Wednesday, March 17

"But we were on a break!"

I feel like I've written this post four or five times already -- "Sorry for the lack of posting over the last few weeks, here are some lame and only tangentially relevant excuses" -- but it may bear repeating once again, because I've come to a decision about the blog: I'm taking it offline for the next few weeks while I try to slam an adrenaline needle, "Pulp Fiction"-style, into my job search.

I've been examining and re-examining things that could make me a more viable candidate for the various jobs I've tried for recently, and without meaning to overdramatize this, when I'm potentially going up against several dozen candidates for a given position -- all of whom are just as desperate as I am, some of whom may be just as qualified -- even something as simple as this blog could mean the difference between making the final cut for an opening and not making it. I mean, though it may not always seem like this is the case, I don't go out of my way to offend people on here. And I don't think I've posted anything here that would automatically red-flag me as unqualified, unstable, or a threat to the security of the republic. But if a job came down to me and another guy with 15 years of writing/editing experience, and the hiring manager is sitting there thinking, "Well, there's this guy who dropped a bunch of F-bombs over a Georgia football loss last fall, and this guy who apparently has never done anything like that" -- I'd hate to think I missed out on a job over something that picayune. But it could happen.

And it's not like y'all are going to be missing out on much, at my current rate of production, at least. Between hunting for jobs and recent co-captaining gigs at EDSBS and Dr. Saturday, my output here has slowed down to the point where this blog has basically become a glorified Tumblr page, and I've been torn between being frustrated over that and really not being inspired enough to do anything about it. This isn't euthanasia, it's merely a hibernation, by the end of which this blog will hopefully emerge refreshed, re-energized, re-inspired and, God willing, written by a person with a steady income.

So Hey Jenny Slater goes behind the wall at midnight tonight (OOH DRAMA), and if you're really starved for my cranky outbursts in the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter or over at EDSBS or Dr. Saturday, where I hope to maintain a healthy contribution level during the interminable football offseason. I'm sure I'll also be popping up like a bad penny at Holly's joint. (I know what you're thinking: "Doug, if you're really so concerned about maximizing your employability, why would you allow yourself to be filmed singing along and doing a really gay dance to an Erasure song in your car?" All I can say is the heart wants what it wants, I guess, and at that moment my heart wanted to sing along and do a really gay dance to an Erasure song in my car.)

Thanks to those of you who have hung with this blog through the recent lean months, and I promise it'll be back eventually. For now it's time to regroup and light a fire under myself in a number of other areas. Your thoughts and prayers during that period will be appreciated, and when Hey Jenny Slater does come back, I will do my best to reward your patience by ensuring that it doesn't suck too terribly hard.

Peace.

"He's a very good boy."

The "Onion News Network" has already put out dozens of pitch-perfect parodies of 24-hour news networks and morning shows, so it should probably come as no surprise that their piss takes on "SportsCenter" are seamless as well.


Kentucky Violated NCAA Rules While Recruiting Basketball-Playing Dog

Stay with it through the stinger at the end. I hope some of these guys are getting acting jobs elsewhere; to be able to ape the tone of ESPN's reporters and anchors that closely speaks to some level of talent. (I mean, if Paris Hilton can still show up in movies . . . )

(H/T: The Senator.)

Wednesday, March 10

Plug.

If you're not keeping up with the RoboShark Publishing House & Fuzzy Kitty Emporium on Tumblr, you're depriving yourself of stuff like this . . .



. . . and that can't help but be a detriment to your well-being.

(Oh, and Christina Hendricks.)

Tuesday, March 9

The mild side.



. . . Which brings me to the two truest, most brilliant, spot-on paragraphs I have seen written about American cinema in eons, courtesy of you-know-who and you-know-who's BFF:

Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

LIVIA:
Oh, Sandra. I really don't know what to say about this nomination. You have brought me so much joy over the years, beginning with your bizarrely compelling performance across from a never-creepier Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping. You are glorious, and to be honest, I love you a little. However. That does not mean I will be endorsing you for Oscar gold. If they gave out Oscars for dyeing your hair blonde and acting like a bitch at football games, three ladies on my block would be Academy voters. Color me unimpressed.
NASTINCHKA: This is the only remotely relevant section in which I can point out that the Tuohy's real-life daughter is eons prettier than that tramp-stamped little minx they put in the movie. Who de-hots an Ole Miss cheerleader for filming purposes? If they were going to get one thing right about this festering delta puddle of an adaptation, that one seemed like easy money.


I'll confess right now that I somehow still have not managed to see "The Blind Side," but I did devour the book -- whose author, outrageously, didn't get mentioned once on Sunday night -- and I've seen enough clips and promos of the film adaptation to be confident I got the better end of the deal on that one.

So anyway, all I'll say about Sandra Bullock's Oscar win is this: Not having seen any of the five films to receive Best Actress nominations, I can't say where Bullock's acting job should rank among them. My beef is that she got nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role to begin with. Had they filmed Michael Lewis's book completely accurately, Bullock's character of Leigh Anne Tuohy would only have been eligible for the Best Supporting Actress category. She plays an important role in Michael Oher's awe-inspiring transformation, to be sure, but the story isn't about her; it's about Michael Oher. Flipping the script to give Bullock a shot at a bravura leading performance basically turns the whole deal into Very Very Special White Lady Saves Minority Youth, and I think that trivializes the amazing story of what both Oher and the Tuohys accomplished.

Did race play into that decision at all? Ergh, I'm not going near that can of worms. Not knowing any of the filmmakers, I'm not qualified to say whether turning "The Blind Side" into Very Special White Lady Story was a product of any racial condescension on their part. But whatever the motivation, it sure seems like it made for a less interesting movie.

And no, I can't imagine a reason why they would've had anyone but the Tuohy's actual daughter in the Collins Tuohy role. As cinematic mysteries go, that's right up there with Rosebud.

Friday, March 5

The Friday Random Ten+5 gets down in da club.

Holly directed me to this fascinating item from the Village Voice blog about music in strip clubs, and the most interesting revelation to me is that strip joints are apparently one of the main reasons really shitty mainstream rock groups like Nickelback and Staind hang on as long as they do. If titty-bar audiences like certain songs or bands -- no matter how obvious their awfulness might be to the general public -- then DJs snap up their records, the records cling to high chart positions, and the radio stations keep playing them. To me, this string of causation is almost as nefarious as finding out that the CIA hired the mob to kill Kennedy, or whatever the prevailing conspiracy theory is these days.

It's almost enough to make me want to take out a bunch of risky loans and open my own strip club, just to inject a better class of music into the world of adult entertainment. Hell, if I don't find a job soon, I may try applying for the job of strip-club DJ myself -- I've tried just about every other damn thing. This week's +5 is a taste of what I'd throw out there were I offered such a position -- Five Songs On My Strip-Club DJ Playlist:



Digital Underground, "The Humpty Dance"
I've been to a strip club or two in my time -- yes, I know that's a shocking revelation -- and somehow I've never heard this song played. Not once. If I was a strip-club DJ, I'd remedy that real quick like, and could even rap the song live while the dancer performed (not that anyone would be paying attention to me, of course). This, incidentally, was the song I did when we visited the karaoke bar at the Imperial Palace during our big blogger trip to Vegas last spring. And I killed it, quite frankly.



Bell Biv Devoe, "Poison"
Another song I can crush at karaoke, and another one I've surprisingly never heard at a strip joint. (My strip-club repertoire would have a strong '80s influence, which is another revelation that I know is just absolutely shocking to all of you.)



Pet Shop Boys, "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)"
Obviously there has to be a Pets song in there somewhere, but their catalogue is not exactly front-loaded with strip-club-appropriate songs -- it's pretty much either this, "Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend," or "It's a Sin," and this is probably the best-known of the three. Not to mention a great song to "make it rain" to, if that's what you're there for.



Isaac Hayes, "Theme from 'Shaft'"
This is one of those songs that's so awesome I can't think of a situation it wouldn't be appropriate for, honestly. Strip club? Awesome. Bar mitzvah? Sure, why not. Funeral? Maybe it's a bit out there for you, but I'm going to make sure they play this as they wheel my casket out of the church.



Nouvelle Vague, "Too Drunk to F#&k"
I'd save this one for the last song of the evening, by which time the song pretty much describes most of the patrons in the bar anyway. And just for the record, this wouldn't be the weirdest song I'd ever heard played at last call at a strip club; I was at a place in Birmingham a few months back where they closed out the night with Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

And now for the Ten, which may or may not come strip-club-approved:

1. The English Beat, "Can't Get Used to Losing You"
2. Beck, "Profanity Prayers"
3. Q-Tip, "Do It"
4. Public Enemy, "Bring the Noise"
5. Orbital, "Are We Here?" (Industry Standard version)
6. The Farm, "Rising Sun"
7. Pet Shop Boys, "Miracles" (Eric Prydz remix)
8. Sinéad O'Connor, "Famine"
9. Big Audio Dynamite II, "Kool-Aid"
10. Lyrics Born, "I Changed My Mind"

You know, with the Olympics having just recently concluded, it occurs to me how many good strip-club songs would also be great for figure skaters. The day a skater has the stones to select "Poison" or "The Humpty Dance" as her free-skate music, that's the day she locks up the gold medal, no questions asked.

Throw your own Random Tens and your own selections for music you'd play at a strip club (or, hell, music you'd dance to at a strip club) in the comments.