Calling All Perverts

OK, so the next celebrity interview takes me to Playboy magazine.

Michelle Manhart, the staff sergeant who was bounced from the Air Force for appearing in a sexy spread in the February issue of Playboy, will be talking to Primpin' Ain't Easy this weekend. Too bad it's only a telephone interview, but I'll be asking her any questions you want to solicit, so click below and offer up your inquiries.

And would it be redundant to ask you to keep the questions clean?

Submit your questions here.

Ellen DeGeneres Is Funny

I'm typically not a big awards-show guy, nor do I ever catch myself offering props to Ellen DeGeneres, but her Oscar monologue was an excellent 10 minutes of television.

Before you disagree, first find out what sarcasm is. It's not for everybody, usually just smart people. Like Paris Hilton.

Wish I could write more, but I have to go see who won Best Set Decoration. Is that seriously a category? Weak.

Deron Washington's Disgusting Dunk

I'll never know what a Hokie is, but I had to put this up because this dunk by Virginia Tech's Deron Washington is just absurd.

Weekend Recap

After XBox Girl's ADD combined with a weak storyline, we had to turn off "The Black Dahlia" on Friday night, but the rest of the weekend introduced me to a couple of firsts around the city.

Saturday, I watched my first beer pong tournament. I'd heard of the drinking sport for years, but had never played nor even witnessed such an event. I expected to be surrounded by Fraternity Frank and Sorority Sue, but the crowd was surprisingly older than college age, which was nice. The scene went down at Turtle Bay Grill And Lounge at 52nd and 2nd. I went there to meet my dude Jason and some of his people. Jason is a PR guy who's organizing a mission trip to Africa in 2008 in which I'm expecting to take part, and he was among the combatants in this beer pong competition.

Remember the Dick In A Box video? Well, Jason and his teammate Mike lost in the second round to two guys sporting, um, dicks in boxes. It's true; they had boxes somehow fastened to their belts and every time Jason or Mike was preparing to throw the ball, one or both of the other guys distracted them with pelvic, box-covered thrusts. Sophomoric no doubt, but entertaining nonetheless.

After the loss, we ended up downstairs where we watched the bartender pour himself a drink for seemingly each one he served. Then two gals named Heather and Meredith, names of my two most serious ex-girlfriends, came over and despite my 10 days of orange facial hair, seemed to think I looked safe enough to talk to.

A short time later, we ended up next door at Opal, where a pub crawl (called a bar crawl up here) was visiting. Even though it was only 7 o'clock or so, it was packed with drinkers. Jason and Mike both have girlfriends and live in New Jersey, so they finished a beer each, quite quickly, and had to head for the train. I'd just come back inside the bar -- my cell phone was blowing up, you see -- and they were walking out, handed me Meredith's beer, as she was in the restroom, and told me she'd be right back.

Sure enough, Meredith never returned, and when I looked for her girl Heather, who 15 minutes earlier was seated at the bar, becrutched with a broken wheel, she too was nowhere to be found. Clearly I looked like someone whose friends had ditched, so three bar crawl gals sitting at a nearby table invited me to make them laugh. Can it seriously be this easy?

Anyway, I split about a half hour later and it was nice to be in bed by 10 or 10:30 on a Saturday night.

My early bedtime yielded an early rise on Sunday morning, so I hustled down to Trader Joe's at 14th Street. The joint opens at 9 a.m., and I arrived only minutes later, yet this place was already a zoo.

I once walked into Trader Joe's in Chicago with Marcus, but never had I gone there to shop for myself. This story doesn't get much better. In fact, it's never been quite good, but I just wanted to express that I'd lost my Trader Joe's virginity this weekend.

Ohio State plays Wisconsin today. That should be a good game.

Anna Nicole's Casket?

Thanks to my friend George in Louisville, Ky., we now know what Anna Nicole Smith's casket will look like. Not that she's going to be buried anytime soon, but I just wanted you to have this critical information. I'm here for the people.

Anna Nicole Watch

As another day of Who Gets Anna Nicole's Body? hearings gets set to begin, a national network reporter outside the courthouse in south Florida just uttered the following sentence:

"They're expected to show that video in court today, the video that shows in the background one of those artists you might see at a children's museum. That artist painted Anna Nicole's face like a clown, and Anna Nicole, the former Playboy model, was dressed in a sheet or something and was pushing a stroller around her living room with a doll in it. The man holding the video camera asked her if she was on a mushroom trip, and she was clearly inebriated."

I saw this tape on Wednesday, and it's just another afternoon in the life of a girl, by virtue of her public standing -- deserved or not -- was a role model to teen trailer park whores all the way from east Texas to west Texas and points far beyond.

Back inside the courtroom, what can you say about this judge that hasn't been said about Whitney Houston? This guy is a circus freak who gives dorks like David Blaine license to wonder.

And Britney needs to drown or something.

Hooray Me!

I am quite funny. You all know this, right?

Well, for the second straight week, TV helicopters in Miami hovered above a high-speed chase in Miami. One is going on right now, and I liked a joke I cracked to my female co-worker so much last week that I did it again just a moment ago.

"This guy's crazy," I said.

"How do you know it's a guy?" female co-worker asked.

"You're right. This driver does look lost."

Anna Nicole Watch

Remember when you were a kid, and you and your buddies got together for a little 2-on-2 basketball, and right before starting, you'd claim, "I call I'm Larry Bird," and another kid said, "I'm Dr. J," and so forth?

Oh, you guys didn't do that when you were kids? You should have. I mean, look at how much better my life has turned out to be than yours as a result.

Anyway, it's one thing to be a kid and have a vivid and active imagination. But what about when you're an A-list celebrity in your late-30s, like Anna Nicole Smith, and two weeks after your not-really-all-that mysterious death, it's revealed in a courtroom that you declared not long before dying that you wanted to be buried next to your idol Marilyn Monroe?

Do you know any adults whose obsessions are so outrageous that they're talking in their 30s where they want to be buried?

I'm typically a compassionate dude, but not when it comes to losers who lead comfy lives despite having no talent or work ethic whatsoever, and even moreso when said loser has it so easy and still finds a way to fuck it up. Have you noticed that the file video you've seen of her since her death includes mostly pictures of Anna being held up by her entourage? There always seems to be a hand firmly gripped around one or both of her forearms. How many clips do you see of her walking -- shoot, even standing -- straight up?

Anna, you made such a mess of your life that you're making quite a mess in death, and thanks to you, the equally trashy masses now have their circus to watch for the next couple of years because no one knows who the father of your new baby is, no one knows who gets to bury your plastic body or where, and no one knows who will get your money that you made merely by marrying a dinosaur in the 1990s.

And don't get me started on Britney.

Pong Update

Remember Pong? (pronounced Pong)

She's the Chinese woman who runs a laundry business in the basement of my building, and even though she's been in the States for many years, her English remains terrible. Before November, when she told me I couldn't take my laundry to her anymore, we agreed (I think) to help each other out. She'd teach me a few things in Chinese and I'd teach her a little English.

Well, judging by the sign she put up a couple weeks ago explaining her pre-Chinese New Year absence, you can see she could still use a little work on her verb tenses. Bitch.

Good Timing, Mr. Hardaway

I wonder if any sex-addicted NBA players will take any slutty women up to their Las Vegas hotel rooms over All-Star weekend the next few days. I really can't imagine that happening.

But one person who will probably try to keep a lower profile is former NBA star Tim Hardaway. Quite frankly, I don't have a problem with his "I hate gay people" rant this week. Not because I agree; I like and dislike gay people for the same reasons I like and dislike straight people. People can't control how they feel, and they're more than welcome to express those opinions.

The only things with which I have problems here are:

A) How dumb a former star athlete must be to make such comments when he's got to know of the next morning's backlash.
2) The hypocritical NBA coming out to remind the public of the great disparity between Hardaway's views and the league's. What, does the league have a formal policy on how it views gay people? It's not a real policy; it's merely a form letter drawn up by a PR jackass and a lawyer that the league has at the ready in a time like this. It's a hollow statement that exists only to keep the league out of trouble.

As the publisher of a public blog and a supervisor of its staff of dozens of writers around the globe, should I craft my own official policy?

If you ask 100 NBA players, or 100 NFL players or 100 MLB players, off the record, you'll get more than a small percentage of athletes who share Hardaway's anti-gay views. I guarantee that.

Do you think Hardaway will become the outcast John Rocker became?

Best TV Commercial

This is the best TV ad out there right now. It debuted a few months ago, got mass play last month and is now getting fewer turns since the Super Bowl, but I saw it again the other day and I love it.

I'll grant two weeks worth of free comments to the first person who can find me the name of the song that plays underneath.

Ego Blow

One of the most blatant blows to the ego in a news environment is when a manager walks past you as he or she is escorting a new reporter/anchor candidate around the newsroom.

The manager will introduce the candidate -- often a clean-cut, well-suited man or a finely figured gal with made-for-TV hair -- to the important people only, other on-air folks, executive producers, maybe some show producers, other management types.

But the guy in jeans with a gnarly crop and three days of facial hair just gets passed in even the tightest of corridors without receiving so much as eye contact from the manager who would otherwise ask how the national news editor is doing.

Perhaps in this specific case, the manager was aware of said editor's proclivity toward Asian gals and steered his candidate far and fast in another direction.

And case you're wondering, yes, I am the neglected national editor in this story.

A Big Plate Of Hate

It always makes me laugh when women don't have any idea how often they get their way. Men, partly because of their shallow desires to see these women naked, or maybe just to be gentlemanly, or even perhaps because they simply don't care enough to argue, allow the shit way too often.

Take, for example, Monday night. Old friend Brian was in town for a meeting, so we made plans to have dinner, and another friend of his was going to join.

As you know, I get nervous about venturing too far from the crib on schoolnights because of the still-difficult 5 a.m. wake-up call. I figure I'll meet Brian at his hotel, and Susie will do the same, and we'll be off with little trouble.

Because I live here and Brian doesn't, I took the liberty of looking up a few restaurants in the blocks around his hotel. I found a couple Thai joints and a Balkan restaurant, all of which seemed like low-maintenance, affordable dining that got good reviews for both food and atmosphere on menupages.com.

Despite the cold, Brian wanted to walk to find a place just to take in a little city flavor. Once he and Susie saw that my list had on it a couple of Thai restaurants, Susie must have thought it meant it was now time to nominate other Thai places with which she was familiar. It kills a girl to have no say in deciding where to eat or socialize. I know this. Then when you give up on your suggestions and you tell her that her preference "sounds good," they often reply, "it doesn't matter. I'll do whatever." Oh really. That's why you just complicated things, because you're so agreeable and satisfied with the existing plan?

Don't get me wrong; the gal is quite nice and turned out to be splendid to hang out with. This is not a new rant, more of a general one that just rekindled last night.

Anyway, she made a suggestion or two, but then we reverted back to the list I brought, and all seemed settled.

But then we walked downstairs and out to get a cab, and suddenly Susie figured it was cold enough to try to revisit our plan out in front of the hotel at 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Only makes sense.

So, what did we decide on? Pasti's, of course, a French joint in the meatpacking district. Girl gets her way after all.

Now I know I'm a little stubborn in my dealings with women at times, but in almost all cases, my stubbornness is often a reaction to the woman's initial stubbornness. A kind of she-started-it excuse, you could say.

But seriously, if I brought a list, and the places are nearby, and Brian hoped to walk somewhere, why take a cab somewhere else farther away after 9 o'clock on a weeknight to a place that only you suggested and where we'd end up standing waiting for a table for a half hour?

I don't want to sound like a chauvinist, but please feel free to enlighten me if that's what you think I am doing here.

Two More Cents On Anna Nicole

Now that the Anna Nicole Smith hullabaloo seems to have died down some, here are my two cents:

I have no idea why this person was so celebrated. She succeeded merely at being a brainless millionaire. Blond hair, big tits and completely devoid of any character.

If we've learned one thing upon reflection since her death, it's that trailer trash can certainly make it big. Just start out as a stripper, get impregnated as a teen, present yourself as a whore loudly enough for Playboy to take notice in the form of a rich contract, get an enormously disgusting tattoo on your back, hate your mom, marry a zillionaire three times your age, treat your newfound irrelevance by gaining 100 pounds, make a comeback by embarrassing yourself with that joke of a reality TV show, lose the weight and then spend the last few years of your life being a camera-hungry pill addict and acting like a Marilyn Monroe wannabe.

Certainly Anna had to have had image consultants, but none seemed to tell her of the difference between paparazzi and studio photographers. So much of the file video that's been flashed on television the last several days shows Anna posing like she's in a photo shoot for a truck-stop soft-porn mag. Red-carpet events really aren't the place for tongue shots, but that girl is so fucking dumb I think the national average IQ just went up by a full point with her death.

And even in death there's more to her loser legacy. Three men claim to be the father of her 6-month-old daughter, whose name is quite trailer itself. Dannielynn? I think I've seen that name before -- on a theme-park airbrushed T-shirt back in 1989. What a summer that was.

News Of The Weak

Just a few minutes ago, this is what I heard on a national cable news network, after a report that a Duke University student claims she was raped over the weekend:

"No reports on whether a Duke lacrosse player was anywhere in sight."

Are you freaking serious? Even if the Duke trio did not have its rape charges dropped in December, that is incredibly irresponsible for any hack producer to write, let alone a national anchor to read over air.

My wallet was stolen the other day. I wonder if Frank Abagnale had anything to do with it.

Happy Birthday!

I just realized that yesterday was Feb. 8. This blog turned 1 year old.

The editorial team thanks you for reading.

If there's one request we could make, it's that you should submit more comments. Thank you. That is all.

Prank Call Etiquette

To the girls who prank-called me last night . . . if you're going to do that again on a weeknight, please do it before 10 p.m. I don't mind annoying pranks, but when you wake me up on a weeknight after I've fallen asleep, during a week where I've been sick and have had trouble getting up at 5:30 a.m., please be respectful in future gags. Call before 10 p.m.

But please know that you're also more than welcome to not call at all.

Anna Nicole Smith Dead At 39

I've had the privilege of photographing the Barnstable Brown Derby Eve Gala in Louisville each of the last few springs. It's a great event, but as you can see, I'm not the best shooter in low-light situations, so a lot of my stuff turns out blurry.

Nonetheless, here's an up-close picture I got of Anna Nicole Smith at the 2004 party.

She's dead now.

Weekend Recap ... Tardy Again

So Xbox Girl and I rolled over to the Guggenheim last Friday for their monthly First Friday gathering. It was my second time there, her first. Good time. It should have cost me four tickets to buy two drinks, but I accidentally handed the guy just two tickets for the first round, so I tried to get the same discount from the same guy for round two, and sure enough it worked. Six days later, I'm realizing how much better my life is by having saved those tickets.

Once is a mistake or perhaps an act of generosity on behalf of the bartender. A second time, at least in an uppity atmosphere like the Guggenheim, clearly was this guy's way of saying he liked me, or at least my new glasses. I'd told Xbox that I've been hit on by more gay men than by women, and I think she's starting to see the evidence.

Nonetheless, it seemed like a splendid evening until Saturday morning. I woke up sick as a dog and only this morning am I feeling close to 100 percent. For four days I was achy and coughy and just plain miserable. And poor Xbox had to take Tuesday off because she was feeling ill as well. But she told me Wednesday that once she started looking at pictures of me, she quickly regained her strength and felt much better.

Saturday, I watched "Little Miss Sunshine," which was outstanding. Steve Carell was excellent, as was Greg Kinnear. The little girl who's gotten plenty of buzz the last six months kind of annoyed me until her routine at the end of the movie. A little bit of a surprise, but quite entertaining. And her big brother Duane showed he was on the verge of becoming likable when he wrote "Go Hug Mom" on his notepad, but reverted to his cynical ways not long after when he got some bad news. By the end of the movie, however, his transformation made him my favorite character in the play.

I should have watched LMS after "A Scanner Darkly," not before it, because even in animation, Keanu Reeves cannot act. That movie was far less than what I was expecting or at least hoping for. Robert Downey Jr. usually delivers and Woody Harrelson seldom disappoints. Neither got it done this time and I regret the two hours it took me to realize that. Don't waste your time here.

Old Man Rant Again

Speaking of Jenny McCarthy, did you follow the party coverage of the Super Bowl weekend? Lots of behind-the-scenes looks at this A-list couple going to that A-list club. Exactly the type of stuff that makes me want to live out the rest of my years in the northern reaches of western Canada. I just wish I was better with one of those Swiss Army knives.

Remember when female musicians used to be female musicians? When actresses were just actresses? When did the memo go out to all women telling them they had to look like porn stars too? Seriously, I think every South Beach party picture I saw had a woman showing cleavage, legs and ass, or at least some kind of suggestive smile that told me -- and only me, of course -- that she was ready for me to meet her at her hotel and have my way with her. Certainly the temperatures are nicer in Miami than in most places this time of year, but -- and I haven't yet been invited to a red-carpet Super Bowl party, so I could be wrong -- the invitations surely don't require female guests to dress nearly naked. Do they?

But that's unfortunately how things are in our VIP and velvet-rope culture, which has conditioned too many women to put on every weekend outfit with "How much attention will I get from men?" being the chief concern.

This is not a new rant. The only two girls who've ever broken up with me heard variations of it often. I'm pretty doting with girlfriends, but when it feels like the large amount of attention I heap upon them still isn't enough, then the problem is on them, not me.

This is obviously a note from someone who's 36, not 26, but if you've dated me, or even if you've just had a conversation with me, you know this isn't old and conservative talking. It's well known I can be just as perverted as the next Larry Flynt.

But as long as tan, curvy women want to behave in a way that makes Girls Gone Wild videos sell like hotpants, er, hotcakes, I'll never know which is worse -- their starvation for attention, or the eagerness by typical men to encourage such behavior.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go search for more pictures of Eva Mendes.

Jenny McCarthy Update

For someone who was a 1990s sex symbol, Jenny McCarthy certainly has changed her appeal over the last decade.

She's got more of a suburban mom haircut, she's toned down her everybody-look-at-me schtick and it even looks like she's grown a man's right arm. Doesn't that hand look veiny!

New Year's Resolutions

I started thinking about New Year's resolutions way back in November, and though the new calendar is nearly six weeks old, I couldn't think of a better time to formally announce what I've come up with now that it's Feb. 7. This year I plan to:

+ Procrastinate less
+ Quit being indecisive

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Dad would have turned 76 today. Happy Birthday, Pops! Here's the last column I wrote about him, a Happy Father's Day note in 2005.

You'd Be Cool With This Story If She Was Ugly

When you're built like a Victoria's Secret model and your smile is worthy of a toothpaste ad, you don't have trouble getting Super Bowl tickets.

Especially if you're Sarah Spain, who insists she isn't just another pretty face. Backed by a strong will, an infectious personality and a degree from Cornell, Spain, probably not used to hearing no for an answer, got actually more than what she wanted.

She was just hoping to get into the Super Bowl to watch her beloved Chicago Bears. But she got four tickets and an invitation to what she thinks will so far be the best weekend of her young life. Read the rest of the story.

Hollywood Hot Five

One of the tasks for which I'm responsible at work is that I compile a collection of celebrity photos each morning, usually taken of A-listers out on the party scene in New York, Los Angeles and Toledo the night before.

Today's effort included pictures of Eva Mendes and Thandie Newton, reminding me how long it had been since I'd updated the coveted John P. Wise Hollywood Hot Five. Newton has made appearances here before, but Mendes has really grown on me in the last year or so. Drumroll please:

5) Thandie Newton
4) Rachel McAdams
3) Jessica Alba
2) Charlize Theron
1) Eva Mendes

Also receiving votes: Kate Beckinsale, Gabrielle Union, Jessica Simpson