turned every corner hoagie shop and pizza joint into a taco stand. Actually, those churros are delicious, but that's beside the point. The brown-skinned immigrants are ruining America!

Travis Barrett knows how dangerous the brown-skinned people are, and using "current events and his imagination," this proud patriot has written what I feel safe in calling The Most Important Book of The Twenty-First Century: Strangers.

The novel begins when Good American Jeffrey Thomas opens his door and finds "a strange Latina woman named Imelda standing on his porch with a child in her arms." Jeffrey and his family are suspicious, but "she eventually manipulates her way into the house."

I doubt I need to tell you what comes next. I've seen it a thousand times before.

"Throughout the next two days, other members of Imelda's family trickle into the Thomas house. Soon Imelda's first husband, Arsenio; her son, Lope; and two children that she had with her second husband have filled the house."

They're like seagulls, these brown-skinned immigrants. You throw one of them a few breadcrumbs and pretty soon they've swarmed and started pecking your eyes out.

Imelda's son takes to spray-painting the walls of the house, Imelda tries to seduce Thomas with some kind of Mexican Voodoo, and Imelda's ex-husband, it turns out, is a dangerous murderer and "a follower of Darwinism." That means he's "willing to do anything to ensure the survival of him and his family."

Thomas and his wife do the only thing they can do -- flee the Brown Menace. But they soon discover it's not just their house that's been overtaken by illegal immigrants, but every house in the neighborhood. And not just every house in the neighborhood -- "their entire city has been taken over and more and more immigrants are arriving every day."

All I have to say is THANK GOD someone has finally mustered the courage to write this book. It's like The Birth of a Nation for our modern times, unafraid to strike fear in the hearts of good, God-fearing white people everywhere. A few months ago I read T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain, hoping he'd be brave enough to tell the truth about illegals, but all I got was a giant serving of White Guilt with a side order of moral relativity.

Of course it should come as no surprise that America's big publishing houses -- all of them bastions of Ivy League, East Coast Liberalism -- practically fellated themselves over The Tortilla Curtain but couldn't handle the truth of Strangers. Luckily, author Barrett, like Favre and Lieberman and PROTW, isn't a quitter. Faced with rejection after rejection, he persevered, eventually settling on self-publisher AuthorHouse.

Barrett is humble about his masterwork:

"[W]hat I have done that I believe is somewhat innovative - but not completely so since Truman Capote did this first in 1966 with In Cold Blood - is to infuse the story with current events, most of which I [read about in] the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers and periodicals."

According to the press release -- and I have no trouble believing it -- Strangers has already received "rave reviews," including a hard-to-win endorsement from the propieters of a web site called Mothers Against Illegal Immigrants.

So go out and buy the book, fellow Barrelhousers, and support this great American. And bolt your doors!

Ich ben ein Office

This article in Slate discusses the proliferation of Office-style comedies, not just in the U.S., but also in France and Germany.

The article brings up interesting things about the national character--stereotypes, if you will--of Germans, French, Americans, etc. He also relates a World War II anecdote about Danish border guards identifying imposters by requiring them to pronounce a particularly difficult Danish phrase.

That reminds me of a story in one of Stephen Ambrose's World War II books. German spies speaking fluent English dressed up as American soldiers, but were caught because the German forgers noticed that American ID cards said "Indentification" in bold letters at the top and they corrected the error...

Worst. Songs. Ever.

Blender has a great series of lists up right now about all the worst things in rock (worst 50 songs, worst 50 things to happen to rock, worst 50 artists). I think we can get about a month's worth of blogging out of this. But for now let's concentrate on the 50 worst songs (thanks to Backwards City for the link).

According to Blender, the 50th worst song ever is "My Heart Will Go On," by Celine Dion. The number one worst song ever is "We Built This City" by Starship. Hard to argue that either one should be left off this list, and in between there is a lot of very, very bad rock.

So, Barrelhouse peoples, what's the worst song that is not included in this list?

I'll nominate "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas, and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes. Actually, I'll pretty much nominate anything by Yes.

What Historical Figure Would You Do?

While Dave is busy blog-humping his favorite TV show, I am tasked with much more important things. Like wrestling with history. Like more specifically, what historical figure would I most want to engage in carnality with?

It's a tough call. There's the whole "What's the fuss about " like Cleopatra, or the "darn she's a bad-ass" like Catherine the Great (too intimidating if the rumors are true) and Boadicea, who took on the Romans and got 100,000 Celts killed. There's "if only in real life she looked like Cate Blanchett" like Elizabeth I, and then there's "just plain wrong" like Joan of Arc. So I finally decided to get all medieval on Heloise, known far and wide in her time for her intelligence and wisdom, and for her lover Abelard's nuts being cut off. Heloise wrote some awfully passionate, earthy letters to him also, as can be demonstrated by a quick skim here. Even I am moved by the memorable phrase: "Quorum quidem suggestionibus quid de glorioso", which, translated literally, means: "How much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood, if you catch my meaning, lover."

So, all five of you Barrelhouse blog readers, I hereby open the "choose the historical constort of your choice" forum. Preferably, someone of whom there is no extant photograh.

Best. Show. Ever.

Time for my annual post about how goddam good The Wire is. And damn, is it good. I mean great. Better than ever. Better than anything else on television, maybe ever. But since America doesn't seem to believe me (bastards), here's Slate's Jacob Weisberg:

The Wire, which has just begun its fourth season on HBO, is surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America. This claim isn't based on my having seen all the possible rivals for the title, but on the premise that no other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature.

Click here to read the entire article, which describes in much greater detail and more eloquently than I can, just how wonderful and important The Wire is.

And yeah, although I feel kind of like a "very special" jackass for saying it, I don't think its an overstatement to call The Wire important. The series has always been an unflinching portrayal of life in the inner city, with a huge, diverse cast and characters that ran the gamut from drug dealers and users to cops and congressmen and the people who are stuck in between these groups, just trying to make it from day to day. But this season moves away from the police work and into a new arena: the public schools.

It should be said now that The Wire's credibility in these areas extends directly from its creators. David Simon spent a year shadowing Baltimore homicide detectives for his book Homicide. One of those detectives was a man named Ed Burns, a former Vietnam infantry officer who was then a Baltimore cop. Following Homicide (which was the basis of the series), Burns and Simon then spent a year on a Baltimore street corner, following drug dealers and addicts and chronicling their lives in the book The Corner (made into the HBO miniseries). Turns out that following his career on the police force, Ed Burns became a teacher in one of Baltimore's inner city schools, and this season of the Wire builds off his experiences there.

So when these guys talk, they know what the fuck they're talking about.

It doesn't hurt that they've got an incredible cast to help them out -- of the 20 or 30 regular characters, there is literally not a dud in the bunch, and the new actors (the four young African American boys who are really the focus of this season), as Weisberg points out in his article, seem not to be acting so much as inhabiting their characters.

Simon and Burns are also helped out by a murderers row of modern literary crime authors: Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, and Richard Price all work as writers on the show (the only person missing, far as I can tell, is Walter Mosley).

But all this important business makes the show sound less entertaining than it is (if that's what you're looking for, check out The Corner, which is available on on-demand right now and is so "unflinching" as to be difficult but rewarding viewing). Like any great drama, or great piece of literature, The Wire keeps you coming back because you care about the characters. Whether they're a striving young politician, a down and out cop, a drug kingpin, an ex-con trying to make right by opening a boxing gym, a young kid trying to stay on the straight and narrow, a...see, I could go on and on (yes, there are a lot of characters, and yes, it takes awhile to figure out what's going on, and yes, if you're not in right now, you might want to do some serious netflix research).

But that's the thing about The Wire: like any great work of fiction, it presents people that seem real, in real situations, making difficult decisions every single day. There's no other show on television that you could really call "Shakespearen" and get away with it. I will tell you now: The Wire is downright shakespearean. Like any truly great work of fiction, it's not easy, but damn, you'll be glad you put the work in.

Questionable Celebrity Sightings

Driving home from work today, I spotted the guy with cerebral palsy from Last Comic Standing coming down the sidewalk. My first thought was Hey, it's that guy with cerebral palsy from Last Comic Standing! And then my next thought was Wow, I can't believe I just got so excited about seeing that guy with cerebral palsy from Last Comic Standing.

My critical faculties kicked back in before I honked the horn and waved, but it was closer than I'd like to admit.

Still, in the Mike Gets Excited About Questionable Celebrity Sightings Index, this one still ranks a distant third to:

--the time I spotted Principle Martino from Ed at the beach; and
--the time Mel Silver, D.D.S., ate dinner at the Charlotte restaurant where I worked.

What about the rest of you Barrelhousers? Any Questionable Celebrity Sightings? People you hate to admit you recognized?

Yes, Virginia, Garden State Does Suck

Not like I, you know, care what other people think, because I'm my own man and people just tease me all the time because they are jealous of how awesome my mom says I am, but I got a little discouraged when no one agreed with me that the movie named after a crappy state that does not let you pump your own gas really stunk it up.

Leave aside any jealousness at the meteoric talent that is Zach Braff, or his squiring Mandy Moore about town as one professional helping another professional, because he knows what it's like to be lonely in a new city. From the first time I saw the trailer I knew exactly what that movie would be about, and when I did, all my suspicions were confirmed. Cloying, cliched, and dramatically as incoherent as its protagonist. (Great soundtrack, though!)

Finally, though, some confirmation that I wasn't all wet. Via Defamer, I give you Zach Braff’s 10 Easy Tips for Writing Films About Twenty-Somethings®

Dear People Who Think Dane Cook is Funny

What the fuck? What? The? Fuck?

Really?

You really do?

Funny?

Wow. Um, okay.

So this is the thing: I caught about a half hour -- literally all I could take before my head exploded, and not from laughter -- of Dane Cook's Vicious Circle on HBO the other night. I watched you people greeting this guy like he was the comedic version of Muhammed Ali, watched you stand and applaud and cry and laugh and poke each other as he sauntered hippily into whatever arena he had filled up with you people. And then I watched as he launched into the lamest, unfunniest, lamest, most stupid, lamest, and lamest routine I'd ever heard.

And I watched you, People Who Think Dane Cook Is Funny. I watched you react with uproarious laughter, tears literally streaming down your faces, mouths open in unbelieving delight. I watched you lean into one another, unable to support your own weight under the incredible comedic tidal wave of jokes like this:

...so these people who give you directions, right? There's always a place, you know, like a place where you've, like, gone too far. Like, and if you hit the railroad tracks, bro, you've gone too far. And you're driving along like, 'if you hit the railroad tracks...' [feigns driving, bumping over tracks]...FUCK!

And to that "joke," you, the People Who Think Dane Cook Is Funny, were out of your seats, standing and clapping and crying with delight and making that lame-ass giant finger thing you do. You couldn't believe how funny that joke was.

And that wasn't the only lame joke that you loved. You practically exploded at every hippy gambol Dane Cook took around his little ring of a stage. When he said, "and you know your parents are the worst people to call when you feel like you might cry, because your mom can always touch just the right buttons, bro, you know, to make you, like, cry. And your dad just makes you feel like a pussy for the whole thing," you went absolutely nuts. You had never heard anything so funny.

So....what's the story? You guys know that's not funny, right? I mean really not funny. Not. Funny.

Oh no no no no no, not at all with the funny.

So help me out. Let me inside the curtain here. Was this show actually in some other, secret language that I don't know? Like that "ubby dubby" language I could never quite figure out on Zoom? Maybe in that Other Language, these jokes are just like a Chris Rock or Lewis Black routine, and all I'm missing is the decoder ring that will let me into a whole new world of comedy bliss.

Or maybe you were Laughing Ironically, like how you were probably doing at Snakes on a Plane. Is that it? Because I have Laughed Ironically, People Who Think Dane Cook is Funny. I own Point Break on DVD. And what you were doing looked a whole lot like Laughing For Real.

Maybe you were shitfaced. Maybe I just couldn't see the beer spread out throughout the crowd, using the Preakness Infield Ratio of one case of Milwaukee's Best Light per person. Maybe they had pumped pot directly into the ventiliation. Maybe your Mountain Dews were spiked with ecstasy.

Is that it? Please tell me that's it. Please tell me you don't really think this lame-ass, middle of the road, dumb-guy comedy is funny. Don't tell me you can't see that Dane Cook is like ten years too old to ever call anybody "Bro."

People Who Think Dane Cook Is Funny, you should get off myspace for awhile, even if you are Dane Cook's Friend Number 1,223,201. Trust me, he'll still be there when you get back.

Take a look around. Check out a Chris Rock concert. Catch the Lewis Black show on HBO. Watch old Chappelle's Show reruns. Hell, watch old Barney Miller or Sanford and Sons reruns.

But then again, you think Dane Cook is funny, so you probably wouldn't like any of that stuff I mentioned above.

Actually, I think I might know who you people are, and it explains a lot about many things that perplex me. You probably bought that Pussycat Dolls album, didn't you? You vote for your favorites on American Idol. And you set your Tivo for According to Jim. You went to see Snakes on a Plane and it made you feel smart and ironic, didn't it?

I know who you voted for in the last two elections, People Who Think Dane Cook is Funny.

But I have to admit that you sure did seem to be having a good time watching Dane Cook's Vicious Cirle, and I guess that's harmless enough. Its only Comedy, or the Lack of Comedy, right? And if Jessica Simpson is the only person who gets hurt in all this, I suppose we're all a little ahead of the game.

Crazy

So when is your cover of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" going to hit YouTube? Dude, you're already way behind. So far, according to this article in Slate, the song has been covered by everybody from the Raconteurs to Nelly Furtado to The Twilight Singers to...Bryan Adams. That's 80s pop idol B-ryan Adams, not alt country balladeer and frequent cover song artist Ryan Adams.

I like the Ray Lamontagne version, here in mp3 myself.

But the best cover might be Gnarls Barkley's own, this mellowed out version, which puts Cee-Lo's vocals (he was right, by the way: Cee-Lo Green really is the Soul Machine -- and you should check out that album if you like Gnarls Barkley but could use a little more southern fried rap around Cee-Lo's soul) from the Conana O' Brien show.

So what makes a great cover song? How come everybody is covering Crazy? What is it about U2's One that makes it sound great no matter who covers it (I prefer the Johnny Cash version, actually, to the U2)?

And finally, what song are you surprised isn't covered more often. I know every time I see an even vaguely hard band, I think, "Wouldn't it be cool if they came out and did Back in Black for the very first song?" Haven't seen it happen yet, and the closest I've seen is Dash Rip Rock open a set at the N.O. Jazzfest with "Highway to Hell."

So what cover song should everybody be doing? My vote: "Back in Black," "Peter Piper," or "Thunder Road."

Game Over

Tom Cruise has had a rough year. Lots of bad press. Some weird couch dancing. A marriage that roughly 80% of all Americans believe is a complete sham. A baby that may or may not exist. Mediocre box office. And then a very public rebuke from Paramount chief Sumner Redstone that left him belly up and looking for financing.

Yet throughout it all I believed Cruise would pull through. Just like his character in All the Right Moves, he'd turn the tables on the authority figure who tried to hold him down. Just like in Risky Business, he'd get his house cleaned up in just the nick of time. Just like in Eyes Wide Shut, he'd have heterosexual sex in front of a crowd of people and we'd realize all the rumors were untrue.

But now, with the announcement that Cruise has inked a deal with Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder ... well, now I know it's all over but the crying. If there's anyone who can take a pickaxe to the hull of a gently sinking ship, it's Snyder, the man who turned the Washington Redskins into the Tampa Bay Buccaneers -- and not the snazzy silver-and-red-uniformed Bucs who won a Super Bowl; I'm talking the Creamsicle-uniformed, Vinny Testaverde-era Bucs.

Expect Snyder to throw lots and lots of money at the Cruise "problem," perhaps bringing in past-their-prime stars to hang out with Cruise and try to improve his image. And Cruise's new publicist? Jeff George.