A weird trick for free testosterone. Thanks? Maybe?

Scrolling up and down this blog lately, there’s a recurring theme of Facebook ads and potency/performance copulating/dating issues. Yet this is another ad Facebook served up that squicks me out. 

“Why men need more free testosterone” 

Not sure that’s the lesson of world history in the West. Although many of our military adventures and empire-building MAY be based on older men needing to prove their studliness despite waning biochemistry. Free testosterone may help take the edge off there. But DO go on, ad… 

“Free Testosterone Boost” 

Administered how? Given those terrifying “Low T” ads marketed to men express mere physical contact with people who take their medicines may induce birth defects and cause early onset puberty to children, there’s a strong chance a shoddily administered boost of testosterone may require complete human exile. Or maybe you could join The Avengers as new superhero ‘Rone Hulk?

The ad has my attention, along with a woman who may have traveled from 1966 (a former model for Swiss Miss?)  and looks vaguely aware of my presence and ready/worried. She’s ill-dressed for wilderness exploration.

“Researchers in Boston have found a natural way to boost testosterone.”

Good for science! Wonder if the same researchers have done the same for estrogen and androgen. Wonder what Estrogen Hulk would look like. 

“Try this weird trick and take your performance to the next level.”

Uhm, no. I’m willing to WATCH these researchers demonstrate this “weird trick” while I stand in safety behind bullet-proof glass. Otherwise, no. Thanks Facebook ad. And I hope that lady gets indoors before it turns cold. 

 Testosterone Hulk enjoys life with more vigor. You can too!
Testosterone Hulk enjoys life with more vigor. You can too!

No, no, NO Facebook Ads: a swing(er) and a Ms?

Another Facebook ad on the log off screen wants me to get hitched/hooked up. First it was Christian Single (my report about that) that whiffed it as a targeted ad. I am not Christian and not single. My Facebook profile lists my religious views as “Heathen/Hellenic”. My marital status: “Married”. I’m all about helping the CIA/FBI/NSA save a few keystrokes on research. The Christian Mingle ad made it look like the first date would lead to marriage THAT SAME NIGHT. Too much pressure! Sure, I am charming enough to pull that off on someone, but my choice would be to wait until the second date. Between my lack of smoove operator skills and blitzkrieg atheism, I would leave a trail of metaphysical destruction across the Christian Mingle terrain like the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character through a forest. Get thee behind me, Christian Mingle!

THEN Match.com targeted an ad featuring greasy women (my report). What in my profile indicated that was my type? Never pondered it as a “thing” before. Not saying it’s without merit, but still a shock. 

All of these Our Time models (actual customers?) appear to be fine people. I shuddered slightly at the woman on the right who appears to have had “some work done”. In a dating scenario, I would reserve judgment (Maybe recuperative surgery? Tell me more, madam, about your disfiguring traumatic event and how you surpassed it to defy nature and use science to seize control of your personal appearance and gain agency against the amoral churning of the Void!)

Then her photo is featured in the thumbnail image of a sample profile, which conveys: “Well, this is pretty much what we got. A lot of this.” 

Hey, Our Time, how about some women of color? It’s 2013. The white patriarchy is diminishing. Way past time for minds to open up. If we white males don’t do a better job of mingling with races on the rise we will fade completely. Are you trying to kill off all memory of my people, Our Time? Where will the future hockey players come from if your scheme succeeds?

The ad shows a “over 45” criterion. Absolutely nothing wrong than that (I’m 44 as I type this). Guess that means 46 and over? Seems ageist. 

Trek in the Park, the Final (Fun!) Year

This is the fifth and final year of Trek in the Park, an annual live re-enactment of an episode of the original Star Trek show put on by Atomic Arts. It started out small with a few people having a good time over a lark. It has become massive, moving from a cramped corner of a small park to a vaster space in a larger park, but STILL packing ’em in. Attendance is easily in the thousands now.

 Panoramic shot of
Panoramic shot of “The Trouble With Tribbles” in Portland’s Cathedral Park. (click for close-up)

2009: “Amok Time” 
2010: “Space Seed”
2011: “Mirror, Mirror” (first year I went, my write-up & confessed Uhura crush)
2012: “Journey to Babel”
2013: “The Trouble With Tribbles”

 The comedy climax, Kirk piled on with Tribbles. As on the original show,
 throughout Kirk's dialog he gets bonked by descending Tribbles.
The comedy climax, Kirk piled on with Tribbles. As on the original show,
throughout Kirk’s dialog he gets bonked by descending Tribbles.
 Vulcan ear sets aside an area for those wanting an easy view of the provided American Sign Language interpreters.
Vulcan ear sets aside an area for those wanting an easy view of the provided American Sign Language interpreters.

While there are wry laughs to be had, it’s a communal vibe with a great fondness for the material by both audience and crew. Over the last five years, the audience has palpable warmth toward the developing and ambitious Atomic Arts group. 

Trek in the Park is worth checking out in clips on YouTube. It’s across the internet and has been featured in a Portlandia skit. At the end of this year, Adam Rosko (who plays Kirk and started Trek in the Park with his sister) said that Atomic Arts would be performing on its own original work. He emphasized the importance of ending things on a high note, and while they were still fun and within control. Atomic Arts has done that. Keeping eyes open for their next project will be worthwhile.

 Trek in the Park curtain call & announcements
Trek in the Park curtain call & announcements

Glad Facebook wasn’t around when Diana died

 Diana Memorial Tartan, for sale at the United Kingdom land at Epcot in Walt Disney World, 2009. 
Diana Memorial Tartan, for sale at the United Kingdom land at Epcot in Walt Disney World, 2009. 

The romance and swooning over the Windsor dynasty is disturbing. The family members have little to no merit given the amount of power they are born into. And almost to a person they seem miserable. Gross all the way around.

Was Lady Diana’s death a sad one? Sure. Did it warrant an entire hemisphere seemingly crippled with grief in 1997? No way.

Sympathies to her family and friends, but she was not a magical creature and I can’t recall any constructive thing she did other than take stands on issues like objecting to abandoned landmines blowing up children. Hardly daring stuff.

She was a crucial part of the big Royal Wedding industry that ramped up to her marriage to Prince Charles in the 1980s. Now we know Charles was in love with someone else at the time, Diana’s happiness was doomed (recall the “miserable” point made above). 

Worst of all, as her family mourned and others projected their fantasies onto Diana’s blankness, Elton John reworked the lyrics to “Candle in the Wind” and made it WORSE than its original tribute to Marilyn Monroe. Sure, his longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin had a hand in it, but STILL. Is life better for anyone with words like “And your footsteps will always fall here
/ Along England’s greenest hills”? One imagines a gigantic Diana patrolling England, a colossal stomping wraith wandering a Emily Brontë heath.

Actually, that would be marvelous

What rhymes with “hug me”? Let’s help Robin Thicke (UPDATED)

The Robin Thicke song-of-the-summer “Blurred Lines” asked, with practiced super-produced fake-spontaneous laugh, “What rhymes with ‘hug me’?”.  Let’s give it a whirl…

 #Thicke. Get it? It's a boast, and HIS NAME! Lol. 
#Thicke. Get it? It’s a boast, and HIS NAME! Lol. 

To start, here’s the clothed video to the song. I’ve linked to the “unrated” version in another post, but don’t want to shock people unfamiliar with the concept that we higher primates are attracted to attractive, naked members of our same species. The key lines at 1:33: “I feel so lucky. / You wanna hug me? / What rhymes with ‘hug me’? / Hey-ey-ey-ey.”

Going straight through the alphabet with single-letter replacements we get: 

You wanna bug me.
You wanna dug me.
You wanna fug me. (“fug”, adjective, a stuffy or malodorous emanation)
You wanna jug me.
You wanna lug me.
You wanna mug me.
You wanna pug me.
You wanna rug me.
You wanna sug me. (“sug”, verb, to Sell Under the Guise of conducting market research)
You wanna tug me.
You wanna vug me. (“vug”, noun, a cavity in rock with mineral crystals)
You wanna zug me. (“Zug”, noun, a German-speaking canton in Switzerland)

Some of these clearly won’t work and/or are bad grammar. Some work marvelously. Other possible choices, especially if sung at a quickened pace to stay within the measure: 

You wanna chug-a-lug me.
Bella Abzug and me.
It’s ‘A Bug’s Life’ we’ll see.
This tastes nougat-y. 

I’ve got to go catch up on some recorded television, but your suggestions are heartily welcome here!

More ideas: 

You wanna thug me.
You wanna shrug me.
Let’s do The Frug, G.
You look like Pugsly.
C’mon butt plug me.
Butt butt butt butt me.
 

My ‘Jobs’ the movie pre-review

I want to see this movie in Harlem so I can talk at the screen the whole time.

It’s not impossible that Ashton Kutcher could do well in this role.  He has intelligence and savvy beneath his goofball persona. I don’t trust screenwriters to get the technology and the personalities right. The trailer below does not inspire confidence:

 They command you to put that colored dust on yourself before watching this movie. 
They command you to put that colored dust on yourself before watching this movie. 

Josh Gad (the shlubby Elder Cunningham from Book of Mormon) plays Steve Wozniak. That casting looks bad. Wozniak is a person who has hardly aged the last 40 years. Why not have him play himself, and treat ‘Jobs’ as a weird fantasia? Make THAT movie, guys!

I’ve read many books about Jobs and Apple, went to the same college (Reed) that Jobs attended for only one or two semesters (I went for TWO years, thankuverymuch), and watched several documentaries about the days of the Homebrew Club and Xerox PARC and Apple and NeXT and Microsoft. Documentaries suit those stories, especially interviews with the people who were there.

How do you make compelling drama out of pear-shaped men anguishing over gadgets and doo-dads? Or, Athene help us, operating systems

How do you beat a clip like the real Jobs, below? He’s talking in 1996 (Windows 95 had just been released), about a dozen years after getting kicked out of Apple for being an asshole by CEO John Sculley. Jobs is still more than a year away from working his way back into Apple, but he can’t help himself from getting an important dig into Microsoft. I watch this clip a few times a year and LOVE it long time:

Fiona Apple’s “Hot Knife” with ex Paul Thomas Anderson

I rarely like albums on the first listen, but Fiona Apple’s “The Idler Wheel” is my favorite album from last year, and I liked it from the first. 

I enjoyed her hit “Criminal”, but was bored by Jon Brion’s production style (foot on piano pedal for echo, pound and hold chord, repeat) and soon tuned her out. I also worried about her, getting a sense that by listening to her songs I was injuring her in some way. 

After reading a review I got her album and listened to it on headphones during a long walk. Then listened to it again. An interview Apple gave on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast gave assurance that she was resilient and funny. She puts herself on her sleeve, and actually lets some of it get on you, or lets it fall to the floor with a laugh. But she has tenacity and creativity.

Her video for “Hot Knife” is directed by ex-boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson, an excellent film director (“Boogie Nights”, “There Will Be Blood”)  who also keeps knocking up Maya Rudolph. Respect.

Being the hottest bitch in this place

I knew Alan Thicke’s kid was a singer. Hadn’t heard any song by him before (or at least connected any song with him). His photo would show up here and there, then his name. I’d think “Ah. Alan Thicke’s kid. Bet that’s a steep climb, or a career boost. Whatever. Looks like a dullard. Like an even-blander Enrique Iglesias.” 

This week, I discovered the name of that song I’ve heard 300 times this summer (“Blurred Lines)”, and that it was Alan Thicke singing it. Great production. Not surprised Pharrell is involved.  The video is causing a stir, due to the presence of naked female models (let’s all of us clothed primates gasp in horror). Even so, only Pharrell and T.I. come across like the only humans within worth hanging out with. Even better, though, is the parody video. Unfortunately, getting many of the jokes in the parody require seeing the original. Here you go [Not Safe For Work unless you work someplace awesome]:

The funnier, more personality-driven parody by Mod Carousel that swaps the genders:

Bet the group in the parody video had more fun than the pretend-fun in the first video. 

Shiny, frosted women await!

The ads that come up on a web browser after logging off from Facebook are reliably off-target. And what, in my profile, is triggering these ads and for “Christian Singles”? While I’m sure these “single” women/models/sample profiles are all wonderful human beings within, seeing a mosaic like this feels like I’ve had too much frosting with a saccharine aftertaste AND a sugar headache. With an oily residue. I’m sure it’s not them, it’s me, but STILL. 

Fifty Shades of Anne Gray Sexton

I finished reading Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook. It was insightful, and the second Sexton-related biography I read this year. The first was written by Anne Sexton’s eldest daughter, Linda: Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother.

I enjoyed the Middlebrook biography more, but both played off each other well. Some thoughts:

1.) A Biography caused a stir
when it was released, for outing a sexual relationship between Anne
Sexton and one of her later psychiatrists. Among the immediate problems
that come to mind: conducting an affair during the scheduled therapy
hour as part of therapy and charging for it. Caused concern among her
friends at the time, and remains an eyebrow-raiser now.

2.)
More controversially, A Biography relies on many hours of recorded
sessions between Anne Sexton and the main psychiatrist of her life, Dr.
Martin Orne. The material was used with the permission of Linda Sexton,
her mother’s literary executor, and the book has a foreword by Dr.
Orne to put things in context. No big deal. Auxiliary family members had
a problem with it, Linda sanctioned it. Good insights resulted.
Middlebrook did a good job using fragments to shed light on Sexton’s
life and work. 

3.) Anne
Sexton’s poetry started in her 20s, at the suggestion of Dr. Orne as a
way to deal with her mental and emotional issues.  It helped.

4.) It is a romantic notion to regard the artist as shaman, one who has a
schizophrenic break and becomes shifted from the rest of our humdrum
reality. That has a bit of bearing on Sexton’s creativity and
productivity. Primarily, though, that romantic notion gets set aside as
true blue mental illness seems an outright pain in the ass with
devastating consequences for the sufferer, family, and friends. It’s not
that the person is ahead of his/her time so much as the wiring is off, leading
to sparks of brilliance than extended short circuiting and shutdowns.
The upcycle of mania may be fun. The downcycle is hellish.

5.) Middlebrook was trustworthy in both the conveyance of Sexton’s life and interpretation of her art. 

6.) I admire Dr. Orne’s willingness to endorse use of the confidential
material, and especially admire Linda Sexton’s willingness to share a
variety of personally embarrassing and harrowing details in her own book
and allowing Middlebrook to probe and bring things to light the rest of
the family would likely object to. It mattered to understand the art.