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No Shirt, No Service
Photographer Jordan Matter, who created an art show called Uncovered, a collection of photographs depicting women walking around the streets of New York topless. "There was so much hoopla around it and I got to thinking about our culture of covering up," explained Mr. Matter. "In New York, it's legal for a woman to be topless in public, so I decided to document what happens when a woman bares her breasts." While I have long been an advocate of female breasts, I am adamantly opposed to any law which allows a person to walk around without a shirt. And lest any of you accuse me of sexism, let me assure you that I am primarily referring to men. Whenever someone talks about the equality of a law that allows people of either gender to bounce around without a shirt, they giddily envision a Victoria's Secret model jogging through Central Park with her DDs bouncing gleefully up and down for all to see. The reality is that most people who strut around without a shirt are overweight middle-aged drunks sitting in the stands of football stadiums with their sagging paunches and man boobs poised to make anyone within a 50-foot radius throw up in their mouths. I think it should be illegal for anybody to be seen in public without a shirt because most of us have bodies that are so disgusting that we prefer to shower with the lights off. And if you have a good body it doesn't make it any better, because seeing you without a shirt only makes the 98% of us who look like Jabba the Hut feel insignificant by comparison. So I submit that it should be illegal for anyone – male or female – to be seen without a shirt in public. That eliminates the sexual inequality of the law while still allowing us to keep our hot dogs down when we attend football games. If you're riding the fence about this piece of legislation, just look at the photo on the left and put yourself in the woman's position. I'm sure you'll agree that some laws are needed just to protect the public sanity.
Jonny Award winner Jesse Merlin, who posted a photograph of himself hosting a Q&A with legendary actor Barry Bostwick which Mr. Bostwick inscribed "Jesse thanks for making me 'hip' again, if only for one night!" It dawned on me that I've known Mr. Merlin for several years now and he's never made me seem "hip" at all. In fact, when we're seen in public together (which happens more and more infrequently since the religious rites I follow prohibit me from bathing) the more hipness Mr. Merlin projects, the less hip I come off as by comparison. I am outraged that Mr. Merlin isn't affording me the same courtesy that he does to the star of 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure, so I must insist that the next time we're together that he whip out his bag of magic tricks to increase my hipness by a factor of at least 17%. That would give me just enough hipness so that those damn kids won't T.P. the front of my house when I keep their ball after they kick it into my yard, but not so much that any gold digging college girls will come after me with their damned STDs and eyes on inheriting the collection of string I keep in the attic. If I tried to keep up with them I'd fall and break my hip, thus defeating the purpose of the whole exercise. I only pray that Mr. Bostwick had Medic Alert® on call the night Mr. Merlin bestowed him with the extra hipness. Once you've fallen and you can't get up, there's a limit to how much hip you can take.
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Enemies List favorite Mara Marini whose restraining order against me was just enthusiastically renewed. Ms. Marini recently posted on the social network " When did spam turn into cellphone calls? A guy just called me insisting me I purchased Viagra from their online pharmacy! (FTR: I have not.)" I suppose I owe Ms. Marini an apology since it was me who ordered the Viagra and gave them her name when I misunderstood the online questionnaire. As I approach my golden years, I find more and more that my hardwood floors are turning into shag carpeting, so to make my nightly self abuse quota, I am forced to rely on boner medications to satisfy my imaginary lovers. It was Ms. Marini's turn in the masturbation rotation (she's right between Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman and my 9th grade algebra teacher) so when I was ordering the Viagra, I absent-mindedly inserted her name on the form. Everything went as planned until I actually began envisioning my perversion, when instead of a mental image of Ms. Marini appearing in my mind's eye it was her attorney Solomon Weinberg, Esq. to remind me that I wasn't allowed to so much as think about Ms. Marini or face serious jail time. Since I'd already popped the pill, I had no choice but to alter the scenario and imagine myself crawling on top of Mr. Weinberg clad in a pink bikini until it was time to bring out the Kleenex to mop up the mess. I'm sure Mr. Weinberg wasn't any unhappier about the compromise than I was, but at least he bills by the hour. That means I was able to get my jollies and someone was able to make a few bucks from walking away covered by a faceful of my spooge. When you look at it that way, it was a pretty typical Saturday night.
My college chum Phyllis Bergermeister. I posted another of my delightful cover images on Facebook on Sunday, this one of a line of disobedient schoolboys waiting in line to be disciplined by their sexy teacher (depicted by the fore-mentioned Ms. Marini). It brought the desired number of cyber-chuckles, compelling me to add that "for the record that I am adamantly opposed to spanking children. That should be between consenting adults." This prompted Ms. Bergermeister to respond that she has consented to such punishment in her adult life, but as a reward in engaging for certain behavior as opposed as a means to dissuade her from repeating those actions. That's when it occurred to me that many of the penalties used to strike terror in us in our childhood are now regarded with delight in our adulthood. And I'm not just talking about kinky role-playing like spanking. For instance, I might be given an early bedtime for committing a crime when I was a boy, whereas now the earlier I get to drag my ass between the sheets, the happier I am. I might be given a thimble-full of hard liquor to teach me a stern lesson about the realities of intoxicants, while today I drink it by the gallon. And I might have Tabasco sauce applied to my fingers to keep me from biting my nails, but nowadays I douse it on everything from lima beans to rum cake. I'm not sure why our childhood disciplinary measures give us pleasure now, but then the punishments leveled against us as adults wouldn't carry much weight when we were kids. For instance, Ms. Bergermeister is a tax consultant and I'd have a hard time picturing her threatening the preteen me with an audit if I didn't settle down and behave. I think the only effect it would have on me then would be to turn me on.
The irritating Amy Ball, who threw an olive branch at me by inviting me to join her and her entourage on a leisurely hike through a trail which housed the relics of a compound founded by German sympathizers after World War I. Or at least I thought it was an olive branch until I learned her true motive by asking if it was something that my beloved pug Winston would enjoy, and she innocently replied "I believe Winston will be fine. We just may have to carry him up some steps. But I'm game!!"The "steps"Ms. Ball was referring to turned out to be a treacherously narrow incline carved into the living rock which pervaded dangerously into the uneven valley below. It was a challenging descent under any circumstances, but Ms. Ball and her group of Himalayan Sherpa guides took delight at the sight of me awkwardly tripping down the dangerous slope whilst carrying a massive ball of fur and pug fat. When we arrived at the former shrine to Kaiser Wilhelm it was impressive spectacle, as the few remaining buildings had stood the decades being decorated by an artistic tapestry of graffiti. Ms. Ball and Company giddily explored the ruins as I was forced to stand nearby with Winston lying like an obese rag doll in my arms. The trail was festooned with more steep rock staircases which Winston ascended in style, reclining lazily in my weakening embrace as I only prayed that the medical helicopter which would surely be called to rush me out of there could make a landing through the expanse of trees that the Germans had planted to hide their Teutonic rituals from a curious public. Through some miracle of grace, I was able to finally crawl back to the starting point dragging Winston behind me on a hammock crudely constructed from graffiti-covered deadwood. It's no wonder that support for Kaiser Wilhelm eventually died out.