g-string panic attack

According to the webstats program, two people (or the same person twice) found my little site here by running internet searches for “lap dance ocd.”

I have no idea what this means, but I like the sound of it. I even think that it might make a good album title.

Could there possibly be people out there who feel compelled to get/give lap dances? My Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) just makes me check locks and zippers for the most part. If I’d known there was a choice, I would have gladly opted for the “must receive lap dances” variety.

Could there really be people out there who get anxious and upset if they can’t get a lap dance every day? I don’t think that Linette would buy a story like that, even if I had a note from a doctor.

Or, more interestingly, what if it’s a person, male or female, who is obsessed by the idea of giving lap dances? What if they kind of sneak these compulsions quickly into their daily routines the way that many of us who suffer from OCD do, so that it’s almost unnoticeable to non-OCD folks. Whereas I make it a point to straighten my office kitchen a few times a day, maybe this person shimmies around the copy machine when no one is looking, thrusting his or her pelvis into the return tray while groaning, “Do You like that, Baby?”

I’m picturing people in my office doing this now and it’s upsetting me.

Time for the next subject.

Wait. I just had another thought. What if there’s something else that “OCD” stands for that I’m not aware of. Could that be it? I’m so into my own OCD sub-culture that it almost didn’t occur to me that it might have a different meaning in lap dance circles.

Could it be something like, “on concrete dancefloors”? That could be some lingo in the fetish underground. Or, how about “offers complete debasement”?

best headline

I read lots of news. That’s how I spend my evenings, trying to be a more informed global citizen. (At least when Linette’s watching the Food TV network.) Trying to be somewhat balanced, I read stuff from the far left and the far right. (The truth, I figure, might be somewhere in the middle.) In doing this, I recently came across the following piece of mock journalism. (The influence of “The Onion” is spreading.)

The article itself isn’t great, but the headline had me laughing out-loud the day after the election.

DASCHLE SEEKS LEADERSHIP ROLE AT KFC

it’s been so long

There’s nothing better than hearing from a long lost friend and knowing that, even though he’s had some tough times, he’s doing OK.

8 miles high

This weekend, Linette and Jen (our friend from Colorado) and I saw the Eminem bio pic, “8 Mile.” Linette and Jen would probably disagree, but I liked it better than “Frida,” the film we’d seen the night before. “Frida” almost put me to sleep. It was beautifully shot, but it dragged. There were some really great, lovely images of real Frida Kahlo paintings coming to life and such, and even a terrific animated piece by the Brothers Quay, but otherwise the film left me cold.

As for “8 Mile,” I don’t know what else I can say that hasn’t already been said since its debut. As almost everyone has pointed out, it is like “Flashdance,” “Beat Street,” “The Karate Kid,” “Purple Rain,” “Rocky” and any number of ‘underdog’ films that have come before it. (I haven’t heard anyone yet compare it to the Howard Stern film, “Private Parts,” but I think that analogy works as well. Both have certainly used film as a vehicle to break into larger, more mainstream markets.) And, Eminem, as almost everyone has said, doesn’t show much emotional range in the lead role, but he does a credible job playing himself. (Again like Howard Stern.)

It’s a well-written and well-calculated film, and it accomplishes exactly what it set out to do. It delivers Eminem, repackaged as the lovable, yet mischievous, boy from the wrong side of the tracks, to the parents of America.

It turns everything on its head. It even shows how what once was seen as homophobic was, in actuality, gay-friendly! (There’s a scene where his character, Rabbit, raps to defend a gay co-worker who is being negatively rapped about. “James be gay,” Eminem says, “but you’re a faggot.” From a marketing standpoint, it’s a brilliant move, a great follow-up to his appearance singing with, and then hugging, Elton John at an awards show about a year ago.)

The bottom line is it’s a pretty damned good film and I’m sure it’s got other rappers out there yelling at their managers, asking why they hadn’t made the move first. When flipping stations the other day, I caught a news story about the Detroit premier of the film and the anchorperson stopped Kid Rock on the red carpet to ask him about the movie. You could just tell that he was seething with jealousy.

So, what does this mean for Detroit?

Eminem’s film, the first Hollywood film shot exclusively in Detroit, presented an image of the city that’s as realistic as any I’ve seen. It’s a shame, but that’s really what Detroit’s like, right down to the rusted-out Escorts and the stories of kids getting abducted and raped inside of abandoned houses.

It’s probably not going to have any families packing up and moving to the Motor City, but it might help in getting our arts scene a little more respect. (All of this started with the Stooges and it’s taken this long for it to come to blossom. It’s a simple message – Detroit is terrible, but terrible is good for artistic vision. It’s a carrot and a stick.)

My first day living here, on the outskirts of Detroit, I remember seeing a story on the news about a women who, instead of getting a babysitter, put her kid in a toilet, with a cement block on the closed lid, while she went out to buy cigarettes or something. That’s Detroit. It’s hard.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of good in Detroit. Having lived in Atlanta, LA and Detroit now, I can say without hesitation that Detroit is the best of the three when it comes to heart, history, artistic vision and an overall sense of reality. Things aren’t glossed over in Detroit.

The film ends in battle, a rap battle, that Rabbit wins hands down. He does so by owning up to what and who he is. The entire movie is built on the foundation of these rap battles, these 45 second bouts between competing poets. They’re staged like boxing matches. A coin is flipped and the winner chooses whether to go first or second. The first man goes after his opponent with everything he’s got. Then, the second man rebuts.

Rabbit, in the final battle, cops to being white trash. He cops to living with mother, in a trailer. He confesses the fact that he’d had his ass kicked and that someone in his opponent’s crew had fucked his girlfriend. He turns the contest on its head, robbing his opponent of every weapon in his arsenal. He rips the words right out of his opponent’s mouth, leaving him noting to say. It’s brilliant.

With that said, it also strikes me that it’s a bit unlikely. The rhymes are too good. They’re too formulated. You get a sense as you’re sitting in the audience watching this that the battles in the real world were never so intense. Yes, they may have destroyed their opponents with generic put down’s, but not with such split second personalized attacks.

operation whitney lover: update

OK, the plan is going into effect. Actually, not only is it going into effect, but it’s growing in scope. In military terms, you could say that I’m experiencing “mission creep.” I’m afraid that I might lose control and not be able to pull out in time.

The mission creep I’m referring to involves my family. At first, as you know, I was just planning to trick my co-workers into thinking that I loved Whitney Houston. Well, I decided last night, after a lot of soul-searching, that I’d widen the scope of my little game to include my entire family.

Fortunately, it looks like I’ve got things timed well.

First off, the movie “8 Mile” gave me a chance to drop a few references to Whitney Houston’s film “The Bodyguard,” a film that I have never seen, but that I think I know enough about to bullshit my way around.

Two days ago, before the official start of a meeting, I started digging the first trench of the campaign.

Imagine, if you will, six business people around a table, talking about the fact that the Eminem film, “8 Mile” had taken in $54 million its opening weekend.

Coworker 1: “Mark, you saw the movie, right? What did you think?”

Me: “I liked ‘8 Mile’ alright. It was kind of like ‘Flashdance.’ It followed a similar trajectory. It was predictable, but good. It wasn’t the best recording-star film vehicle ever made, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. They did a great job of repackaging Eminem and selling him to additional demographic segments.”

Coworker 2: “I don’t remember anything like this before?”

Me: “Well, if you mean recording artists being placed in films, it happens are of the time. There was this fellah named Elvis once….”

Coworker 1: “Madonna. The Beatles. Media companies are always looking for ways to extend their brands. J-Lo is doing the same thing, only in reverse. She’s parlayed a film career into a series of hit singles.”

Me: “In my opinion, the best of the lot was Whitney Houston’s film, ‘The Bodyguard.’ It delivered on every level. It had action for the men and romance for the women. It was perfectly constructed for Whitney Houston. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to capitalize on its success by moving into other films.” (Said without a hint of irony.)

At that point, my boss walked in and the meeting began. It was perfect. I hadn’t come out and said that I loved her, but I had planted a seed in people’s minds. Now they knew that I was at least aware of her work.

Fate must be with me. I saw last night on “Primetime Live” (Linette was watching an earth-shattering Jennifer “J-Lo” Lopez interview about P Ditty and the rest of the men in her life.) that on December 4, they would be airing Diane Sawyer’s “exclusive” interview with Whitney Houston! The timing is perfect. I’ve got three weeks to get things ready before the pot begins to boil.

My parents are asking me for a Christmas wish list. (They don’t want to try to get inside my head and think about what I might want. They’d rather just have me write it on a list that they can hand to someone in Borders.) Well, I’ve decided to put some less well-known Whitney Houston recording (i.e. not a greatest hits collection) on the list. If they ask, I’ll respond, somewhat embarrassed, that “it relaxes me when I’m sitting in traffic.”

As I mentioned a few days ago, I plan to be in this for the long haul. This isn’t a joke like a can full of coiled snakes or a joy buzzer. This is slow torturous work with no big pay-off.

mayberry u.f.o.

I don’t like stealing stuff, but Jeff Kay linked to this today at the West Virginia Surf Report and it was just too cool not to share with those few readers here who don’t read his site as well.

According to this site, the sets of the “Andy Griffith Show” were used in two episodes of “Star Trek.” They’ve got photos to prove it.

It’s neat seeing the streets of Mayberry covered in garbage and littered with derelicts and winos. If I recall the episode of “Star Trek” correctly, they go back and visit the earth during some kind of period of lawlessness and depression. It’s neat to imagine that this could be the future of Mayberry. It’s also fun to think of Opie in a bread line, looking for handouts.

grapefruit in nylons

Now that the woman with the bad boob job (Erin) is off “Survivor,” I don’t know if there’s much reason to watch. I was hoping she’d hang on to the end just so I could see what happened to her freaky breasts over time, as she continued to lose weight. When se left last week, they were already looking like jellyfish being dangled upside down by their tentacles.

I wanted to show you an image of them, and I started to do a search, but then I gave up. I felt kind of pathetic typing “erin + survivor + boobs + photo” into Google.

So, you’ll have to use your imagination.