The Lion King

From last night's Letterman.

I'm totally on board with this idea.

Adding: For those who saw last night's episode of Louie, a great description of the second half of it, from New York's Vulture section: "'Pamela' may be the least funny Louie in recent memory, but it’s also the most affecting; every one of us, at one point or another, has made the kind of desperately lovelorn pitch Louie throws at Pamela. But that’s the sort of plea you make when you’re young. Watching a middle-aged guy fall so hard for someone and realize it’ll never work, is a rarely seen, deeply felt kind of heartbreak." If you missed it and you don't have it DVRd, kick yourself.

Scorned Dog

As my incomprehensibly busy streak continues -- and once again, I swear it won't last forever -- I'm doing what I can to keep some semblance of content appearing on this site regularly. So with that in mind, I'm bringing back a piece from last year on the eye-opening joys of keeping your penis safely tucked in your pants. Why do I do this? Because 23-year-old mistress/psycho-chick Brooke Hundley -- who you'll remember was one half of the duo that wrecked the career of sports anchor Steve Phillips (the other half being Phillips himself) -- is now suing ESPN for supposedly defaming her.

So what's the lesson again, folks?

"Reject the Cock" (Originally Published, 10.23.09)

"Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography."

-- Robert Byrne

All kinds of wonderfully interesting things happened to me following the brain surgery I underwent back in 2006. Because I had a very large portion of my pituitary gland removed along with the even larger tumor I had to have cut out of my head, I was rendered one giant, hormonal trainwreck in the months and even year or so following the operation. Although it was nightmarish at times -- you try figuring out where that fucking fruity smell is coming from while you're sitting through your dozenth hot flash of the day -- I have to admit that one by-product of the surgery's aftermath was nothing short of eye-opening.

For a good amount of time, I completely lost my sex drive.

As in completely.

It didn't mean I couldn't have sex -- just that I had no overwhelming desire to.

While this might sound like some Boschian hellscape for most men out there, I gotta say -- it was actually anything but. In fact, it was kind of nice, for the first time since puberty, to be mercifully free from the tyrannical rule of my own penis. Think about it: If you're a guy, how many times has your dick gotten you into serious trouble? Think about the money you've spent in pursuit of getting laid. Think about the compromising positions you've put yourself in; the number of girlfriends who've thrown drinks at you in public after discovering that you couldn't resist the two bisexual strippers the previous evening; that time you woke up in a strange house with a girl scout sash tied tightly around your scrotum, boxes of Samoa cookies scattered everywhere and the police threatening to bust down the door.*


Or how about this one: Your inability to keep yourself safely out of the pants of a 22-year-old psychopath who's now destroying your marriage and your career at ESPN.

By now you've likely heard the story of ESPN analyst Steve Phillips and his three-week affair with a young production assistant named Brooke Hundley. You're probably also familiar with the fact that Hundley's behavior in the wake of that affair has been, shall we say, "erratic." She wrote a rambling letter to Phillips's wife in which she detailed her relationship with Phillips, talked at length about the couple's children (a violation which, in my humble opinion, constitutes an acceptable defense for murder), and described a birthmark on her lover's crotch -- you know, just to prove that she'd actually been spending a lot of time where she claimed to be. Phillips's wife, Marni, dialed 911 right after the letter was dropped at her home by Hundley, claiming that Hundley had been harassing her family for some time -- making threatening calls and shouting hysterically, "We both can't have him," and posing as a 16-year-old on Facebook to reach out to her teenage boys -- and that she'd just driven her car into the family's house. If Steve and Marni Phillips's kids had a pet rabbit, that fucker would be soup by now.

But while there's no doubt that Brooke Hundley is one crazy little tart, it's Steve Phillips and his apparently still armed and fully operational penis that overwhelmingly contributed to the goddamned mess he's now in.

I've written before about not just men's but everyone's propensity to cheat on their spouses, and given the level of controversy that very personal piece spawned I see no need to revisit it in detail here. But it's still disconcerting as hell to think that no matter how old a guy gets -- Phillips is 46, David Letterman, who's own recent scandal, complete with sex tape, has put him in the spotlight, is 62 for God's sake -- his years of accrued wisdom and ostensible good sense will never apparently trump his hubris and sex drive. It would be nice to think that at some point in a man's life, even one who makes his living on television, judgment will finally override the desire for a cheap thrill that inevitably leads to a really undignified fall.

It would be nice to think it -- but it apparently just ain't so.

Years ago, my friends and I used to regularly warn each other of the dangers of "men made dumb by pussy." And for a little while, I got to stand outside myself and laugh at the absurdity of the endless pursuit of it -- and it was a revelation.

For the record, I eventually did get on the right kind of medication, my chemistry balanced out and my sex drive finally returned. I'm hoping, however, that the insight I gained during my time as a free, hormonally castrated man -- the time when sex seemed like nothing but a silly triviality -- stays with me and is powerful enough to counteract the biological drive that's been an albatross around the neck (to say nothing of the nether regions) of my kind since the beginning of time.

Although -- anybody know when Girl Scout cookie season starts again?

*I sometimes drink.

Related:

DXM: All Fall Down/8.10.08

DXM: Eliot Mess/3.12.08

Middle Man

I have trouble sleeping these days -- which means that occasionally, in the middle of the night, I'll roll over in bed and read a few news items off the browser on my phone. I sometimes spend hours doing this.

Maybe it's the fact that I read this piece from the new issue of Vanity Fair during that twilight time overnight, somewhere between being asleep and awake, that I suddenly couldn't help but kind of sympathize with Joe Halderman, the man who allegedly tried to blackmail David Letterman. I somehow feel like I understand his motivations -- what he was going through -- even if I don't necessarily condone what he's accused of having done.

Everyone has a breaking point, I guess.

Vanity Fair: Big Trouble at 11:35: Inside the Letterman Love Triangle/April 2010

X-Man

Yesterday I took a shot at those on the right who inexplicably feel that they have the luxury of worrying about whether there's a liberal subtext to James Cameron's Avatar. My point was that with everything else that's going on right now, you'd think that anyone serious about fixing the country would ignore inconsequential pretend controversies, at least for the time being. Well, not to be outdone -- and proving that there are overly touchy dingbats on both sides of the political fence -- say hello to what's shaping up to be the politically correct left's own Avatarian cause célèbre du jour: David Letterman's crack about President Obama's latest appointee to the Commerce Department, Amanda Simpson -- who happens to be the first transgender ever named to a federal post by the President of the United States.

Two nights ago on The Late Show, Letterman mentioned the appointment of Simpson during his monologue, including the fact that she's transgender; upon hearing this, someone behind the scenes on the show immediately jumped up from his seat in a panic, shouted, "Wait, Amanda used to be a dude?! Oh my god!" and ran offstage in horrified disgust, implying of course that he'd been intimate with "her" at some point. It was a totally juvenile gag, but one that was actually pretty funny -- not so much because it was taking a shot at Simpson but because the guy who supposedly had hooked up with her was 67-year-old Alan Kalter, The Late Show's amusingly staid announcer.

Needless to say, as soon as the bit was over you could've practically counted down the seconds before the mushroom cloud of thoroughly unnecessary liberal indignation appeared on the horizon. Yesterday the muscularly named Human Rights Campaign -- which concentrates solely on the human rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders -- sent an official letter to CBS demanding (wait for it) that Letterman issue an obligatory on-air apology. The group's somewhat dubious claim is that it's a very short hop from using transgender people as a punchline to, you know, actually punching them. Admittedly, the notion of "trans panic" has been used, unsuccessfully, as a defense in a number of cases of crimes against transgenders, but to claim that a gag about a sexagenarian (no pun intended) who fooled around with someone who used to be called "Mitch" before he became "Amanda" is somehow beyond the pale for a comedian -- that's monumentally silly.

There's been quite a bit of back-and-forth on this subject on Twitter this morning, with those who support the outcry against Letterman claiming that poking fun at a transgender -- which I don't think the Late Show bit was doing as much as it was poking fun at the most immature response to a transgender -- is the same as making a racial or ethnic joke.

Except that it isn't.

I'll catch a certain amount of hell for this, but the difference is that you can't choose your race, ethnicity or even your sexual orientation -- as in, which sex happens to appeal to you -- but transgenderism, be it hormonally enhanced cross-dressing or surgical sexual reassignment, is a choice. I understand that for many, they feel as if it's a choice that they really have no choice but to make, however there's still a conscious and informed decision at play in whether someone lives outwardly as the opposite sex. It's wrong to ridicule a person for a state of being that he or she has no control over -- and I think, by the way, that genuine ridicule and light-hearted kidding around are two entirely different things -- but if you're aware of the potential real-world consequences of a decision and do it anyway, you forfeit your right to complain too loudly. Now before anyone screams bloody murder, yes, of course in a perfect society no one would ever make fun of those who choose transgenderism, and I'm all for a more tolerant culture -- which doesn't mean that I think that trying to force people to be tolerant is a good idea. The problem, though, is that we don't live in a perfect society. I've used this example here before but I have tattoos -- 14 of them; I don't have the nerve to assume a position of righteous indignation when someone looks at me and forms an immediate and even wrong-headed opinion of me based on my decision to cover my arms in ink -- even if I see the tattoos as a form of expression that I felt compelled to commit to. People make decisions about who we are based on the image we present to the world. There's just no way around that.

I'm not sure that anyone has the right to single out dressing like the opposite sex -- or undergoing surgery to become the opposite sex -- and declare it off-limits for everyone else to notice and potentially comment on in a way they see fit or, possibly, find entertaining.

Moreover, the Letterman thing was a joke. Just a freaking joke.

But as we all know by now, if there's anyone who cannot take a joke -- and who consistently appoint themselves the gatekeepers of potentially offensive material for the rest of us -- it's the perpetually aggrieved left.

Related:

Media Matters: WorldNetDaily's Bigoted Attack on Amanda Simpson/1.6.10 (As much as I hate to defend Fox News and WorldNetDaily, once again the outrage expressed in this piece is a little over-the-top.)

DXM: Why So Serious?/4.25.09

Reject the Cock

"Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography."

-- Robert Byrne

All kinds of wonderfully interesting things happened to me following the brain surgery I underwent back in 2006. Because I had a very large portion of my pituitary gland removed along with the even larger tumor I had to have cut out of my head, I was rendered one giant, hormonal trainwreck in the months and even year or so following the operation. Although it was nightmarish at times -- you try figuring out where that fucking fruity smell is coming from while you're sitting through your dozenth hot flash of the day -- I have to admit that one by-product of the surgery's aftermath was nothing short of eye-opening.

For a good amount of time, I completely lost my sex drive.

As in completely.

It didn't mean I couldn't have sex -- just that I had no overwhelming desire to.

While this might sound like some Boschian hellscape for most men out there, I gotta say -- it was actually anything but. In fact, it was kind of nice, for the first time since puberty, to be mercifully free from the tyrannical rule of my own penis. Think about it: If you're a guy, how many times has your dick gotten you into serious trouble? Think about the money you've spent in pursuit of getting laid. Think about the compromising positions you've put yourself in; the number of girlfriends who've thrown drinks at you in public after discovering that you couldn't resist the two bisexual strippers the previous evening; that time you woke up in a strange house with a girl scout sash tied tightly around your scrotum, boxes of Samoa cookies scattered everywhere and the police threatening to bust down the door.*


Or how about this one: Your inability to keep yourself safely out of the pants of a 22-year-old psychopath who's now destroying your marriage and your career at ESPN.

By now you've likely heard the story of ESPN analyst Steve Phillips and his three-week affair with a young production assistant named Brooke Hundley. You're probably also familiar with the fact that Hundley's behavior in the wake of that affair has been, shall we say, "erratic." She wrote a rambling letter to Phillips's wife in which she detailed her relationship with Phillips, talked at length about the couple's children (a violation which, in my humble opinion, constitutes an acceptable defense for murder), and described a birthmark on her lover's crotch -- you know, just to prove that she'd actually been spending a lot of time where she claimed to be. Phillips's wife, Marni, dialed 911 right after the letter was dropped at her home by Hundley, claiming that Hundley had been harassing her family for some time -- making threatening calls and shouting hysterically, "We both can't have him," and posing as a 16-year-old on Facebook to reach out to her teenage boys -- and that she'd just driven her car into the family's house. If Steve and Marni Phillips's kids had a pet rabbit, that fucker would be soup by now.

But while there's no doubt that Brooke Hundley is one crazy little tart, it's Steve Phillips and his apparently still armed and fully operational penis that overwhelmingly contributed to the goddamned mess he's now in.

I've written before about not just men's but everyone's propensity to cheat on their spouses, and given the level of controversy that very personal piece spawned I see no need to revisit it in detail here. But it's still disconcerting as hell to think that no matter how old a guy gets -- Phillips is 46, David Letterman, who's own recent scandal, complete with sex tape, has put him in the spotlight, is 62 for God's sake -- his years of accrued wisdom and ostensible good sense will never apparently trump his hubris and sex drive. It would be nice to think that at some point in a man's life, even one who makes his living on television, judgment will finally override the desire for a cheap thrill that inevitably leads to a really undignified fall.

It would be nice to think it -- but it apparently just ain't so.

Years ago, my friends and I used to regularly warn each other of the dangers of "men made dumb by pussy." And for a little while, I got to stand outside myself and laugh at the absurdity of the endless pursuit of it -- and it was a revelation.

For the record, I eventually did get on the right kind of medication, my chemistry balanced out and my sex drive finally returned. I'm hoping, however, that the insight I gained during my time as a free, hormonally castrated man -- the time when sex seemed like nothing but a silly triviality -- stays with me and is powerful enough to counteract the biological drive that's been an albatross around the neck (to say nothing of the nether regions) of my kind since the beginning of time.

Although -- anybody know when Girl Scout cookie season starts again?

*I sometimes drink.

Related:

DXM: All Fall Down/8.10.08

DXM: Eliot Mess/3.12.08

Host and Parasite

Remember how I said that only someone looking for something to be prudish and pissy about would throw a tantrum over the idea of sex with a subordinate at work?

Well, I give you the New York Post's resident pissy prude -- the perpetually humorless Andrea Peyser.

The New York Post: Dump Depraved Dave Now, CBS!/10.5.09

Just a taste of the entirely unintentional hilarity:

"This is a full-grown adult who made a grown-up choice. And he chose to sleep with junior staffers rather than take the standard route and walk to the corner bar to conduct a sad, ordinary affair. Instead, he's working out some twisted Freudian issues on dewy-eyed underlings...

Americans would not stand for this kind of behavior from a government official. Should a jock act in a like manner, his morals clause would likely kick in.

Letterman's contract expires at the end of next year. I count on CBS to pull Letterman off the air, then kick him to the curb."

Oh, yeah, in my description of Peyser you can add one more word: delusional.

And the New York Post dispensing indignant piety? Wow, does that take balls.

Clip Job

Oh this is rich. A little advice from someone who knows: Trying to clean something off the internet is like trying to find a window in a casino.

Mediaite: CBS Removes Sex/Extortion Clip from YouTube... Almost/10.5.09

Yeah, good luck with that.

Quote of the Week

"I've always thought (David Letterman) was a creep anyway."

-- Don Imus stepping up to the irony plate and knocking that sucker into the parking lot

That's like Castro calling him a tyrannical asshole.

The Laid Show

I'm a little busy today so I'll have to make this really quick.

Wow. So David Letterman had sex. With a consenting adult. A few, actually. They worked for him. Where's the scandal here exactly?

Yeah, sleeping with your subordinates usually isn't a good idea -- for you or them -- but it's certainly not illegal or even all that immoral (and anyone who says otherwise on the latter is just looking for something to be prudish and pissy about). He didn't cheat on his wife. He didn't drug and anally rape a 13-year-old. He's a wealthy, hugely successful television star who got laid at work. Will the only living American who's never had sex at the office please stand up. Jesus, I used to sleep with interns; no one ever considered that to be much of a scandal where I worked. Course I did work in the most amoral environment imaginable.

Speaking of which, the guy who tried to blackmail Letterman is described as a cocky, hot-headed, heavy-drinking womanizer who likes to get into fights and who's paying alimony to two ex-wives. Or as I like to call it: a TV news producer.

As for Letterman -- you know what he is?

Employed -- with health insurance.

For God's sake, you cable news nitwits -- get the fuck back to covering something important.

Of course that assumes they were ever covering anything important to begin with.

Punchline Bag

Lee Stranahan's latest piece for the Huffington Post is freakin' brilliant. It imagines Sarah Palin -- Alaska's answer to William J. Lepetomaine and she of the misplaced and thoroughly ludicrous indignation over David Letterman's crack about her kid -- being named the nation's first "Humor Czar."

"In a dramatic twist at the press conference, comic Dennis Miller caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror standing with Palin and Larry The Cable Guy. A look of sudden recognition came over his face before he grabbed a loaded revolver from a Secret Service agent, made a quick reference to 13th century French architect Jean de Chelles and then blew his own brains out. Palin roared with laughter."

The Huffington Post: Sarah Palin Named as "Humor Czar"/6.15.09