What's your price?

The NY Post ran an article about the grisly recent midtown hotel slaying yesterday. The first few paragraphs (italics mine):

Before a gay Portuguese fashion journalist was beaten to death and castrated in a Times Square hotel room, his 20-year-old boy toy told him he was actually straight and only with him for the money, sources told The Post yesterday.

The two men got into a heated argument after the revelation, sources said.

Veteran newspaper reporter Carlos Castro, 65, wound up nude and dead -- his testicles hacked off -- on the floor of his ransacked room at the InterContinental hotel on Friday night.

Acquaintances of Renato Seabra, who recently won a modeling contract on a Portuguese TV show, said he was straight and only pretending to date Castro.

"Carlos Castro was a trampoline to rise in the fashion and social worlds," the source said.

I'm not sure I buy that Seabra was actually straight. But this incident does bring up the age old question.

I once asked it of a particularly macho guy I knew on Wall Street: "How much money would it take for you to blow another guy?"

He responded, "There's absolutely no fucking way I'd ever blow another guy, not for any amount of money, under any circumstances. Ever."

I persisted, "Would you do it for a hundred thousand dollars? Let's assume the guy has been tested for AIDS beforehand and you know he's clean. And you'd have a bottle of Listerine nearby so you could gargle right afterward."

He replied brusquely, "I told you, there's no way I'd ever do that."

I asked, "How about a million then?"

"No." 

I said, "Okay. Ten million."

He just stared off into space expressionlessly for a couple seconds. Then he slowly smiled. 

Movie themes

I was on the subject of movie themes with my son recently and he mentioned that the music from Shane was quite good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiYjHu5B6Nc

I listened to it, and found it stirring. (You may find it the same.) But I can't quite figure out why. Is it because the music itself is good? Is it because I associate it with the movie itself, which I liked? Is it because it reminds me of my youth, when I first saw the movie?

Or is it because I'm an idiot?

I honestly can't tell.

See if it moves you. If it does, maybe you can figure out why. If not, you can choose option four for me.

SATs

When I signed my son up for the SATs a couple years ago I somehow ended up on a mailing list from the Educational Testing Service. Every morning I get an email with a sample SAT question which I now forward to my daughter, a high school junior. Being the nerd that I am, I also do the question myself.

A few weeks ago, while talking to a friend --

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/coolest-guy-i-ever-met_09.html

-- we discussed our daughters' test-taking, and he asked me to forward the questions to him as well, so he could pass them along to his daughter.

It now turns out that he has also been doing the questions, and has done well on them. So yesterday he emailed me, "We ought to take the SATs again, just for hoots, to see how we'd do."

"I will if you will," I replied (in true beta male fashion).

You're probably assuming that he wasn't serious, but -- trust me, I know him -- this is the kind of thing he would actually do. (And if a wager became part of the picture, as it often does with him, I would probably take him up on it.)

But when I mentioned the possibility to my daughter, she let out a moan of dismay: "Oh, no, Dad, not in our town. I know people here. And we'd be sitting right next to each other, because it's done alphabetically. Oh, god, no, please don't."

I have no idea whether the ETS would actually allow us to take the test (I suspect they would not). And if they did, I wouldn't subject my daughter to my presence at such an important event.

But that still leaves the question: how silly would a 56-year-old look sitting in an auditorium full of 16- and 17-year-olds taking that test?

And how much sillier would he look if he got beaten by his daughter?

Waterworks

The NY Post ran the following article two days ago (italics mine): 

New Speaker of House weeps as Republicans take control

The most powerful Republican in Washington blubbered uncontrollably yesterday as he relieved outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the huge gavel that comes with being the chamber's top dog.

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), who became the new Speaker with tears in his eye, will lead the 112th Congress now that the GOP has control of the House.

Boehner is known for getting misty, weeping, or sometimes flat-out bawling -- especially when he talks about his rags-to-riches life story, children or even war funding.

He first got choked up yesterday as he made his way through a throng of colleagues on the House floor, shaking hands with each well-wisher en route to the rostrum.

Boehner then produced a handkerchief, wiped his eyes and blew his nose -- steadying himself before the ceremonial passing of the gavel.

When even the right-leaning NY Post mocks the new Republican Speaker, you know something is amiss. Boehner's tendency to cry is getting to be -- this has to be said -- a little embarrassing. It has actually gotten to point where it's painful to watch him. You sit there thinking, please don't start crying, please, please don't. And then, sure enough, Boehner gets all choked up and the waterworks start.

The weird thing is, Boehner is one of the last people you would have expected this from. He has a gravelly voice, a hard face, and a gruff, no-nonsense manner. Given that he obviously subscribes to the macho ethic himself, he has to find this tendency of his embarrassing. (Boehner also gives off the vibe that if he did not have this weakness himself, he might not be so understanding of it in others.)

One has to think that crying in public has become Boehner's biggest fear -- and this may actually be why it manifests itself so often. But he seems to deal with it, and just keeps plugging away. It doesn't seem to be hampering his role, at least not so far.

It has become customary for men to admit that they cry and to say that they're not ashamed of it. So, in that vein, let me confess that I cry too. The only thing is, I always am a little embarrassed by it. Which is why I generally don't do it in front of other people. These days the tears come when I think of what could happen to my son in Afghanistan. And I'm certainly not ashamed of that. But I still reserve them for private moments.

I wish Boehner would reserve his crying for those as well. I just don't want the new face of the Republican Party to be such a weeping willow -- I want him to be made of tougher stuff than I am. It's a little like having a leader who is incontinent. It wouldn't directly affect his job performance. And we shouldn't criticize someone for something beyond their control. But at the same time it wouldn't exactly inspire confidence. What happens if Boehner gets in a fight with the Democrats? Will he start crying then?

The Democrats have got to be chortling. Imagine how filled with glee the Republicans would be if every time Obama gave a speech pushing one of his redistributionist programs, mucus would slowly dribble out of his nose. Or if whenever Hillary Clinton gave one of her evasive answers she would let out a rip-roaring fart. So far the Democrats haven't said anything publicly. But they have to be laughing inwardly.

Lots of Republican voices have been heard saying things along the lines of, he's not a crybaby. But of course that only underscores the fact that he is. People would never put that much effort into denying something which isn't true.

At least we know Boehner is not shedding crocodile tears the way Bill Clinton used to. You might fake a tear or two in order to gain some sympathy, or to appear more compassionate; but no one is going to do it to the extent Boehner has just for show.

Still and all, it's probably a healthy development that men are now allowed to show their emotions in public without overt censure.

We've certainly come far since 1972, when Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine had his Presidential campaign derailed because of crying.

Maybe just a little too far.

Sociopath alert: Heidi Jones

The weather reporter for WABC-TV, Heidi Jones, has been in the news recently for having filed a false police report about an alleged rape attempt. She claimed to police that she had been assaulted on September 24th, and then harassed again by the same Hispanic man on November 21st.

After police noticed discrepancies in her story, she confessed to them on December 13th that she had just concocted the entire story in a bid for sympathy.

According to the NY Post, she recently told the police, "I made it up for attention. I have so much stress at work, with my personal life and with my family. I know there is no justification for it."

Ordinarily I like to see some corroborating evidence before I say someone is a sociopath. I want to see more about their background, a consistent sociopathic bent to their behavior, a certain pattern to their relationships, and evidence of other dishonesty. I couldn't find anything like that for Jones, for whom there is no Wikipedia entry. But her hoax was something nonsociopaths simply wouldn't do.

Can you imagine yourself making up a story like that, and then taking it to the police, so that they would have to check out all the local videotapes, scour the area for eyewitnesses, and search for the suspect, all of which would take time away from their investigations of real crimes? Can you imagine basking in the sympathy of your coworkers for your "traumatic experience"?

An ordinary person wouldn't do that because her sense of shame, embarrassment, guilt, and fear of discovery would prevent her. Only one kind of person totally lacks those emotions.

Another giveaway of Jones's sociopathy is the transparently false excuse she used for her behavior: the "stress" occasioned by her work, personal life, and family. What did you do the last time you felt stressed out? Have a beer or two? Go for a three mile run? Confide your troubles to a friend? Or did you make up an elaborate story about an assault and take it to the police?

This is just not the way normal people react to stress. For normal people, excess stress results in a desire to withdraw, and to try to reduce the causes of that stress. For nonsociopaths, there would be nothing more stressful than filing a false police report.

Sociopaths simply don't feel stress the same way. The kinds of things which would terrify you and me because of their potential for public shaming simply don't matter a whit to them, because they don't feel shame. They don't worry about not living up to others' expectations, or about letting others down. They know they're supposed to, but they don't. Every now and then they lay claim to emotions they know they're supposed to have, so as to appear normal. But they usually give themselves away by wielding them falsely, as Jones just did.

The woman who educated me about sociopathy when I was 25 once told me a story about how she saw an old lady trying to cross the street, and it made her feel so guilty. As she said this, she tried to look very compassionate. At the time I didn't understand sociopathy, but I remember thinking, why should she feel guilty -- she had nothing to do with the old woman having gotten old. And if she felt guilty, why didn't she just help her? When I finally realized that the woman I knew was a sociopath, and that she didn't feel guilt, the story made sense to me in a different way: she was trying to appear a good person with a show of false emotion.

Another emotion sociopaths don't feel is affection. When I worked on Wall Street I knew a sociopath who absolutely hated a coworker of ours named Jerry. The sociopath once said, "I like Jerry, he's a family guy, but...." and then proceeded to eviscerate him. I thought about it later and realized that no one actually likes anyone else simply because he has a wife and a bunch of kids. But the sociopath wanted to disguise the fact that he was eviscerating Jerry out of pure hatred, so he tried to lay claim to "liking" him for completely bogus reasons. He didn't know any better, because he never actually liked anyone. If you listen closely, a sociopath will usually give himself away with his false emotionality.

Jones' actions sound a bit like Munchhausen's Syndrome. That is the syndrome under which people will fake illnesses just to receive attention and sympathy. It's regarded as a unique illness, but I've always thought it merely an offshoot of sociopathy. The sociopathic nature of the "illness" is never more apparent than in what the psychiatric community refers to as Munchhausen's by Proxy, a variation in which parents will make their children ill in order to be able to take them to the hospital in order to receive attention and sympathy themselves from the doctors. What kind of parent would make her child physically ill just to be able to get attention for herself? (A rhetorical question.)

The evidence on Jones is narrow but deep: she is a sociopath.

(Oh, by the way, I'm sorry this post was out so late today -- I want you to know, I feel incredibly guilty about that.)

Hopper and Warhol

Today's NY Post has an article about Dennis Hopper's art colllection being up for auction at Christie's next week. The first paragraph reads:

"Dennis Hopper shot two bullet holes through an Andy Warhol 'portrait' of Mao Zedong but instead of earning the wrath of the artist, Warhol called the 'Easy Rider' star a collaborator."

That was actually a very adroit response by Warhol. Rather than stamping his feet and coming across like a ninny, he managed to turn a potential humiliation into a grace note. But that doesn't change the fact that Warhol was basically just a scammer. (Whenever you the words "conceptual" and "artist" together, you can usually just eliminate the "-ceptual" and get a clearer picture of what the artist is about.)

From the time he first called a Campbell's soup can a work of art, Warhol has been tricking the gullible into believing that he was some kind of genius. In fact he was, but his genius was at trickery, not art.

He managed to sell his "silkscreen portraits" (i.e., colored in photographs) of various celebrities for vast sums of money. This was all the more amazing considering he rarely produced these himself, and just had the employees at his Factory do it for him.

You can't really blame him. If I could sell that kind of garbage for that kind of money, I'd do it too.

But since I can't -- and perhaps this is jealousy speaking -- whenever I do see a Warhol, I get the urge to do a little collaborating myself.

The Dark Ages

To historians, "The Dark Ages" refers to the era which ran from the decline of the Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D. up to the beginning of the Enlightenment in the 15th century.

But from the vantage point of the internet age, my own childhood is looking more and more like the Dark Ages. 

For entertainment, we had black and white TV. The picture quality wasn't great, and sometimes the image on the screen would scroll up or down, which meant we had to adjust the "vert hold" dial. There was no such thing as a remote control, so to do that, or to change the channel, you had to get up, walk over to the TV, and turn a knob.

There was less motive to change the channel, though, as there were only three channels. This is why Hollywood can make nostalgic movies from old TV shows like Get Smart and The Wild, Wild West and Starsky and Hutch: everybody remembers them, because there wasn't much else to watch. In the future they will be far less likely to do a remake of, say, Hoarders, simply because audience shares are less due to the number of choices.

Cell phones did not exist. Each family had one land line, ensuring arguments over who got to use it when. I knew of only one family that had two phone lines back then, and it struck me as the height of self indulgence. And without call waiting, getting in touch with someone often meant endlessly dialing until you finally stopped getting a busy signal.

If you wanted to contact someone far away (long distance phone calls were expensive), you used snail mail, or, as it was called back then, mail.

There was no GPS, so if you went for a walk in the woods you had to orient yourself. And if you did get lost, there was no calling for help on a cell phone. (It's a wonder any of us Baby Boomers survived to adulthood.)

To go for that walk, you would most likely have put on a pair of Keds, since there were no running shoes. That didn't seem like such a hardship, though, since jogging hadn't caught on yet.

Cars usually didn't have seat belts in the back seats, and there was no such thing as a crumple zone. No one would have imagined such frivolities as heated seats, or a digital readout to tell you what the outside temperature was, or another to tell you how many miles per gallon your car had averaged for that tank of gas.

(What the cars did have back then were personalities so distinctive that from a hundred and fifty yards away you could tell a Caddy from a Mercedes from a Mustang from a GTO. Nowadays you often have to look at the logo on the back to identify the model.)

There were no video games, so people actually played board games. Some of the games, like chess, actually required some brainpower. (You never hear a parent boast, "Oh, my Joey is really smart -- he's a really good Call of Duty player.)

To type, you inserted a piece of paper in the typewriter and pecked away. There was nothing you could do about typos other than put on some White Out -- remember that? -- reinsert the piece of paper, painstakingly line it up, and retype. Electric typewriters seemed like a luxury since you didn't have to tap on the keys that hard.

To listen to music, you used a record player. You had to be careful not to scratch the record, as a scratch could make the needle bounce back and forth, causing an endless loop of two seconds of music. Ironically, as the equipment to play it has gotten ever more sophisticated, the music itself has gone steadily downhill. Today you can use your iPod to listen to....rap. 

Computers were huge machines with names like ENIAC that only people at places like IBM used, and frankly, at the time they seemed sort of pointless.

Without the internet, the reference of choice was the Enclopedia Britannica. (Remember how grand that sounded -- Britannica? To be educated back then was to be slightly Anglophilic.) The information got out of date from time to time, but the encyclopedia was still the ultimate authority on just about everything.

With no Facebook, we figured we were doing well to have just four or five friends.

And special friends -- the kind with privileges? If you wanted to advertise for them, you had to do it in the back of some sleazy publication. (Decent people did not do this.) Or you had to actually go places to possibly meet people, like the local bar, from which you would return smelling like secondhand smoke.

Kids must think of the 1960's the way we thought of the horse and buggy days.

What will they have forty years from now which will make today look like the Dark Ages?

Addendum, next morning: I had honestly intended to keep all sentimentality out of this post, and just emphasize how much better things are now. But I see that despite my intentions, a little bit did creep in.

Staff Sergeant Sal Giunta

You may have heard of Sal Giunta, the nation's first living Medal of Honor recipient since the Viet Nam War.

On October 25, 2007, Giunta's platoon was ambushed in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. When Staff Sgt. Erik Gallardo was hit by a bullet to his helmet, Giunta leapt up, exposing himself to enemy gunfire, and rushed over to help him. After rescuing Gallardo, Giunta saw that Sgt. Josh Brennan was missing. He then raced ahead and saw that two insurgents were carrying the wounded Brennan away. Giunta shot and killed one of the insurgents; the other ran away. Giunta then carried the mortally wounded Brennan back to cover.

Giunta has been interviewed countless times since he was awarded the Medal of Honor. He's always well spoken and down to earth. Each time he says pretty much the same thing: he doesn't deserve the medal any more than any other member of his platoon, and he doesn't deserve it as much as the two who died. He frequently mentions that he wasn't even the best soldier in his platoon, and was surrounded by others who were smarter, stronger, quicker, and braver.

Could there possibly be a better representative of the Medal of Honor, of the military, or, for that matter, of the United States?

Giunta has received many invitations in the past few months. Wherever he goes, whether it's a football game or a hockey game, the David Letterman Show or Times Square on New Year's Eve, he gets a standing ovation. This is as it should be.

At the same time, he's right about one thing. There are plenty of other people in the military who probably also deserve the award, but have not received similar recognition. That underscores the fact that every last person who signs up for a combat role in the armed forces is more of a hero than any sports star, movie star, or business tycoon.

I admit I'm biased now that I have a son in the military. But I wish they'd stop using the word "hero" to describe someone who's good at his sport. That word should be reserved for someone who puts his life on the line for others.

Jenn Sterger et al

The NFL fined Brett Favre $50,000 this week for having been less than forthright during the investigation about whether he had sent pictures of his penis via cellphone to Jenn Sterger, pictured here. (They decided they couldn't prove that he had done so.)

My guess is that Favre did send those pictures. I would also guess that Sterger subtly encouraged him to. Google Image Sterger --

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&biw=1263&bih=620&q=Jenn+Sterger&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

-- and every single picture you'll see shows her trying to look as provocative as possible. She has evidently learned that this is the way she can best attract attention. If Sterger wants to present herself that way, fine, but it seems a little unbecoming for her to then be acting so offended that Favre presented himself back to her the same way (okay, even more so).

This may sound suspiciously like the old -- and faulty -- argument that defendants' lawyers used to use in rape trials: look at the way she was dressed, she was asking for it!

But Favre did not rape her; he was accused of sending her pictures of himself that were slightly more graphic than the pictures she has posed for (for instance, in Playboy). Favre is a big name in professional football. When Sterger met him, she undoubtedly acted the way that she normally does to get attention. Maybe at some point she stopped encouraging him. If she did tell him to stop sending those pictures, or stop phoning her at all, and he continued, then he is guilty of harassment. But if all she did was act flirtatious, then see a chance to cry foul and make some money, he is guilty of nothing other than carelessness.

Favre has undoubtedly become somewhat sloppy in his approach over the years simply because he is used to getting his way with women. It's probably not even the first time he's ever sent pictures of his penis to a woman. (The approach, boorish as it is, has probably worked for him in the past, simply because he's Brett Favre.) But if Diane Sawyer -- or even Katie Couric -- interviewed him, I doubt that he would send such photos to them.

The last woman who complained of being sexually harassed by professional football players was Ines Sainz, a Mexican TV reporter, who said that she was subject to catcalls in the Jets locker room. (Isn't a locker room where men parade around naked? She was not offended by that, but was offended by the catcalls?) Google Image Sainz and this is what you see:

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&expIds=17259,27617,28033&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=ines+sainz&cp=3&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1263&bih=620

Both of these women are nominally reporters. (What journalism school did Sterger graduate from? Or was it her extensive knowledge of football strategy that got her hired?) There's something anomalous about the fact that the two women who would complain about being treated as sex objects are the two who tried the hardest to come across that way.

This is not to excuse a slob like Favre. But the odor of hypocrisy around these two women lies heavy in the air. Even heavier than the perfume they probably wore.

Even the feminists haven't taken up Sterger's cause. They know that Google Image's rebuttal to their case would be far more eloquent than anything they could say.

Addendum -- There's nothing I find less sexy than a dumb woman with fake boobs who tries really hard to be sexy. 

Blue Moon

In the post on Richard Rodgers from a couple weeks ago I forgot to include "Blue Moon," one of his great songs from the Rodgers/Hart era, which you're undoubtedly familiar with, but probably hadn't realized was composed by him.

The list of artists who have recorded it pretty much reads like a Who's Who of twentieth century singers: Mel Torme, Billie Holliday, Dizzie Gillespie, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sam Cooke, The Marcels, Frank Sinatra, The Ventures, Dean Martin, Bobby Vinton, Sha Na Na, Bob Dylan, The Supremes, Tony Bennett, and many others. Here's Rod Stewart's version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxpnPKxEA1o&feature=related

Richard Rodgers wasn't just Julie Andrews and Shirley Jones. He was Billie Holliday, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan.....

Growltiger's Last Stand

One of my son's and my favorite songs -- as much for the lyrics as the music -- from Cats. Part I:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmSp73HVpcA&feature=related

And Part II, which must be listened to for the whole thing to make sense:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG3AeLNf1Xo&feature=related

Andrew Lloyd Webber's music and T.S. Eliot's poetry is a hard combo to beat. The music is operatic, but overdone enough to seemingly be mocking itself at the same time. Either way, it's fun.

Die Moritat von Mackie Messer

You've undoubtedly heard the Bobby Darin standard, Mack the Knife, any number of times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEllHMWkXEU

The song was originally composed by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht, for their Threepenny Opera. In the opera, Mackie Messer was evil, a robber, rapist, murderer, and arsonist. In Darin's version, the lyrics don't quite make sense, and you just get the vague impression that Mack is a badass who is popular with the ladies.

Lotte Lenya is best known to Americans as the evil Rosa Klebb in From Russian With Love. (Klebb was the woman who kicked at Sean Connery/James Bond with those shoes with the poisoned blades coming out of them.) Lenya was also Kurt Weil's widow, and starred in both the 1928 German and 1954 Broadway productions of the Threepenny Opera. Here is her version of the song, originally titled Die Moritat von Mackie Messer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPG9GcykPIY&feature=fvsr

Lenya's is a much more stripped down version, with a sadder undertone. It features the barrel organ more prominently in the background, as Weil had intended. Lenya sings it in the original German; it's fashionable to say that German is a harsh, guttural language, but I find it quite appealing.

Servio Tulio looks like a schoolteacher, but he seems to be telling the story well, accompanied by just a piano:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0HZsiFNxN0

Finally, a sexed up 1950's or 60's Euro-video version featuring Broadway-style dancers in the background:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDU_8hnWcbE&feature=related

What all these versions have in common is that they make you want to run out and get a switchblade.

Here's to you

For some reason, probably because New Year's Eve was approaching, I thought of Auld Lang Syne the other day, and played it on Youtube. It's a nice piece of music, but it always sounds better on New Year's Eve.  

The reason for that, of course, is because you're drunk. Drinking has that effect. Women seem more attractive, your acquaintances seem cleverer, and music sounds better. Plus you get more sentimental, which makes it the perfect occasion for a song like Auld Lang Syne.

Drinking does make the world a better place. 

But if you've ever hung out with people who've gotten progressively drunker while you remained stone cold, you know what a sorry spectacle it is. Each cocktail seems to lower the drinker's IQ roughly seven points. (Make a rough guess of each person's starting point, do the math, and you'll see what I mean.) By the end of the evening you're hanging out people who are, for all practical purposes, retarded.

(When was the last time, while sober, you ran into a stumbling drunk and were wowed by his wit and intelligence?)

Dorothy Parker is credited as the originator of the line, "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." It's a great line, and she did capture the essence of drinking perfectly: the former is simply a temporary version of the latter. 

When sober, I feel disgust around drunks, but also envy. How wonderful it must be to be able to find someone else's vomiting hilariously entertaining. How wonderful it must be to have your pool of potential sexual prospects increase roughly threefold.

It's no coincidence that alcohol and alchemy start with the same three letters. Alcohol magically transforms the lame into the clever, the repellent into the attractive.

So go ahead and toss a few down this evening. The world may find you less delightful, but you will find it more so.

And that's really not such a bad trade.

Addendum, same day: Looking back on this a few hours later, I get the impression that what I was really trying to do was ruin your fun tonight. (There's really no joy equal to killing someone else's.) But don't worry: I'm sure I won't succeed.

Why do men fixate on one body part?

While it is common to hear a man describe himself as an "ass man" or a "tit man," one never hears a woman describe herself similarly. 

Women tend to have what Freud described as a "polymorphously perverse" sexuality that can accommodate more variation: their sexuality can seemingly adapt to the desires of their partner. They care more about the personality of their mate, which is -- speaking evolutionarily -- at it should be. And they do not limit their attractions to one body part. I have yet to overhear a woman say, "I gotta admit, I'm pretty much of an ass woman," or, "I'd have to call myself a dick girl."

As women will tell you, theirs is the more humane, more humanitarian approach to mate selection. (They don't focus on something superficial like a body part; they just want a man with money.)

Men, on the other hand, tend to reduce women to their body parts. And they tend to get fixated. Rex Ryan, the New York Jets coach, suffered some embarrassing publicity last week when it became obvious from a film he had taken of his wife (in which he focused on her feet, and asked to touch them) that he is a foot fetishist. This particular fetish is probably rarer than it once was. It used to be that during the Victorian era, when women's feet were the one exposed part of their bodies, men would thrill to the sight of them and thus get fixated.

There was no voluntary component to this; men just become fixated with all the foresight and planning that a baby duck employs when it becomes fixated on its mother. Nor is there any morality involved: none of us has any control over whom or what we are attracted to.

I have a friend who is an obvious breast man. He focuses on that one feature to the point where all else is essentially irrelevant. I once said to him, "I could hang a pair of double D's on the back of your Mercedes and you'd probably do the tailpipe." He snorted in grudging acknowledgment. (He and I liked distinctly different types, which made him an ideal companion way back when.)

But why would evolution have made us this way? There doesn't seem to be any benefit. A man less finicky about having that one body part meet his standards would have more reproductive success. Similarly, a man attracted to a wide variety of women would seemingly have more options available. Yet almost all men have a certain type they are most attracted to, be that blonde or brunette, thin or voluptuous.

I haven't yet been able to come up with a good evolutionary reason as to why this should be so. For men to have one type -- and then to have certain standards for one aspect of that one type, further decreasing their pool of eligible prospects -- would seem self-defeating.

If you can think of a good reason why nature would have constructed us this way, please let me know.

Obama's dog

Back in September, in one of his always entertaining un-Teleprompted moments, President Obama said about his political opponents that "they talk about me like a dog":

http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2010/09/yo-dog.html

Michael Vick, as we all know, has a history of cruelty to dogs. He tortured and even killed his if they didn't perform well in the fights he and his friends staged.

This didn't seem to bother Obama too much. Otherwise he would probably not have made that congratulatory phone call to Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie for having hired Vick. That call seems even stranger in light of the fact that the Obama family pet, Bo, is a Portuguese water dog. 

Obama does seem to have a thing about dogs, though.

I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to start a rumor that Obama is actually training Bo for a dogfight.

But he sure does seem to be running him hard.

Conversational ADD

Ten days ago this blog had a post about the evolutionary benefits of Attention Deficit Disorder. It got me to thinking: almost all conversations are actually a testament to ADD, even if neither party has been officially diagnosed with it. Think of the way most conversations with your friends go: you just jump from one subject to another, with no discernible thread.

Your friend mentions something that sparks a thought you want to share. So you tell him, then your friend makes a joke about it. Laughing causes you to lose your train of thought, but then you think of something that happened earlier in the day which you think he would find amusing, so you recount that; he then tells you about a similar experience. His story reminds you of someone you detest, so you take the opportunity to vent about that person. Then he tells you about someone he knows who acted the same way, who used to cheat at his sport. Then the conversation turns to sports....and so it goes.

Whatever subject you started off discussing has long since been shrouded in the mists of time -- from five minutes ago.

Next time you get off the phone with a friend, try retracing the conversation. It's almost comical. If you were to draw a diagram of it, it would look like one of those crazy webs woven by a spider who had been given LSD. (And who was it, by the way, who came up with the idea for that experiment?)

Most conversations just meander along like a mountain stream, following a seemingly random path. The only consistent pattern is that a stream will always go downhill. (I'll make the obvious joke here: as do many conversations.)

This is why stream of consciousness monologues are funny -- it's reassuring to see that other peoples' thought patterns are as disorganized as our own. The brain is just a big labyrinth, from which there is no escape.

President Nixon once said that Mikhail Gorbachev was the most impressive head of state he'd ever met. (And Nixon had met a lot of them.) Nixon said that Gorbachev would never let a train of thought get away from him, and would always steer the conversation back in the direction he wanted it to go. The takeaway here is that even most world leaders can not keep their minds on one subject. So if heads of state cannot exhibit linear thinking even when meeting other heads of state, everyday people can hardly be blamed for letting their conversations wander.

Autistic people are different, of course. They have the ability to focus on just one thing -- like memorizing the telephone book.

In a way, having ADD-like symptoms could be viewed as the opposite of autism. Count your blessings, I guess.

Liberation

Yesterday I took a workout at the local pool with a guy named George, who is 6'2" and 220 pounds of solid muscle. His brother, also a former swimmer, was staying with him for Christmas, and worked out with us. At one point while chatting with his brother, I pointed at George and said, "Alpha male." Then I gestured at myself and said, "Beta male."

I realized later that saying this had actually made me feel good, not because it was the right (diplomatic) thing to say, but because it was....liberating. Such an admission is in fact a free pass not to have to constantly live up to some ridiculous macho standard.

Fellows: Try it, you may find it works that way for you, too. What I sometimes say is, "Hey, you're the alpha male around here, I'm just happy to be your sidekick." When I say that, I never feel as if I've put actually myself in a subservient position. I feel as if all I've done is establish that I have all the upside and whoever I've said it to has all the downside. Plus it allows the luxury of an inward chuckle ("Think what you will, my friend, but the truth is I'm about twice as tough as you and I've had about four times as many babes.")

Honestly, that was the feeling my comment instilled in me. Don't be surprised if that's the feeling you get afterwards, too.

I also thought some more about that recent post about how I'm a beta male, and it occurred to me that admitting you're a beta male is actually sorta.....alpha.

Yeeaahh!!

I'm so alpha I don't even care about being alpha.

(Those are the kinds of thoughts that endorphins give you.)

Then again, maybe I'm like that little boy my son used to play with when he was nine. They would play a lot of games, as kids that age do, but whenever this boy would lose at anything, he would inevitably announce that that was a stupid game, and insist they play something else.

I think I prefer the first interpretation though.

Deborah Kerr

Two weeks ago in the post about Richard Rodgers I had mentioned that Deborah Kerr (1921 - 2007) was one of the all time great beauties of the screen. These pictures are -- or were -- an attempt to back that statement up.

She was certainly beautiful. But now, examining her face feature by feature, she seems no more beautiful than any number of models you see in the advertisements in Vanity Fair. So what was it that made her so incredibly appealing? (And what was it that left that impression of otherworldly beauty?)

It was partly her elegance and femininity, and partly her ability to express unrequited longing. (Put the two together and it's a devastating combination.) She was quite adept at embodying the well bred, tremulous refinement which directors -- and moviegoers -- favored back in the 40's and 50's, long before the advent of female buttkickers like Lucy Lawless and Angelina Jolie.

(Around fifteen or twenty years ago, Hollywood decided that one of the ways in which they would be politically correct was to show that women could be tough too. They did this by having women who were built like Angelina Jolie -- all breasts, with skinny arms and legs -- singlehandedly take on entire gangs of thugs, most of whom looked something like Vitali Klitschko, and send them flying with their punches and kicks. I'm as happy to suspend disbelief as the next fellow, but pleeeease.) 

As a guy, whom would you rather be with, an elegant feminine type like Kerr or some snarling (fake) tigress who is always on the edge of violence?

It seems an easy choice.

Eleanor Roosevelt quote

I stumbled across this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt earlier today:

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

Doesn't the above quote actually make her a hypocrite? (She is discussing people.)

This small-minded blog is written more in the spirit of her cousin Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who so famously said, "If you can't say something good about someone, come sit next to me."

Hugh Hefner

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In the 1960's, Hugh Hefner was the envy of virtually every man in the country for his money, fame, and most of all, lifestyle.

In the 1970's, as the women's movement heated up, Playboy Magazine became a prime target. But the Playboy empire continued to flourish nonetheless. If Hefner, safely ensconced in his mansion in Los Angeles, was bothered by the flack, he didn't show any outward signs.

By the 1980's, both the Playboy Clubs and those curious ears-and-tails outfits the bunnies wore seemed a little antiquated. The Sexual Revolution had occurred two decades before and had long since stopped being news. And Hefner himself didn't seem to be on the radar screen that much. But his magazine continued to thrive.

In the 1990's, most of the Playboy Clubs closed, and in the second half of the decade the magazine started to feel the pressure of competition from the internet. But Hefner himself had lasted long enough to become an icon, celebrated not only for his business acumen but also for his championing of civil rights in the 50's and 60's (back when civil rights actually meant equal rights). An invitation to one of his parties at the Playboy mansion was still one of the hottest tickets in town. And Hef still presided over his empire with a benevolent grin, devoting as much personal attention as ever to the selection of the Playmates of the Month.

Bob Guccione, who owned rival Penthouse Magazine, never inspired the same sort of affection or admiration. There was always something a little darker about Guccione; he came across more like a sleazy pimp. The one movie he produced, Caligula, seemed to embody something about Guccione that people just couldn't warm up to. Hefner's role models were Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey and Martin Luther King; Guccione's was Caligula. And Guccione never smiled. Every photograph showed him staring at the camera with that reptilian gaze, unblinking and seemingly unfeeling. The only message he ever seemed to convey was, "This is all mine." Hef, on the other hand, never completely lost that kid-in-a-candy-store aspect to his personality; he always seemed as if he couldn't quite believe his good fortune.

By the 2000's, even as the Playboy empire was cratering, Hefner's own status as an American icon remained undiminished. Celebrities still flocked to his house and declared him their hero. But there was a strong whiff of nostalgia to the way so many people seemed to feel affectionate towards Hefner. And by now something else had happened: Hefner had gotten awfully old.

This was apparent from that recent TV show The Girls Next Door. (Please don't try to tell me you never watched the show for at least a few minutes while channel surfing.) Those three gold diggers who looked -- and for the most part acted -- like Barbie dolls seemed wholesome enough (if you can swallow the concept of a wholesome gold digger). And they treated Hef with apparent affection. But it wasn't really the way women treat their boyfriends. It was more the way young women might treat their favorite grandfather -- you know, the rich one they're hoping will remember them in his will.

The one inescapable thought which had to have gone through the minds of everybody who saw the show was, what was the nature of their sex life? How often was he actually doing it with each of them? Did he actually go to bed with all three of them at the same time? How much Viagra did he have to use? It was hard to avoid the impression that Hefner looked just a little bit.....overmatched.

In October 2008 all three girls left the Playboy mansion. (Why all at the same time?)

Yesterday, it was announced that Hefner, 84, had gotten engaged to Crystal Harris, 24:

Harris reportedly cried when Hef popped the question. Was she crying because all her financial dreams had come true, or was she crying because she knew that was the appropriate response for the occasion? (People who can cry on command are usually sociopaths.) Yes, this blog does use the word "sociopath" a lot, but what kind of 24 year old woman marries a rich guy who looks like the Crypt Keeper?

Harris must feel the same way about Hefner that the 26 year old Anna Nicole Smith felt about 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall when she married him in 1994.

Still, what is Hefner's alternative? If you were 84 and had the opportunity to marry a 24 year old, would you turn it down so you could play Bingo with all the other geezers? Hefner now looks as if he belongs in an old age home; but if you had your choice of old age homes, wouldn't you pick the Playboy mansion?

Most women will probably react to this news of Hefner's engagement by expressing disgust of some sort. (In fact, since writing that line I have already heard one refer to him as a "disgusting creep.")

Most men will probably react a bit more indulgently: you gotta to hand it to him, even at 84 the ol' rascal is still up to his old ways.

I side with the guys.

Here's hoping Hefner gets Harris to sign an ironclad prenup, then in three years dumps her for a younger model.