Each week, TCM schools your ass in good ol’ rockland. This week, I’m looking forward to the Bengals v. Raiders game and was looking for something that gets me totally juiced. The result: Death. Enjoy.
Every week, The Cincinnati Man drops a revue of everything that was awesome on the Internet over the previous week. We’ve been doing it for a while; you can check past festivals here.
–Remember M.A.S.K.? Yeah, let’s see how much you remember, terdz.
–Here’s a ricockulous take on those Brett Favre Wrangler ads. Not much else to say except, “Hott.”
–Best. Costume. Ever. (thanks, Super Punch.)
–Years back, I did a podcast with my wife. On one episode, we talked about Chindogu, and this post reminded me of that. Cool.
–This is a cute lil’ piece about children and swearing by Jon Ronson. He’s the same dude who wrote The Men Who Stare At Goats. The book.
–This web-based clock made completely of scrollable fields is probably the coolest thing I’ve seen all week.
–Stuffing made of White Castles. You’re welcome.
–Super Mario Bros. + Pulp fiction = Awesome.
–Whelp, that was good and disturbing.
–”Beards and Bellies” is dedicated to, you guessed it, Beards and Bellies. They started strong w/ some artistic renderings of your fave characters & superheroes wearing beards. Nice.
–This is hands down the greatest beard ever. Seriously. EVER. What I mean to say is that this is the reason man exists. Wow. Know what? I’m just gonna embed it. Here:
Every so often, The Cincinnati Man looks at the day in history. Today is November 20.
-Danger on the high seas in 1820! The American whaling ship Essex is attacked by an 80-ton sperm whale. This event apparently partially inspires Moby Dick–the book, not the song.
-The Cuban Missile Crisis ends in 1962.
-1984: SETI is founded, which is awesome.
-Birthdays: Emperor Maximus, Dick Smothers, Super Dave Osborne, Joe Biden, Bo Derek.
-Yeah, that’s about it. As a consolation prize, here’s my favorite hockey fight ever:
For part one, read here.
She was only 5 weeks old when we adopted our half-lab, half-border collie (a “borador) puppy Lucy. We expected our children to love the furball, and for Lucy to get used to the idea of our children being bigger and stronger than her. We did not anticipate the insane energy of a borador puppy. Even though she weighed less than 7 pounds, she could easily knock over any of our children, and regularly did so, all the while licking them like the best popsicle ever. Our oldest daughter – yes, the same one who asked for a dog for over a year – quickly developed a dog phobia, climbing to the top of the nearest piece of furniture any time the dog was out of her crate. Perched atop our kitchen table, our daughter would assure us that she’d play with the puppy “later.”
Lucy also began peeing and chewing on everything. Yes, this is what puppies do. However, we also expected we’d be able to train her without screaming children running about the room, and we expected that we would have at least one-tenth the consistency and willpower of an animal whose brain was smaller than a peach pit. Wrong on both accounts.
We enrolled in dog training classes at PetSmart (forcing our oldest daughter to come with us), and things got better. Lucy’s incredibly smart, so she started to pick up on basic training – even cool things like jumping through a hoop. “Ok,” we thought, “maybe we can do this.”
Then, things got a lot worse.
First, we had to take a 10-day trip to Michigan. We were camping, so we thought dogs would be OK to bring, but no, this camp does not allow pets. Surprise surprise, none of our family was willing to dogsit the urine machine. We found a kennel that would take a puppy (most will not kennel dogs under 6 months old), but the long time away from us erased most of her hard-won training. Grrr.
Then, literally the day after we got home, I broke Lucy’s paw. Not on purpose, I swear. I was trying to get her to go outside, she ran under me at the wrong time, we both moved to the same place, and – I stepped on her paw with an audible crack. The vet confirmed that she had broken a bone in the middle of her foot. She would have to wear a cast for at 4 to 8 weeks, stay as inactive as possible, and keep her cast dry and clean. In other words, she would have to stay in her crate almost 24-7.
As a friend of mine recently informed me, labs and border collies have the highest energy levels of any large dogs. Staying in her crate made Lucy miserable. She couldn’t get her cast wet, either, so her time outside was strictly limited by wet weather. She lost the little training that remained, as well as developed the nasty habit of peeing in her crate whenever she liked.
So here’s the situation, post-trip, post-foot, post-growth-spurt-that-added-25-more-pounds-to-this-dog.
1) Urine. Specifically, urine in the house, in her crate, on the couch, on me….Frankly, it’s getting a bit tiresome. Our 3-year-old suggested we buy her some diapers. She might have something there.
2) Teething. Did you know that puppies teethe just like babies? It’s true. The only difference is that dogs have the teeth and jaws of wolves, which means that they can destroy just about anything they can get their mouth around. From our experience, “things dogs can destroy” include:
For those of you who don’t have babies, let me assure you that babies almost never eat patio swings.
3) Jumping. Lab-border collie mixes love people. Let me amend that: they LOVE LOVE LOVE PEOPLE!!!!! Lucy expresses this love by trying to kiss you, which means that she jumps up, puts her paws on your chest, and becomes very, very excited. It’s annoying when she does it to me. It’s terrifying when she does it to the kids. She knocks the kid to the ground, goes after their face with her tongue going crazy, and, for a brief moment, we wonder if this is going to move into the “teething” category.
Me, I like this dog. If I were single with no kids, I bet we’d get along great, especially if I had no job, got depressed if I sat inside all day, and could just work on training and walking her every day. As it is, it’s been, well, a character-building experience.
She’s making progress, though. With her foot fully healed, we’ve been able to restart our dog training classes. Even better, PetSmart recently switched trainers for our class, and Lucy is responding better to the new woman. It’s probably not very manly that a woman at PetSmart who only sees the dog once a week can command Lucy far better than I can, but at least she’s taller than me. If she were, like, five-foot-two and looked like my mom, that would be less manly. This new trainer has given us revolutionary advice like, “She jumps all over your kids? Keep her on a leash when she’s around them.” Oh yeah – the leash. It’s kind of designed for that, isn’t it?
Slowly, very slowly, Lucy is starting to get the idea that:
We had a breakthrough of sorts over the weekend. I was raking leaves and the kids were jumping into them. My wife brought Lucy out on the leash so that we could work on training her not to jump on the kids. After a few successful “non-jump” incidents, Lucy dives into the leaves with our 6-year-old, splashes around with her, and then starts licking her silly, but without pinning her down. Our 6-year-old – the one with the dog phobia – throws her hands out, kicks her legs, and…laughs like a maniac. She’s loving it. She thinks Lucy tickles, and she even complains when my wife finally pulls the dog out of the leaves. Our 3-year-old even got Lucy to sit on command a few times. Maybe this dog is going to work out.
I can’t say that I’m as manly as an Alaskan dog sled driver or one of those circus guys with the dancing Pomeranians. Still, I’m keeping an animal in a cage in our living room who can disassemble a patio swing with her teeth. It’s almost exactly like keeping a tiger in your backyard, except more culturally acceptable. This dog has lived with us for 6 months now, and no one (except the dog) has needed an ER visit. That’s all the success you need, right?
Testing My Manliness Score: A+
Okay, so I have a dysfunctional relationship with contemporary television, mainly that I refuse to pay to watch it. Generally, I get my network and cable fix through Ye Olde Internet, so when I heard that one of the most talked about (at least in my circles, anyway) shows would be posted on hulu.com, I made a little squeak of joy.
Not to plug an internet site or anything, but if you haven’t heard of hulu.com, then there’s something seriously wrong with your Popular Culture filter.
Now, if you’re unfamiliar with The League it’s basically a sitcom about a much-loved, but oft cloaked-in-mystery past time of the American male: Fantasy Football.
You, my fine-feathered male friend, need to be watching this show. The writing is superb, from jokes about women having vaginal hubris to moments about friends being “Eskimo Brothers“. This show will make you laugh–at least, that is, if you are a man. I say this because I am not a man and was keen to notice that all of the married men were unhappy to the point of suicide because they are married to these obnoxious (though hot) sex-withholding bitches. The institution of marriage is portrayed as a second childhood where boy-men are only allowed out of the house because their wife-mothers give them permission. There is one exception to this rule, but the “cool wife” has her foibles, too.
Women will not like this show because it depicts them in a very negative light. Not only are the stock characters’ wives awful people (not saying, b/t/w that the guys are not horrible people as well, because they are, but they’re at least funny), but the non-central female characters are just depicted as sex holes. There are also a lot of references to porn, sports, and ways in which women generally are not as good as men. Steer your female loved-ones away from this show because once they see it, they will disapprove of your watching it, and much like the show satirizes, you will be forbidden to do something you love to do in front of her. But, such is life in Marriedland, apparently.
In addition, you should not allow your wife or girlfriend watch The League because then she will learn all of your secrets: how you really talk about women, what you really think of your significant other’s body, and the body of your friends’ ladies’, where you go for an emergency porn break, etc.
In one scene, a character makes a call from the bathroom, and the recipient of the phone call notices that his buddy is shitting while he’s talking on the phone. The friend then justifies this because he says that the toilet is the only place he gets to be alone. Many men will identify with this, and I’m sure you don’t want your wives and girlfriends to catch on to the unfortunate fact that you’re in there so long by choice. Like I said, this show gives away some of your secrets, and we all know how harmful that can be, especially to those of you who actually live with a female and have them watching your every move.
So guys, check out The League, but not on Family TV Night.
______________________
Front page thumb: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beigephotos/ / CC BY 2.0
Each week, The Cincinnati Man asks its writers to chime in on a topic of manliness. This week: name your top 5 manliest bands/musicians.
Dale
1. Johnny Cash
2. Johnny Cash
3. Johnny Cash
4. Johnny Cash
5. Johnny Cash
Megan
Yikes.
First, I will preface my choices with this note: loud, obnoxious, and barely-coherent do not make “manly”, it’s just plain bad, like curdled milk or Incubus.
Second, I don’t listen to music that would be considered “manly” by many listener’s standards, but I will make the argument for why each is manly.
1. Doc Watson: Bluegrass legend, flat-picking genius, and blind before he was one year old. What’s manly about Bluegrass, one might ask? Murder ballads, of course. This traditional musical form was brought over from Scotland, Ireland, and Britain with immigrants who settled in the Appalachian region of the U.S. What’s more manly than singing about slitting your cheating woman’s throat and throwing her in the river, or better yet, drowning your girl cause you knocked her up and you don’t want to marry her?
2. John Hartford: Banjo and fiddle-playing monster, recovered heroine addict, cancer survivor, and river man. Hartford virtually invented the sound that came to be known as “New Grass” (which Bela Fleck quickly adopted and bastardized–yeah, he’s a gerat musician, but c’mon!). Hartford is manly because he kept it together for so long, played about a million shows and recorded a ba-gillion albums. He’s badass no matter how you cut it.
“Let Him Go On Mama” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC0n0NAUp_k
“Gentle on My Mind” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fXXkybycsU
3. Woody Guthrie: The original musician hobo, Guthrie wrote “This machine kills fascists” on his guitar, forever crowning him punk before there ever was such a thing. He was a hard working, hard-playing man who left his home to find the real America. Manly as you can get.
“Pastures of Plenty” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDKYkvuRXik
“Jesus Christ” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnnMgMBTp8
“Hard Workin’ Blues” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnnMgMBTp8
4. Son House: Although any blues man could be argued as manly–after all, how difficult is it to make a living as a musician, especially when the world doesn’t like the color of your skin OR the content of your character–Son House was an originator of early delta blues and a huge influence on such blues greats as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.
“Death Letter Blues” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDCNbacVt5w
“Forever on My Mind” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLD9Iej5nRc
5. The White Stripes: Okay, generally I would go by the adage: “If everybody likes it, then it can’t be that good,” but this does not apply to The White Stripes. First, they rock, no matter what musical genre they’re trying out. Second, Jack White is a badass. He’s from Detroit, and he’s a brute: bar fights, actress girlfriends, movie cameos–the dude does it all. And if you think you know The White Stripes because you listen to the radio and watch MTV, then you need to knock it off and start discovering music like an adult.
“Ball and Biscuit” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnTb0PfbSoE
“Hotel Yoruba” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXmF3an6kYI
Mike Hickerson
I grew up listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Country Countdown every Sunday after church, so in tribute, I will be listing my top 5 bands in proper Kasem countdown order, starting with number five. In further tribute, I’ll also include one country band, even though I don’t particularly care for country music.
5. The Beatles. Nothing particularly “manly” really, except for the practice of craft at an extremely high level. If the greatest song writers of the rock era had been The Supremes, I would have listed them, too.
4. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. My token “country” band, though, really, Western swing is to country as blues is to rock – same city, different neighborhood. Here’s one of their classics, “Take Me Back to Tulsa.”
3. The Grateful Dead. Ah, the ironies of manhood. A band (and its fans) known for, er, creative use of herbal remedies, but one of the hardest working bands in the business. Anti-corporate, anti-establishment, they built an empire based around their brand. With the exception of Pigpen, they lived far longer than any of them had any right to. Here’s my favorite, “Sugar Magnolia.”
2. Metallica. I debated a long time over which band should go here. If the Miles Davis-Thelonious Monk-John Coltrane jazz quintet had a real name, they probably would have been here instead. Metallica had far too much influence over my early high school years, even though I could never carry off that brooding, angry thing. What pushed them to #2 on my list was their movie Some Kind of Monster. I haven’t seen it, but Chuck Klosterman’s review made it sound interesting. Nothing more manly than getting in touch with your feelings.
1. Queen. Ah, the ironies of manhood, part two. A falsetto-prone lead singer who hid both his sexuality and his ethnicity from the public, a flamboyant gay man writing one of the American football’s favorite sports anthems, a lead guitarist whose true love was astrophysics, two other guys who, um, played bass and drums…OK, OK, I just like their music. I’ve had “Don’t Stop Me” stuck in my head for three days.
Jason McGlone
Beards: Manly. Beards + Music? I find it somewhat strange that the formula doesn’t always equal as much. Don’t get me wrong, pretty much every metal band is bearded to some degree, or has been at some point. But a beard does not a manly band make. So much for my brilliant idea. Except for one:
5. Hot Water Music: That’s it for the beards–and the music after, oh, 1993.
4. Judas Priest: Bikes, leather, and dueling lead guitars. Not seeing how this isn’t manly.
3. Ray Stevens: I’d be remiss to not include everyone’s dad here. I personally can’t stand this dude’s music, but pretty much everyone’s dad LOVES Ray Stevens. It’s escapism in an audio format. Case in point: Guitarzan.
2. Led Zeppelin: This doesn’t need explanation.
1. Black Sabbath: I can’t believe they haven’t been mentioned yet.
