My Vegas Opus is a work in progress, but while I crunch the numbers on my Fegonomic analysis of our trip, I figured I'd get my prose back out into cyberspace with a running monologue while I watch this week's episode of the "Real World."
Scene 1
- Ah yes, there's always that one episode of every season that begins with a "State of the Messiness" montage of the house. This year the 3.5 women of the house seem to be the lazy culprits. A bit surprising, but I've never lived with females before and have seen some messy ass rooms in my day so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised.
- Wow, it's early on and now we already have our Magnavox "Moment that Makes Me Glad I Have a DVR"
JD is making some sort of chore flyer so that the chores of the house can be equitably divided. It reads:
"BROOKLYN ROOMIES
SOME TIME TODAY (SATURDAY) OR SUNDAY IF YOU CAN PICK ONE OF THE FOLLOWING CHORES AROUIND THE HOUSE THAT WAY IT IS A CALABRIATED EFFORT INTO MAKING OUR PIER 41 HOUSE CLEAN, NO CHORES WILL BE ASSIGNED TO ANYONE IN THE HOUSE NOTHING WILL BE ASSIGNED TO" and it stops there.
Now, I realize he hasn't proofread it or completed it and I'm no Bill Shakespeare, but this is the man who a mere episode or two ago was lauding his college education and denigrating Devin for dropping out. I'm not by any means interested in defending Devin's intelligence or honor, but "calabriated?" What were you even trying to say? Collaborative? That can't even be defensible as a typo, you just flat out don't know what you're saying. Let's just say if Dan from Miami is the Michael Jordan of intelligent gay men on the "Real World" and we're looking for his successor, JD is more Harold Miner than Dwyane Wade.
- JD is super excited about his cool gimmick. It's so cool and easy! The coolest way to do it! Cool! Baya isn't buying what he's selling. She says she "loves it" and then proceeds to trash it in the confessional booth. Bitch.
- Hearing Katelynn using words like "subscribe," "phenomenon," and "practicality" to try to sound like an intellectual makes me cringe more than I would imagine seeing "her" genitals would. Ok maybe not, but still it makes me uncomfortable.
Scene 2
- Supermarket webisodes...oh graaayyyt.
- Not surprisingly, Chet gets them fired for his obsession with "Just the tip."
Since this is the first time I've written about this iteration of America's favorite reality show, I'd like to take a moment to expound on Chet. The guy is all over the map. First impression, I actually felt bad for the guy. His Mormon upbringing had him snuggled up in the back corner of a Mariah Carey sized closet. (Come on, I know you've all seen that cribs. Bitch wouldn't show us that piano!) Butters and I would sit and watch the first few episodes and extract the lion's share of our enjoyment from Chet's ambiguously (guyliner to attract chicks) or unambiguously (the song - clip not available) gay moments. He was simultaneously infuriating because of his immature ignorance and his insistence on getting involved in other people's business. Also, his game with Scott's friend was a "first episode of the pick up artist" level attrocity.
Then, he was pretty decent with his interviews of Rete Rentz and some other band. Respect. Then, he tried to get tickets to TRL - his stated dream job was to host the (canceled) MTV late 90s early 00s staple. Moronic. Really, Chet? That's your dream job and you didn't know it was canceled? I hope the Grundle Bug is right and this is all an act. Otherwise, I'll chalk this idiocy up to your Mormon-ness. Really, nothing would surprise me at this point. Chet's in the laid off man's (too soon?) "Tyson Zone".
- JD and the ugly short-haired one (Ed. Note: Sarah) fight. Yawn.
Scene 3
- Ryan's going to film school to become "the next Spielberg." Color me skeptical. I'll give it to him though, he's putting himself out there with the music, his book, and now the film. Getcha artsy on.
- A key piece of evidence in the Chet: Undercover Fego investigation. He laughs after he claims to not be surprised that he was chosen to have a more demanding role in Ryan's 30 second film. So he is capable of facetious fegocity. Noted.
- Here, in its entirety, is everything going through aspiring actor Scott's head as this short film was...filmed: "
"
Glad we could get that inside peak.
Scene 4
- JD's chore plan is kind of lame, but these girls refusing to attend a meeting about it is just petty. I don't really like anyone in the house all that much at this point.
Ok, at this point my DVR decided to delete footage as I watched so I only have a random smattering of thoughts for the rest of the episode.
- Scott finally brings something to the table and hides the car keys. Bitches deserve it.
- This week's "Joke of the Week Made by a Tranny" sponsored by Right Guard is (paraphrased) "They are trying to bate me into this argument. They are really good at it. They are 'master baters.'" Well played, Katelynn.
- Oh here comes a house argument. I bet this is when JD smashes the table. You know, from the clip they've been showing since the preview show.
- Yep, smashed.
- Everything's cool again. Of course that means we get the gratuitous "Scott working out" scene. I wonder if these core exercises he does improves agility.
- JD once again calls the house a "family." I don't have the credentials to begin psychoanalyzing this.
- Katelynn, you are not a luxury cruise liner.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Quantifying Vegas
As I settled back into the real world, I knew I would be asked at least a dozen times, "How was Vegas?" That's an absurd question. Answering that kind of question requires a committed conversation, a storytelling session with a captive audience, or something of that ilk. You can't just be like, "Oh it was great, I lost a few hundred bucks but I nearly did coke off a stripper's ashya. See you at lunch!"
Needless to say I needed to come up with my stock answer that provided enough truth without explicity giving anything away. I settled on, "It was everything Vegas should be." And it was; it really was.
Of course, I can't keep it all to myself so I'm gonna throw my version of a recap into the Fegonomics pot. Since exposition is too hard, I'm also going to use a gimmick a la Mahktar.
We're of the empirical sort here at Fegonomics, so I'm going to use my recap to quantify our trip into a tidy number. Each of my memories will be plugged into my patented "Vegas Utility Metric" and will come out as a discrete positive or negative value. This is especially fitting because with Vegas there are few gray areas aside from the legality of available endeavors. Either something is decidedly awesome or it'll leave you some combination of bummed and creeped out. For instance: hot streak on the craps table - good. Getting badgered about club free passes by a worn out, over the hill Roller Girl - yuck. I haven't decided what that number will be used for, but I don't want to be like the major sports leagues and not record blocks and sacks just because it seems irrelevant now.
(note: I completely ripped this off of NY Mag's recaps of gossip girl. And yes, I realize I probably could have gotten away with not disclosing that information and come out looking less fegoscious, but as my 11th grade English teacher, Mr. Perry, would say...such is life.)
Our Digs: +7
The last time I was in Vegas with Mahktar, Dream, Oden, and Butters we stayed at the Las Vegas Club Casino. The moment you walked in you felt the second hand smoke. It was as if the oxygen systems used to pump life into the weariest of gamblers was replaced by a collection of chain-smoking, blue-haired grannies from Del Boca Vista pulled from the Wayne Newton ticket line. The clientele looked like the people in that first Vegas scene in Swingers. If I wasn't still in college, I would have felt old.
Moving to Planet Hollywood on the strip was just the right move for the karma of the trip. Newish casino, young crowd, plenty of ventilation. The right kind of environment that will lead you to look at your watch wondering it's time for dinner and seeing that it's approaching 4am. Instead of being next to the Girls of Glitter Gulch (Zounds!!!) it neighbored Paris and the Bellagio. We stayed in a basic room but it just felt sleeker. We had a plasma screen and some modern furniture. Minor stuff, but the room on a Vegas trip is really just used to set the mood for your day/night's adventures. And, of course, to provide the necessary venue for the token 6-way with a girl you get from one of those pamphlets the fine street salesmen hand out with numbers like 1-900-B-I-G-G-U-R-L on them. Which reminds me...
Street Urchins: -5
Walking down the strip during the day is a gauntlet of workers with questionable legality trying to hand you hooker brochures. We had the inevitable discussion about how much these people could possibly get paid for standing there and successfully handing out their pamphlet to one out of at least every 50 people. Guesses ranged from minimum wage to 1.50 an hour. Our favorite cab driver, previously mentioned by Mahktar, later settled it with the true answer: Nothing. (Unless you receive services from his girl) That's depressing. I informed my compatriots that they had the right to shoot me if my life devolved in such a way that resulted in me holding that occupation. Just a poor existence. I'd feel worse if they didn't all somehow have iPhones.
Blackjack Dealers: +25
I love blackjack dealers. They are one of my top 5 favorite vegas fixtures (Neither Sigfreid nor Roy occupies any of the other 4 spaces). It's hard to be lukewarm on a dealer. Either you love them or you hate them. Surprisingly enough, when I ran my regression analysis of the dealers I loved and hated, the correlation between money won or lost and my opinion of the dealer was not statsitically significant. My valiant, 150 dollar run on the last night of the trip that only left my grave 3 feet deep was made against a Spencer Pratt level twat. Some Eastern European guy who refused to smile and was called a "son of a bitch" by Dream. Then, the guy tried to pick a fight with Dream, attempting to escalate the exchange so that my man would be thrown out. F that noise. Luckily, Dream played it drunk by pretending not to hear the guy and the danger subsided for a moment there.
Just for fun let's run down the list of my top 3 favorite dealers.
3. Adam at Bill's gambling hall.
A Polish man with a never-subsiding smile. He even laughed at our lightweight babaayy outbursts and high-fived us when we got BJ. Bonus points awarded because I remembered him from the trip I made on my 21st birthday. Just the epitome of the good vibes dealer who wants you to win. The only dealer I tipped the whole trip.
2. Shui.
Shui came early on in our trip at another low-rent casino (we got jobs, but we ain't comp candidates yet). We were yapping it up with the guy and pronouncing his name like the reliable middle reliever in Major League 2. Of course, Mahktar is embarassed by us (he wasn't used to our role as casino jackasses yet), which is coupled with his need to defend every Asian guy from Saw. "Guys, it's "Shwee". First of all, who cares? Shooey is cooler and he doesn't seem to mind. Second, we asked him how it was pronounced and it was indeed the fun way. So, we got to laugh at Mahktar's expense while we all made some dough...good times.
1. Sophal.
I'm pretty sure I lost a considerable amount when Sophal was dealing. Feel free to correct me in the comments, but I think she was the starting pitcher in the Great Analyzation of 2009. Regardless, she was/is my Cambodian dream girl. It would take a far more eloquent man to adequately describe our fair Sophal but I'll put it this way. She was a combination of Ms. Swan, Tia Carrere, a bubbly anime character, and Vanessa Marcil (body type). Mahktar was enchanted enough to be drawn to Bill's Gambling Hall simply to wave hello to her (which we both wussed out on like giggling school girls. Not our finest moment.)
Laughing so hard I got a nose bleed, and there wasn't even any coke involved: +50
Not my story to tell.
Dexter: +15
Most notable celebrity sighting not involving the Olsen twins: -3
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Fego Goes West: Get Money Get Paid
Disclaimer: This is a freeflowing post that occassionally touches upon mature subjects, so a lot of links are NSFW.
So we've been a little delinquent in making a post about our trip to Vegas, but I've succumb to the constant peer pressure by Charles Haley's big unit, and decided to take an initial stab at it. In lieu of a Simmons-esque Vegas diary, I'm going to go the John Lennon/Yoko Ono route and get experimental on you jabronis. In honor of the Academy Awards, here's an Oscars-style awards list of the highlights of Vegas (Using the common award name formula, these accolades would be called the "Veggys" but we'll call 'em the "vaggys" cuz I like the sound of that better).
The Envelope please...
The Vaggy for biggest table jerk goes to....
(Tie) In Oden We Trust/Fegonomist/Makhtar N'diaye/It Was All A Dream/Butters and Fete Fentz
I don't know if the other guys will own up to it, but the five of us were a monkey finding a time machine at the craps tables -- completely overwhelmed, confused, and constantly making obnoxious noises.
Craps is by far my favorite casino game because it is inherently collaborative. There's nothing better than being the shooter and catching fire. Guys will constantly give you fist pounds, and girls will come up and dome you out to renumerate you for netting them a little extra pocket change. However, I think our contingent took the team sports concept of the game a little too far. Whenever the shooter would hit the point, I would get in my best ump stance, and yell "Striiiiiiiiiii" to the entire table (gun hand motions included). The rest of our guys would go crazy, too, acting like they've just seen this....or that they were Gus Johnson in this clip. Everyone else at the table would then give me a blank look and quietly collect their winnings.
Equally annoying was our tendency to yell out random incantations to educe the shooter to roll a certain number. This essentially devolved into us putting a new spin on our most annoying verbal tics. "Lightweight, baby" became Light-eight baybayyyyyy. The "Noice" guy's "Aw sick" became "awwww six" and Noice transformed into "Aw noine noine noine". Needless to say, it was pretty clear that it was amateur hour whenever we were at the tables.
That being said, I don't think that our transgressions were any worse than the emo poster child we saw at the Bill's gambling hall. Obviously a denizen of the emo/hipster lifestyle, we deemed this Fall out Boy wannabe, Fete Fentz (Fake Pete Wentz). Mistake #1: buying in for $20 bucks at the blackjack table. Mistake #2: obviously having no idea of how to play blackjack. Mistake #3: Do not talk about fight club. Truthfully, whenever we were playing, we had a vendetta against the other people at the table, but this kid was a piece of shit. He lucked into getting 21 after hitting like 7 times, the problem was, it took FOREVER for him to realize it. I could just the chimp with an abucus in his brain, trying to sum up 3+3+2+6+3+4. So, writing this, it sounds like we held an irrational grudge against this guy. What your forget is A. I really like hating people for no good reason. And B. We were ready to stomp this guy out Tupac style. Luckily he struck out in 4 successive hands, and got the hell out of Dodge before we could go east coast/west coast rivalry on him.
Biggest Disappointment of the trip was....
So, I bought one of the guys a tag-team lap dance at the streeep tease. I guess the concept was that these two mejicana performers were do his di-ack like the Hyenas did to Scar, just TEAR that dick apart (at the very least, I thought that they were going to go ass to ass [super NSFW]). What really happened, at least from what he says, was some pretty weak sauce. Just a bunch of eskimo kisses and lighthearted banter between the girls. I dropped $40 on that shit?
Don't feel too bad for this guy, because in the same night, he also had....
Moment of the Trip (Strip Club Category)
So apparently, after chatting up this stripper, Heather, at the after hours joint we went to, this person to be named later (PTBNL) got the lap dance of a lifetime. Granted, there was some hood rat shit going on at this place as it was--by far the dirtiest lap dances I've ever experienced, but this guy went for a RIDE. I got a dance from Heather, so I know that she demands that you smack her ass as you're getting a dance. Of course, PTBNL obliged, but at the same time, he quasi-sexily said "I bet you let all the guys do that". Her Response: "Yeah, but I don't let all them do this"--> and proceeds to stick her tongue down his throat. Now, unlike porn, I don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of strip clubs, but outside of Brady from season 1 pick up artist, I've never heard of someone hooking up with a stripper. That's service with a smile.
Oh yeah, she also propositioned him to do get all coked up and doped up with him backstage. Unfortunately, he didn't follow through. Shit, that was the closest any of us got to going all gonzo (NSFW) in Vegas.
Most Unsettling Taxi Cab Confession goes to....
that sketchy cab driver that gave us a ride back from the Plaza.
Now, I'm used to the cabs in Boston. (i.e. I expect my cabbies to be austere Ethiopian immigrants who talk on their bluetooth headsets the entire ride), but I knew that these Vegas guys were going to be a different breed. I don't really know how to explain this guy except to say that he was acting like me during the walderness party where I hooked up with the lowest rated prospect in the land. Homey seemed straight up drunk.
First off, he was definitely getting all herky jerky behind the wheel on the highway. But the most distinctive tell of this guy was his jarring, unintelligible manner of speech. I think part of this was the fact that he knew that he was in the company of five young, virile human individuals, and was trying to tell the funniest stories he had, leaving himself in fits of laughter. That's all and good. People can laugh at their own jokes and stories--I'm the king of entertaining myself. But imagine someone with a full frontal lobotomy chortling to themselves and trailing off on every sentence...with lots of elbow jabs thrown in.
Miraculously, we were all able to piece together some of the anecdotes this guy was telling us. Apparently, he was involved with some sort of ride/dome exchange with some fresh-faced Ashley Dupree wannabe. Basically, this girl would call him up, and he'd pick her up and drive her to the desperate slob who was retaining her services....I'm not sure what he got in exchange, it was either a cut of her earnings, or the chance to go all Peter North on her belly. Anyway, he started talking about how this nubile young coed was all put off because, throughout the course of their gentlemanly arrangement, he'd never tried to piledrive her. He started making jokes about how he was too old to get his di-ack teased by this girl, which led to this really awkward exchange where I kept on making jokes about his impotence. I'm pretty sure I started throwing around the term "boner stipend"....yeah, ok, I don't really know how to play along with people making bawdy jokes. (Sidenote: I somehow doubt this guy's story as he looked like a cross between that piss-soaked homeless guy who wanted to fight me on the T and this guy):
The most annoying trend of the trip was.....
Constantly getting carded. Everywhere. What can I say, the Fegonomist and Oden we Trust are baby faces (Both in the wrestling, and actual sense).
The Vaggy for hottest white trash goes to......
Danica Patrick. I know, not Vegas related, but I just wanted to get that squared away. MORE:
Dumbest Exchange of the trip was....
We stayed at the Planet Hollywood, which turned out to be one of the best decisions we made the entire trip. One of the big value added pieces of the hotel is the fallaciously named "Pleasure Pit". Basically, this is an "Adults Only" section of the casino floor replete with pole dancers (who don't strip) and dealers dressed in pink negligees. In theory, this sounds great, but upon further examination, the concept is inherently flawed. Girls who want to pole dance and walk around in underwear, but lack the physical gifts to work the pole? Yeah, most of these girls ended looking like this girl, possessing the potential to be hot, but having some sort of deer in the headlights glaze that makes my johnson completely flaccid:
Anyway, one of the nights Butters is able to work his magic and get us onto the list at Tryst, the club at the Wynn (which is simply epic, by the way. The place was a hybrid indoor/outdoor club with a huge waterfall as the centerpiece). After doing a few rep's of Faderade, we headed to the casino floor. The Fegonomist forgot something in the room, so he and It Was All a Dream head back to the room, leaving the three of us in the Pleasure Pit. Earlier in the trip, I had noticed that one of the Pleasure Pit dancers had a tiny tramp stamp tat. I started my approach by waving at this girl with a vigor unseen since Forrest Gump jumped off his boat to greet Lt. Dan. She meekly waved back to the hulking, mute-drunk Asian guy from Saw.
Emboldened by my Popov Vodka fever dreams, I brazenly approached this go-go girl while she was unenthusiastically gyrating, leading to this exchange:
Me: "Hey, nice tramp stamp....what is it?"
Dancer: "It's the Japanese character for "Dance."
Me: *Raising Hand* "I'm Japanese."
...then I stumbled away. What can I say, ever since I've read "The Game," I've been money with the ladies. Speaking of which.....
Best Unfaithful Reenactment....
I'll be the first to admit it, I love an older woman, especially an older woman at a club. There's nothing better than a woman with latent sexual desires that can't be satisfied by her lightswitch husband. Nobody embodied this ideal better than Diane Lane in Unfaithful. She was hot in the early 80's in "The Outsiders." She was hotter in the 90's in whatever the fuck movie this was. But she was Super, Scintillating, SENSATIONAL in Unfaithful (All ridiculously NSFW). Given this precedent, I've made it my categorical imperative to bag an older lady. Vegas seemed as good a place as any. This led to some trouble.
While we were at Tryst, we decided to break up into splinter cells to divide and conquer the cloob. It Was All a Dream and I starting dancing with some pretty women who looked like they were within a standard deviation of our age. Still engulfed in the Faderade haze, I fail to realize that It Was All a Dream only danced with them for a couple songs before moving on. Stranded on my own, and lacking the motor facilities to move onto greener pastures, I just lurked on these women for what seemed like 3 hours. Somewhere along the way, I started dance talking to one of the older looking members of their group. Think a juiced-down Brenda James minus the D cups and perfect Aiss.
During the course of the conversation I was able to glean these nuggets from her: 1. She's 43 years old. 2. She has a 15 year old daughter. And 3. She's in Vegas with some old high school boyfriend that she reunited with on facebook (but I don't think that they were boning). Anyway, by the way that she's talking to me, I get the sense that she's digging the power dynamics and the "this is so fucked up, but I'm going to let my poos do the decision making" aspect of being hit on by a guy literally half her age. After talking to her like a broken muppet for the bulk of the night, the other guys finally find me, they're impatient and trying to book it to a streep tease. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have said that it was very nice to meet her, then given her an ass-out hug. However, we were in fucking Vegas, so I said "Fuck it, we'll do it live!," and asked for her number. Her response: "I could be YOUR MOTHER, get out of here!"
I haven't seen a denial that vociferous since these:
Long story short, this is life. This isn't Maxim Magazine.
So we've been a little delinquent in making a post about our trip to Vegas, but I've succumb to the constant peer pressure by Charles Haley's big unit, and decided to take an initial stab at it. In lieu of a Simmons-esque Vegas diary, I'm going to go the John Lennon/Yoko Ono route and get experimental on you jabronis. In honor of the Academy Awards, here's an Oscars-style awards list of the highlights of Vegas (Using the common award name formula, these accolades would be called the "Veggys" but we'll call 'em the "vaggys" cuz I like the sound of that better).
The Envelope please...
The Vaggy for biggest table jerk goes to....
(Tie) In Oden We Trust/Fegonomist/Makhtar N'diaye/It Was All A Dream/Butters and Fete Fentz
I don't know if the other guys will own up to it, but the five of us were a monkey finding a time machine at the craps tables -- completely overwhelmed, confused, and constantly making obnoxious noises.
Craps is by far my favorite casino game because it is inherently collaborative. There's nothing better than being the shooter and catching fire. Guys will constantly give you fist pounds, and girls will come up and dome you out to renumerate you for netting them a little extra pocket change. However, I think our contingent took the team sports concept of the game a little too far. Whenever the shooter would hit the point, I would get in my best ump stance, and yell "Striiiiiiiiiii" to the entire table (gun hand motions included). The rest of our guys would go crazy, too, acting like they've just seen this....or that they were Gus Johnson in this clip. Everyone else at the table would then give me a blank look and quietly collect their winnings.
Equally annoying was our tendency to yell out random incantations to educe the shooter to roll a certain number. This essentially devolved into us putting a new spin on our most annoying verbal tics. "Lightweight, baby" became Light-eight baybayyyyyy. The "Noice" guy's "Aw sick" became "awwww six" and Noice transformed into "Aw noine noine noine". Needless to say, it was pretty clear that it was amateur hour whenever we were at the tables.
That being said, I don't think that our transgressions were any worse than the emo poster child we saw at the Bill's gambling hall. Obviously a denizen of the emo/hipster lifestyle, we deemed this Fall out Boy wannabe, Fete Fentz (Fake Pete Wentz). Mistake #1: buying in for $20 bucks at the blackjack table. Mistake #2: obviously having no idea of how to play blackjack. Mistake #3: Do not talk about fight club. Truthfully, whenever we were playing, we had a vendetta against the other people at the table, but this kid was a piece of shit. He lucked into getting 21 after hitting like 7 times, the problem was, it took FOREVER for him to realize it. I could just the chimp with an abucus in his brain, trying to sum up 3+3+2+6+3+4. So, writing this, it sounds like we held an irrational grudge against this guy. What your forget is A. I really like hating people for no good reason. And B. We were ready to stomp this guy out Tupac style. Luckily he struck out in 4 successive hands, and got the hell out of Dodge before we could go east coast/west coast rivalry on him.
Biggest Disappointment of the trip was....
So, I bought one of the guys a tag-team lap dance at the streeep tease. I guess the concept was that these two mejicana performers were do his di-ack like the Hyenas did to Scar, just TEAR that dick apart (at the very least, I thought that they were going to go ass to ass [super NSFW]). What really happened, at least from what he says, was some pretty weak sauce. Just a bunch of eskimo kisses and lighthearted banter between the girls. I dropped $40 on that shit?
Don't feel too bad for this guy, because in the same night, he also had....
Moment of the Trip (Strip Club Category)
So apparently, after chatting up this stripper, Heather, at the after hours joint we went to, this person to be named later (PTBNL) got the lap dance of a lifetime. Granted, there was some hood rat shit going on at this place as it was--by far the dirtiest lap dances I've ever experienced, but this guy went for a RIDE. I got a dance from Heather, so I know that she demands that you smack her ass as you're getting a dance. Of course, PTBNL obliged, but at the same time, he quasi-sexily said "I bet you let all the guys do that". Her Response: "Yeah, but I don't let all them do this"--> and proceeds to stick her tongue down his throat. Now, unlike porn, I don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of strip clubs, but outside of Brady from season 1 pick up artist, I've never heard of someone hooking up with a stripper. That's service with a smile.
Oh yeah, she also propositioned him to do get all coked up and doped up with him backstage. Unfortunately, he didn't follow through. Shit, that was the closest any of us got to going all gonzo (NSFW) in Vegas.
Most Unsettling Taxi Cab Confession goes to....
that sketchy cab driver that gave us a ride back from the Plaza.
Now, I'm used to the cabs in Boston. (i.e. I expect my cabbies to be austere Ethiopian immigrants who talk on their bluetooth headsets the entire ride), but I knew that these Vegas guys were going to be a different breed. I don't really know how to explain this guy except to say that he was acting like me during the walderness party where I hooked up with the lowest rated prospect in the land. Homey seemed straight up drunk.
First off, he was definitely getting all herky jerky behind the wheel on the highway. But the most distinctive tell of this guy was his jarring, unintelligible manner of speech. I think part of this was the fact that he knew that he was in the company of five young, virile human individuals, and was trying to tell the funniest stories he had, leaving himself in fits of laughter. That's all and good. People can laugh at their own jokes and stories--I'm the king of entertaining myself. But imagine someone with a full frontal lobotomy chortling to themselves and trailing off on every sentence...with lots of elbow jabs thrown in.
Miraculously, we were all able to piece together some of the anecdotes this guy was telling us. Apparently, he was involved with some sort of ride/dome exchange with some fresh-faced Ashley Dupree wannabe. Basically, this girl would call him up, and he'd pick her up and drive her to the desperate slob who was retaining her services....I'm not sure what he got in exchange, it was either a cut of her earnings, or the chance to go all Peter North on her belly. Anyway, he started talking about how this nubile young coed was all put off because, throughout the course of their gentlemanly arrangement, he'd never tried to piledrive her. He started making jokes about how he was too old to get his di-ack teased by this girl, which led to this really awkward exchange where I kept on making jokes about his impotence. I'm pretty sure I started throwing around the term "boner stipend"....yeah, ok, I don't really know how to play along with people making bawdy jokes. (Sidenote: I somehow doubt this guy's story as he looked like a cross between that piss-soaked homeless guy who wanted to fight me on the T and this guy):
The most annoying trend of the trip was.....
Constantly getting carded. Everywhere. What can I say, the Fegonomist and Oden we Trust are baby faces (Both in the wrestling, and actual sense).
The Vaggy for hottest white trash goes to......
Danica Patrick. I know, not Vegas related, but I just wanted to get that squared away. MORE:
Dumbest Exchange of the trip was....
We stayed at the Planet Hollywood, which turned out to be one of the best decisions we made the entire trip. One of the big value added pieces of the hotel is the fallaciously named "Pleasure Pit". Basically, this is an "Adults Only" section of the casino floor replete with pole dancers (who don't strip) and dealers dressed in pink negligees. In theory, this sounds great, but upon further examination, the concept is inherently flawed. Girls who want to pole dance and walk around in underwear, but lack the physical gifts to work the pole? Yeah, most of these girls ended looking like this girl, possessing the potential to be hot, but having some sort of deer in the headlights glaze that makes my johnson completely flaccid:
Anyway, one of the nights Butters is able to work his magic and get us onto the list at Tryst, the club at the Wynn (which is simply epic, by the way. The place was a hybrid indoor/outdoor club with a huge waterfall as the centerpiece). After doing a few rep's of Faderade, we headed to the casino floor. The Fegonomist forgot something in the room, so he and It Was All a Dream head back to the room, leaving the three of us in the Pleasure Pit. Earlier in the trip, I had noticed that one of the Pleasure Pit dancers had a tiny tramp stamp tat. I started my approach by waving at this girl with a vigor unseen since Forrest Gump jumped off his boat to greet Lt. Dan. She meekly waved back to the hulking, mute-drunk Asian guy from Saw.
Emboldened by my Popov Vodka fever dreams, I brazenly approached this go-go girl while she was unenthusiastically gyrating, leading to this exchange:
Me: "Hey, nice tramp stamp....what is it?"
Dancer: "It's the Japanese character for "Dance."
Me: *Raising Hand* "I'm Japanese."
...then I stumbled away. What can I say, ever since I've read "The Game," I've been money with the ladies. Speaking of which.....
Best Unfaithful Reenactment....
I'll be the first to admit it, I love an older woman, especially an older woman at a club. There's nothing better than a woman with latent sexual desires that can't be satisfied by her lightswitch husband. Nobody embodied this ideal better than Diane Lane in Unfaithful. She was hot in the early 80's in "The Outsiders." She was hotter in the 90's in whatever the fuck movie this was. But she was Super, Scintillating, SENSATIONAL in Unfaithful (All ridiculously NSFW). Given this precedent, I've made it my categorical imperative to bag an older lady. Vegas seemed as good a place as any. This led to some trouble.
While we were at Tryst, we decided to break up into splinter cells to divide and conquer the cloob. It Was All a Dream and I starting dancing with some pretty women who looked like they were within a standard deviation of our age. Still engulfed in the Faderade haze, I fail to realize that It Was All a Dream only danced with them for a couple songs before moving on. Stranded on my own, and lacking the motor facilities to move onto greener pastures, I just lurked on these women for what seemed like 3 hours. Somewhere along the way, I started dance talking to one of the older looking members of their group. Think a juiced-down Brenda James minus the D cups and perfect Aiss.
During the course of the conversation I was able to glean these nuggets from her: 1. She's 43 years old. 2. She has a 15 year old daughter. And 3. She's in Vegas with some old high school boyfriend that she reunited with on facebook (but I don't think that they were boning). Anyway, by the way that she's talking to me, I get the sense that she's digging the power dynamics and the "this is so fucked up, but I'm going to let my poos do the decision making" aspect of being hit on by a guy literally half her age. After talking to her like a broken muppet for the bulk of the night, the other guys finally find me, they're impatient and trying to book it to a streep tease. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have said that it was very nice to meet her, then given her an ass-out hug. However, we were in fucking Vegas, so I said "Fuck it, we'll do it live!," and asked for her number. Her response: "I could be YOUR MOTHER, get out of here!"
I haven't seen a denial that vociferous since these:
Long story short, this is life. This isn't Maxim Magazine.
Friday, January 30, 2009
A Mixed Bag of Tricks
If you're like many Americans, you'll always remember where you were and what you were doing around noon on January 20, 2009. It's rare that a tell-your-children moment resonates through the country with such overtones of hope and promise. The last time I was overtaken by a raw boost of national energy that wasn't in the wake of a tragedy Mark McGwire almost missed first base. While that exchange of emotions didn't work out so well, we're not here to "talk about the past." I myself am not much for politics because of its polarizing nature, but I can confidently say that Obama takes over the office with the potential to be one of the greatest leaders of our generation in a time where our country is desperately seeking any modicum of direction. Here at Fegonomics we respek the eloquent man but immortalize the black man doing his thing while simultaneously being cool (or so we hope) and invested in sports. Much has been made about Obama and his cabinet's low post skills and his "yes we can" stance on a college football playoff so I won't beat these facts into a more hackneyed submission. Instead I'd like to pay tribute to Mr. 44 with a list of the greatest mixed athletes of all-time. Once the parquet is finally laid at the White House, President Obama may even stand a chance of cracking the top 10 here, but until then let the white-black violin begin.
Jammin (Nod Ya Head) (Clean) - Black Violin
Honorable Mention: John Amaechi, Tony Gonzalez, David Justice, and Rosario Dawson (He Got Game sex scene)
10. James Blake - I don't really know that much about this dude except that he beat my favorite tennis player Roger Federer in the Olympics and is about as Americana as an athlete gets and frankly isn't that what this post is all about! I remember seeing a profile on Outside the Lines of the "Tiger Woods of tennis" and it wasn't about Blake but rather this guy. Since Young isn't a halfie the honor goes to Blake.
9. Jarome Iginla - I know what you're thinking "who gives a shit about hockey" and I totally agree that hockey has lost its edge since they stopped highlighting the puck inthe all-star game and allowed the foxtrax technology to go by the wayside. Either way, I'm still enamored by some of the blood spewing fight graphics in Wayne Gretzky 64 and any man that can garner enough fandom to get his own song deserves to be on this list. If Jarome was piledriving one of Sean Avery's exes I'd have him about 4 spots higher.
8. Tahj Mowry - A precocious erudite with limitless knowledge of string theory, space time, and quantum physics doesn't seem like a contender for this list, but consider his competition. 1. The Famous Jett Jackson is some 15 shades darker than I remembered from his Silverstone days even though he and his sea green eyes did lead Florida to a national championship he is disqualified on pigmentation conspiracy theory. 2. Had Halle Berry been the one fellating the cracker in Swordfish her appearance on this list would be based on the Heather Brooke Scale (NSFW). Mowry, currently 22, has had a penchant for seeing double his entire life. Born the younger brother of one of TV's favorite sitcom duos, this two sport varsity athlete in basketball and football knows what it takes to perform in the clutch. I'm still not convinced that his athletic accolades tower above his roles as TJ Henderson and Michelle Tanner's little twat best friend Teddy, but the kid's got game and an Italian dad, so he's in.
7. Hines Ward - The only guy on this list who plays in a stadium that is a homonym of his name, Hines Ward is known league wide as the consummate gentleman. The first Afro-Asian in the top 10, he inherited his congenial behavior from his Korean mother. If that's the case it must be his father's genes that led to his shortening of Ed Reed's spinal column and this ragdoll physics collision. Hines will probably break the 10,000 yard/800 reception/80 TD plateau next year putting him in pretty exclusive company, but it may take another 12 years in the league before he ever approximates anything close to this.
6. Jason Kidd - Half man half pitbull, this guy is straight up ugly. I mean his son had a prominent dirt lip by the age of 3! Maybe the caterpillar lip comes from ex wife Joumana, who used to notoriously kick the crap out of Kidd, who knows. When he wasn't spending his time getting bitch slapped in bathtubs, this guy could straight up ball. Known for honing his skills on the streets of Oakland, Kidd used to improve his passing accuracy by targeting windows on a building and narrowly throwing the ball above them to not shatter the glass. Although his offensive efficiency has always been questioned (career 40% shooter) he's one of the best distributors of our time and checks in at 3rd all-time in triple doubles with now over 100. The post Dallas trade J-Kidd has been the defensive liability everyone imagined, but any man who led a team with semi pooper-stars Keith Van Horn and Kenyon Martin to two straight NBA finals and has a sweet Tupac Mix gets my seal of approval.
5. The Rock - There are at least two other contributors on this blog that could probably write a 10,000 word synopsis of the Rock's plight from WWF champion to C-list celebrity, but that ain't me. What I've always loved about Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was his ability to electrify a stadium with his charismatic mic presence and ever climbing eyebrow. He was one of the few wrestlers to have two signature moves and the only one featured in two versions of the Mummy. What some people might not know was that he played DT at the U and was actually a pretty good player. Aside from his rivalry with my favorite wrestler Austin 3:16, the Brahma Bull should forever be remembered for one of the greatest matches of all time....
Part 1
Part 2
4. Shane Falco - He can surf, he's a lefty, and chicks dig scars. What more can I say?
3. Derek Jeter - The captain and heartthrob of the Evil Empire, Derek Jeter is one of the most recognizable athletes in the country. Much acclaim has been given to his on the field accomplishments such as the 4 World Series rings, .316 career BA, and this play, but I think it's his off the field pursuits and pursuers that make Jeter such a lofty contributor to the mixed community. It recently came out in a book co-authored by Joe Torre called The Yankee Years that A-Rod has what amounts to a Man Crush on Jeter. I don't know if this means he gets wood beneath his jockstrap when Jeter undresses next to him or if he's jealous of the spotlight cast on him by the NY media. Either way, I have to jump on any chance to queue up A-Rod as a homo. Jeter has quite the track record of celebrity hookups from Scarlett Johannson and Vanessa Minnillo to the more recent rumors of everyone's favorite sweet heart gone skank Minka Kelly. But the most intriguing of all the starlets has to be Mariah Carey. This was the alpha couple of mixed relationships that could have reinvented the WB/WB genre and Mariah threw it away so she could learn the krump'd out choreography at the end of Drumline. That's a fucking shame.
2. Charles Barkley - Here's an anecdote from my childhood. As many of you know I grew up in Houston, Texas idolizing the Rockets and Hakeem Olajuwon. Back in the early 90's the Rockets and Suns always ended up meeting in the playoffs and I would sing "I Just Can't Wait to be King" every time Barkley went to the free throw line to distract him, and more often than not it worked. It think I was 6 or 7 years old when I was over one of my friend's houses watching a game and I turned to him and said, "Barkley is one of the best white players in the world." This incited some serious laughter from my friend's dad who went on to explain to me that Barkley was in fact black. (You have to understand that Barkley's skin tone is the exact shade as mine when I'm tan, and living in Texas I was perpetually tan.) Thereore, combining my original perception and the truth, Barkley ekes his way onto this list. Barkley is simply a freak, too unique to compare to any wishy washy Paul Milsap or other undersized PF. Barkley was Jordan's height and grabbed about 12 RPG for his career. Unfortunately, Sir Charles will be MIA from TNT for the next few months as he clears up his BJ riddled DUI charges. Just fucking enjoy this knuckleheads.
1. Tiger Woods - Currently standing as the richest and most successful athlete on the planet it only makes sense that the half Thai half African American Woods graces the top of this countdown. Not only is he my second favorite athlete ever, he stands as a true ambassador to his sport, much like Obama to our country. (Although the Fegonomist informs me that Tiger's public speaking at the inauguration was abysmal) Name it and Tiger has done it. Had kids with a smoking hot Swedish nanny, check. Made incredible chip ins and putts on the back 9 of the final round of a major, check and check. Been selected number 1 in the Racial Draft, fo shizzle. Made millions of kids want to learn how to juggle the pill on their club and smack it 200 yards, dunzo. Farted on live TV, hells ya.
Listen, Tiger won a US Open with a torn ACL and is only 4 major victories away from tying the Golden Bear as the best ever. I have a few Tiger Wheaties boxes and even attempted to Photoshop my face onto Tiger's on this ESPN the mag cover in a class once. Dammit I love Tiger, and you should too.
Jammin (Nod Ya Head) (Clean) - Black Violin
Honorable Mention: John Amaechi, Tony Gonzalez, David Justice, and Rosario Dawson (He Got Game sex scene)
10. James Blake - I don't really know that much about this dude except that he beat my favorite tennis player Roger Federer in the Olympics and is about as Americana as an athlete gets and frankly isn't that what this post is all about! I remember seeing a profile on Outside the Lines of the "Tiger Woods of tennis" and it wasn't about Blake but rather this guy. Since Young isn't a halfie the honor goes to Blake.
9. Jarome Iginla - I know what you're thinking "who gives a shit about hockey" and I totally agree that hockey has lost its edge since they stopped highlighting the puck inthe all-star game and allowed the foxtrax technology to go by the wayside. Either way, I'm still enamored by some of the blood spewing fight graphics in Wayne Gretzky 64 and any man that can garner enough fandom to get his own song deserves to be on this list. If Jarome was piledriving one of Sean Avery's exes I'd have him about 4 spots higher.
8. Tahj Mowry - A precocious erudite with limitless knowledge of string theory, space time, and quantum physics doesn't seem like a contender for this list, but consider his competition. 1. The Famous Jett Jackson is some 15 shades darker than I remembered from his Silverstone days even though he and his sea green eyes did lead Florida to a national championship he is disqualified on pigmentation conspiracy theory. 2. Had Halle Berry been the one fellating the cracker in Swordfish her appearance on this list would be based on the Heather Brooke Scale (NSFW). Mowry, currently 22, has had a penchant for seeing double his entire life. Born the younger brother of one of TV's favorite sitcom duos, this two sport varsity athlete in basketball and football knows what it takes to perform in the clutch. I'm still not convinced that his athletic accolades tower above his roles as TJ Henderson and Michelle Tanner's little twat best friend Teddy, but the kid's got game and an Italian dad, so he's in.
7. Hines Ward - The only guy on this list who plays in a stadium that is a homonym of his name, Hines Ward is known league wide as the consummate gentleman. The first Afro-Asian in the top 10, he inherited his congenial behavior from his Korean mother. If that's the case it must be his father's genes that led to his shortening of Ed Reed's spinal column and this ragdoll physics collision. Hines will probably break the 10,000 yard/800 reception/80 TD plateau next year putting him in pretty exclusive company, but it may take another 12 years in the league before he ever approximates anything close to this.
6. Jason Kidd - Half man half pitbull, this guy is straight up ugly. I mean his son had a prominent dirt lip by the age of 3! Maybe the caterpillar lip comes from ex wife Joumana, who used to notoriously kick the crap out of Kidd, who knows. When he wasn't spending his time getting bitch slapped in bathtubs, this guy could straight up ball. Known for honing his skills on the streets of Oakland, Kidd used to improve his passing accuracy by targeting windows on a building and narrowly throwing the ball above them to not shatter the glass. Although his offensive efficiency has always been questioned (career 40% shooter) he's one of the best distributors of our time and checks in at 3rd all-time in triple doubles with now over 100. The post Dallas trade J-Kidd has been the defensive liability everyone imagined, but any man who led a team with semi pooper-stars Keith Van Horn and Kenyon Martin to two straight NBA finals and has a sweet Tupac Mix gets my seal of approval.
5. The Rock - There are at least two other contributors on this blog that could probably write a 10,000 word synopsis of the Rock's plight from WWF champion to C-list celebrity, but that ain't me. What I've always loved about Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was his ability to electrify a stadium with his charismatic mic presence and ever climbing eyebrow. He was one of the few wrestlers to have two signature moves and the only one featured in two versions of the Mummy. What some people might not know was that he played DT at the U and was actually a pretty good player. Aside from his rivalry with my favorite wrestler Austin 3:16, the Brahma Bull should forever be remembered for one of the greatest matches of all time....
Part 1
Part 2
4. Shane Falco - He can surf, he's a lefty, and chicks dig scars. What more can I say?
3. Derek Jeter - The captain and heartthrob of the Evil Empire, Derek Jeter is one of the most recognizable athletes in the country. Much acclaim has been given to his on the field accomplishments such as the 4 World Series rings, .316 career BA, and this play, but I think it's his off the field pursuits and pursuers that make Jeter such a lofty contributor to the mixed community. It recently came out in a book co-authored by Joe Torre called The Yankee Years that A-Rod has what amounts to a Man Crush on Jeter. I don't know if this means he gets wood beneath his jockstrap when Jeter undresses next to him or if he's jealous of the spotlight cast on him by the NY media. Either way, I have to jump on any chance to queue up A-Rod as a homo. Jeter has quite the track record of celebrity hookups from Scarlett Johannson and Vanessa Minnillo to the more recent rumors of everyone's favorite sweet heart gone skank Minka Kelly. But the most intriguing of all the starlets has to be Mariah Carey. This was the alpha couple of mixed relationships that could have reinvented the WB/WB genre and Mariah threw it away so she could learn the krump'd out choreography at the end of Drumline. That's a fucking shame.
2. Charles Barkley - Here's an anecdote from my childhood. As many of you know I grew up in Houston, Texas idolizing the Rockets and Hakeem Olajuwon. Back in the early 90's the Rockets and Suns always ended up meeting in the playoffs and I would sing "I Just Can't Wait to be King" every time Barkley went to the free throw line to distract him, and more often than not it worked. It think I was 6 or 7 years old when I was over one of my friend's houses watching a game and I turned to him and said, "Barkley is one of the best white players in the world." This incited some serious laughter from my friend's dad who went on to explain to me that Barkley was in fact black. (You have to understand that Barkley's skin tone is the exact shade as mine when I'm tan, and living in Texas I was perpetually tan.) Thereore, combining my original perception and the truth, Barkley ekes his way onto this list. Barkley is simply a freak, too unique to compare to any wishy washy Paul Milsap or other undersized PF. Barkley was Jordan's height and grabbed about 12 RPG for his career. Unfortunately, Sir Charles will be MIA from TNT for the next few months as he clears up his BJ riddled DUI charges. Just fucking enjoy this knuckleheads.
1. Tiger Woods - Currently standing as the richest and most successful athlete on the planet it only makes sense that the half Thai half African American Woods graces the top of this countdown. Not only is he my second favorite athlete ever, he stands as a true ambassador to his sport, much like Obama to our country. (Although the Fegonomist informs me that Tiger's public speaking at the inauguration was abysmal) Name it and Tiger has done it. Had kids with a smoking hot Swedish nanny, check. Made incredible chip ins and putts on the back 9 of the final round of a major, check and check. Been selected number 1 in the Racial Draft, fo shizzle. Made millions of kids want to learn how to juggle the pill on their club and smack it 200 yards, dunzo. Farted on live TV, hells ya.
Listen, Tiger won a US Open with a torn ACL and is only 4 major victories away from tying the Golden Bear as the best ever. I have a few Tiger Wheaties boxes and even attempted to Photoshop my face onto Tiger's on this ESPN the mag cover in a class once. Dammit I love Tiger, and you should too.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Profiles in Masturbation (NSFW)
The inspiration for this post was a conversation between the men of 357. I will do my best to preserve the integrity of the dialogue.
Background
To understand this conversation, you need to know what a Real Doll is. I'm virtually certain Mahktar is familiar with this, but for those of you less pornographically-inclined, Real Dolls are life-size, customizable, silicone sex dolls. They are manufactured by a California company called Abyss Creations and come in virtually any form you can imagine. Want big boobs? They can do that--try Body 3, 5, or 10. Want really, really, really big boobs? Body 9 is for you. Want an Asian? How about a black girl? They've got a wide variety of skin tones to choose from, including some that might surprise you. Want realistic tan lines to turn you on? They'll do it. Shaved, unshaved, extra pubes--whatever your fantasy, the good people at Abyss Creations will help you realize it, for only $6,499.
Now, you don't necessarily have to be a sexual deviant to have heard of Real Dolls, though it certainly helps. Real Dolls have been prominently featured in some legitimate, main-stream media, including recent artsy film Lars and the Real Girl, as well as Nip/Tuck, where one episode involves a character having sex with a real doll.
Real Dolls entered the collective consciousness of 357 last semester, when someone circulated this video, "Real Dolls and the Men Who Love Them." Before you start watching, be warned: this video is quite long, and the people it profiles are very weird, but if you're like me, you won't be able to look away. So make sure you've got plenty of time--and some privacy--before you start viewing.
What you'll see if you watch the video is that, to the men who buy them, Real Dolls aren't a hobby, they're a lifestyle. These guys don't just have sex with them; they name them, dress them, take them out for drives in the country, and generally treat them as if they were actual people. This relationship, the love affair between man and doll, is the subject of Lars and the Real Girl, though it seems considerably less creepy in Lars than it is in the documentary.
To understand the rest of this conversation, you'll also need to know what a fleshlight is. A fleshlight is basically a tube that is shaped like a pussy/ass/mouth that you stick your cock into. Anyway, there's not much more to fleshlights than that; they run around $60.
The Initial Argument
The reason these topics came up in the first place was because it was suggested that we purchase a Real Doll for the house. In order to help finance the cost of the Real Doll, we would let outsiders have sex with it, for a price. But what would the price be? This is the initial argument.
I said that $50 would be a pretty reasonable price to pay for an evening in the company of a Real Doll. Why? Well, for one thing, that's a fraction of the price one would pay for a prostitute. Now, I don't really know what an average prostitute costs, but disgraced ex-Governor Elliot Spitzer apparently paid upwards of $15,000 for seven or eight sessions with high class hooker Ashley Dupre, so I think it's safe to assume that a desirable prostitute could easily cost $500 to $1,000, or even more. To rent an escort for an evening is a little cheaper, but still upwards of $200, and that doesn't even guarantee sex. In comparison, fucking a Real Doll for $50 is a relative bargain.
Now, obviously, there are some serious disadvantages to a Real Doll as opposed to a real woman. Real Dolls don't act out fantasies for you--you act out your fantasy on them, which isn't at all the same. A real woman is an active participant--a doll isn't. On the other hand, you can do literally whatever you want with a Real Doll, something that cannot be said of a woman. If you have some really freaky tastes, a prostitute might indulge them, but it's gonna cost extra. Not so with a Real Doll--you do whatever you can imagine for a flat fee. Also, you might be willing to take some extra liberties with a doll, since it has no emotions and is therefore immune to humiliation and degradation. You might feel guilty shitting on a girl's chest, but a Real Doll will just lay there and take it, no questions asked. In addition, you can ride your Real Doll bareback, without worrying about STDs or getting a bitch pregnant. You want to ride a prostitute bareback? Have fun with herpes, dude.
Obviously, Real Dolls aren't for everyone, but if you're ready to spend a grand or more on a prostitute, dropping a General Grant on a Real Doll seems like a solid investment to me. Some people object to this, saying that an evening with a Real Doll wouldn't be worth more than $20, but that seems a little stingy to me. We've got to approach this from the perspective of someone who is actually considering paying for sex--and I think that Makhtar would definitely be willing to spend a little more than $20 in lieu of having to explain that he isn't Jordan Chui.
So that's my first question: would you pay for an evening with a Real Doll, and if so, how much?
The Secondary Argument
After debating for some time what an evening with a Real Doll should cost, we moved onto another issue, namely: how weird is fucking a Real Doll to begin with?
Now, the consensus is that sex with a Real Doll is definitely weird, but really, how weird?
To begin exploring this question, we have to examine two schools of thought. The first school of thought says that fucking a Real Doll is a form of masturbation; the second school of thought says that fucking a Real Doll is a form of sex.
Personally, I am of the first school. In my mind, sex with a Real Doll is just an advanced form of masturbation, aided by what amounts to a toy. Think about it for a second: isn't sex with a Real Doll masturbation by definition? You are the only real participant; the doll is involved, certainly, but it is passive, and cannot be said to be participating. You provide all of inputs, all of the active ingredients. The baseline for sex is that there are at least two inputs--otherwise, you're just fucking yourself, and that's masturbation, pure and simple.
Not that the second school of thought is without merit. When people talk about Real Dolls, they talk about having sex, not masturbating. There is definitely a sense that you are having sex--after all, you're putting your cock inside something. Something that isn't your hand. Something that looks like a lot like a woman. You aren't jacking yourself off in the traditional sense--rather, you're fucking, but what you're fucking is a doll. Proponents of this school believe that a Real Doll is a simulation of sex rather than a form of masturbation.
This is where fleshlights come in. One of my housemates made the argument that, while using a fleshlight is a sophisticated form of masturbation, using a Real Doll is very different, because it is a sophisticated simulation of sex.
Ah, but isn't masturbation itself a simulation of sex? You don't think about your hand while you're jacking off--you imagine yourself having sex, or at least, doing something sex related. The point of sex--from an objectively hedonistic perspective--is to cum. The point of masturbation is to cum. Masturbation is meant to be a substitute for sex, albeit a poor one. Without sex, there is no masturbation; it doesn't exist as an entity unto itself. You cannot conceive of masturbation as anything other than a simulation of sex.
So, if fleshlights and Real Dolls are both advanced forms and masturbation--and, as such, simulations of sex--then are they so different?
I say no. To me, on a scale of weirdness and sexual perversion, the same order of magnitude separates Real Dolls from fleshlights as separates fleshlights from conventional masturbation. The spectrum looks like this:
Beating it old school --1-- using a fleshlight --2-- fucking a Real Doll
The best analogy for this that I can come up with is that masturbation is like riding a bicycle, using a fleshlight is like riding a motorcycle, and fucking a Real Doll is like driving a car. Obviously, there's quite a difference between riding a motorcycle and driving a car, but to me the essential difference is between traveling under your power (the bicycle) and employing some form of engine to propel you (the motorcycle and car). Likewise, the essential difference is between masturbating au naturale or employing some form of prosthetic vagina--as far as I'm concerned, once you moved beyond your hand and into the realm of prosthetics, the rest is just details. A Real Doll is just a fleshlight with a body built around it.
So, my second question: with these arguments in mind, and relative to regular masturbation, how weird are fleshlights and Real Dolls?
The Tertiary Argument from Economics
Now, as we were having this discussion, Sleazer brought up an interesting point: if fleshlights and Real Dolls are actually that similar, why the huge discrepancy in price? After all, a Real Doll costs between 100 and 200 times as much as a fleshlight, so what does that discrepancy tell us? Sleazer and others argue that this discrepancy demonstrates the degree to which a Real Doll is weirder than a fleshlight. There could be some truth to this--fetish properties tend to be wildly more expensive by virtue of their weirdness, and the further you get away from the spectrum of sexual norms, the more expensive things get. We visited this relationship earlier when discussing the prostitute--if you want to do really freaky shit, like anal fisting or DVDA, you can expect to pay way more than the vanilla John who just wants some straight missionary.
But is this really what the price discrepancy reveals? I'm not convinced. To me, the discrepancy demonstrates not the relative weirdness of the two products, but rather, the relative sophistication of the sexual simulation. People pay huge sums of money for Real Dolls, not because they are exceptionally weird, but because they are the most realistic simulation of sex (and thus the highest form of masturbation) that money can buy. I think anyone would be hard-pressed to argue that Real Dolls are 100-200 times as weird as fleshlights, but a Real Doll might easily be 100-200 times as realistic a simulation as a fleshlight, given that for all intents and purposes a Real Doll is akin to fucking (a) a passed-out girl, (b) a coma girl, or (c) a dead body. A fleshlight, on the other hand, is a pocket vagina; I'm sure it feels great, but really, it can't give you the same realistic sensation of having sex.
The extension of this would be if there was a computer that could simulate sex in virtual reality. Imagine wearing a headset that gave you the total illusion of having sex--you can see the girl; you can feel and taste and smell the girl; she responds to whatever inputs you want and she takes an active role in the sex play; but, at the end of the day, you're still masturbating into a machine, albeit one that feels exactly like fucking a woman. Would such a simulation be way weirder than fucking a Real Doll? It would be weird, certainly, but it doesn't seem like a huge difference in perversion to me. The big difference is that the realism of the simulation would go up enormously, and as a result, a person would be likely to pay many times the price of a Real Doll for such a simulation. For this reason, to me, the Argument from Economics holds little water.
Finally, my third question: what does the discrepancy in price between the two objects suggest to you?
Conclusion
This has been an attempt to present the issues in a fair-minded and even-handed way. I am obviously of one mind, and despite my best efforts, that may have biased my presentation in some way. Therefore, I welcome any critcism of my analysis, and am happy to entertain other arguments.
For me, however, the difference between organic masturbation and the use of prosthetics is at least as big a leap as the one between fleshlights and Real Dolls. Also, any attempts to differentiate between the use of fleshlights as masturbation and the use of Real Dolls as sex is misconstrued, as both must be framed as forms of masturbation and, as such, simulations of sex.
Background
To understand this conversation, you need to know what a Real Doll is. I'm virtually certain Mahktar is familiar with this, but for those of you less pornographically-inclined, Real Dolls are life-size, customizable, silicone sex dolls. They are manufactured by a California company called Abyss Creations and come in virtually any form you can imagine. Want big boobs? They can do that--try Body 3, 5, or 10. Want really, really, really big boobs? Body 9 is for you. Want an Asian? How about a black girl? They've got a wide variety of skin tones to choose from, including some that might surprise you. Want realistic tan lines to turn you on? They'll do it. Shaved, unshaved, extra pubes--whatever your fantasy, the good people at Abyss Creations will help you realize it, for only $6,499.
Now, you don't necessarily have to be a sexual deviant to have heard of Real Dolls, though it certainly helps. Real Dolls have been prominently featured in some legitimate, main-stream media, including recent artsy film Lars and the Real Girl, as well as Nip/Tuck, where one episode involves a character having sex with a real doll.
Real Dolls entered the collective consciousness of 357 last semester, when someone circulated this video, "Real Dolls and the Men Who Love Them." Before you start watching, be warned: this video is quite long, and the people it profiles are very weird, but if you're like me, you won't be able to look away. So make sure you've got plenty of time--and some privacy--before you start viewing.
What you'll see if you watch the video is that, to the men who buy them, Real Dolls aren't a hobby, they're a lifestyle. These guys don't just have sex with them; they name them, dress them, take them out for drives in the country, and generally treat them as if they were actual people. This relationship, the love affair between man and doll, is the subject of Lars and the Real Girl, though it seems considerably less creepy in Lars than it is in the documentary.
To understand the rest of this conversation, you'll also need to know what a fleshlight is. A fleshlight is basically a tube that is shaped like a pussy/ass/mouth that you stick your cock into. Anyway, there's not much more to fleshlights than that; they run around $60.
The Initial Argument
The reason these topics came up in the first place was because it was suggested that we purchase a Real Doll for the house. In order to help finance the cost of the Real Doll, we would let outsiders have sex with it, for a price. But what would the price be? This is the initial argument.
I said that $50 would be a pretty reasonable price to pay for an evening in the company of a Real Doll. Why? Well, for one thing, that's a fraction of the price one would pay for a prostitute. Now, I don't really know what an average prostitute costs, but disgraced ex-Governor Elliot Spitzer apparently paid upwards of $15,000 for seven or eight sessions with high class hooker Ashley Dupre, so I think it's safe to assume that a desirable prostitute could easily cost $500 to $1,000, or even more. To rent an escort for an evening is a little cheaper, but still upwards of $200, and that doesn't even guarantee sex. In comparison, fucking a Real Doll for $50 is a relative bargain.
Now, obviously, there are some serious disadvantages to a Real Doll as opposed to a real woman. Real Dolls don't act out fantasies for you--you act out your fantasy on them, which isn't at all the same. A real woman is an active participant--a doll isn't. On the other hand, you can do literally whatever you want with a Real Doll, something that cannot be said of a woman. If you have some really freaky tastes, a prostitute might indulge them, but it's gonna cost extra. Not so with a Real Doll--you do whatever you can imagine for a flat fee. Also, you might be willing to take some extra liberties with a doll, since it has no emotions and is therefore immune to humiliation and degradation. You might feel guilty shitting on a girl's chest, but a Real Doll will just lay there and take it, no questions asked. In addition, you can ride your Real Doll bareback, without worrying about STDs or getting a bitch pregnant. You want to ride a prostitute bareback? Have fun with herpes, dude.
Obviously, Real Dolls aren't for everyone, but if you're ready to spend a grand or more on a prostitute, dropping a General Grant on a Real Doll seems like a solid investment to me. Some people object to this, saying that an evening with a Real Doll wouldn't be worth more than $20, but that seems a little stingy to me. We've got to approach this from the perspective of someone who is actually considering paying for sex--and I think that Makhtar would definitely be willing to spend a little more than $20 in lieu of having to explain that he isn't Jordan Chui.
So that's my first question: would you pay for an evening with a Real Doll, and if so, how much?
The Secondary Argument
After debating for some time what an evening with a Real Doll should cost, we moved onto another issue, namely: how weird is fucking a Real Doll to begin with?
Now, the consensus is that sex with a Real Doll is definitely weird, but really, how weird?
To begin exploring this question, we have to examine two schools of thought. The first school of thought says that fucking a Real Doll is a form of masturbation; the second school of thought says that fucking a Real Doll is a form of sex.
Personally, I am of the first school. In my mind, sex with a Real Doll is just an advanced form of masturbation, aided by what amounts to a toy. Think about it for a second: isn't sex with a Real Doll masturbation by definition? You are the only real participant; the doll is involved, certainly, but it is passive, and cannot be said to be participating. You provide all of inputs, all of the active ingredients. The baseline for sex is that there are at least two inputs--otherwise, you're just fucking yourself, and that's masturbation, pure and simple.
Not that the second school of thought is without merit. When people talk about Real Dolls, they talk about having sex, not masturbating. There is definitely a sense that you are having sex--after all, you're putting your cock inside something. Something that isn't your hand. Something that looks like a lot like a woman. You aren't jacking yourself off in the traditional sense--rather, you're fucking, but what you're fucking is a doll. Proponents of this school believe that a Real Doll is a simulation of sex rather than a form of masturbation.
This is where fleshlights come in. One of my housemates made the argument that, while using a fleshlight is a sophisticated form of masturbation, using a Real Doll is very different, because it is a sophisticated simulation of sex.
Ah, but isn't masturbation itself a simulation of sex? You don't think about your hand while you're jacking off--you imagine yourself having sex, or at least, doing something sex related. The point of sex--from an objectively hedonistic perspective--is to cum. The point of masturbation is to cum. Masturbation is meant to be a substitute for sex, albeit a poor one. Without sex, there is no masturbation; it doesn't exist as an entity unto itself. You cannot conceive of masturbation as anything other than a simulation of sex.
So, if fleshlights and Real Dolls are both advanced forms and masturbation--and, as such, simulations of sex--then are they so different?
I say no. To me, on a scale of weirdness and sexual perversion, the same order of magnitude separates Real Dolls from fleshlights as separates fleshlights from conventional masturbation. The spectrum looks like this:
Beating it old school --1-- using a fleshlight --2-- fucking a Real Doll
The best analogy for this that I can come up with is that masturbation is like riding a bicycle, using a fleshlight is like riding a motorcycle, and fucking a Real Doll is like driving a car. Obviously, there's quite a difference between riding a motorcycle and driving a car, but to me the essential difference is between traveling under your power (the bicycle) and employing some form of engine to propel you (the motorcycle and car). Likewise, the essential difference is between masturbating au naturale or employing some form of prosthetic vagina--as far as I'm concerned, once you moved beyond your hand and into the realm of prosthetics, the rest is just details. A Real Doll is just a fleshlight with a body built around it.
So, my second question: with these arguments in mind, and relative to regular masturbation, how weird are fleshlights and Real Dolls?
The Tertiary Argument from Economics
Now, as we were having this discussion, Sleazer brought up an interesting point: if fleshlights and Real Dolls are actually that similar, why the huge discrepancy in price? After all, a Real Doll costs between 100 and 200 times as much as a fleshlight, so what does that discrepancy tell us? Sleazer and others argue that this discrepancy demonstrates the degree to which a Real Doll is weirder than a fleshlight. There could be some truth to this--fetish properties tend to be wildly more expensive by virtue of their weirdness, and the further you get away from the spectrum of sexual norms, the more expensive things get. We visited this relationship earlier when discussing the prostitute--if you want to do really freaky shit, like anal fisting or DVDA, you can expect to pay way more than the vanilla John who just wants some straight missionary.
But is this really what the price discrepancy reveals? I'm not convinced. To me, the discrepancy demonstrates not the relative weirdness of the two products, but rather, the relative sophistication of the sexual simulation. People pay huge sums of money for Real Dolls, not because they are exceptionally weird, but because they are the most realistic simulation of sex (and thus the highest form of masturbation) that money can buy. I think anyone would be hard-pressed to argue that Real Dolls are 100-200 times as weird as fleshlights, but a Real Doll might easily be 100-200 times as realistic a simulation as a fleshlight, given that for all intents and purposes a Real Doll is akin to fucking (a) a passed-out girl, (b) a coma girl, or (c) a dead body. A fleshlight, on the other hand, is a pocket vagina; I'm sure it feels great, but really, it can't give you the same realistic sensation of having sex.
The extension of this would be if there was a computer that could simulate sex in virtual reality. Imagine wearing a headset that gave you the total illusion of having sex--you can see the girl; you can feel and taste and smell the girl; she responds to whatever inputs you want and she takes an active role in the sex play; but, at the end of the day, you're still masturbating into a machine, albeit one that feels exactly like fucking a woman. Would such a simulation be way weirder than fucking a Real Doll? It would be weird, certainly, but it doesn't seem like a huge difference in perversion to me. The big difference is that the realism of the simulation would go up enormously, and as a result, a person would be likely to pay many times the price of a Real Doll for such a simulation. For this reason, to me, the Argument from Economics holds little water.
Finally, my third question: what does the discrepancy in price between the two objects suggest to you?
Conclusion
This has been an attempt to present the issues in a fair-minded and even-handed way. I am obviously of one mind, and despite my best efforts, that may have biased my presentation in some way. Therefore, I welcome any critcism of my analysis, and am happy to entertain other arguments.
For me, however, the difference between organic masturbation and the use of prosthetics is at least as big a leap as the one between fleshlights and Real Dolls. Also, any attempts to differentiate between the use of fleshlights as masturbation and the use of Real Dolls as sex is misconstrued, as both must be framed as forms of masturbation and, as such, simulations of sex.
Friday, January 23, 2009
If skiing was easy, it would be called snowboarding
Today I'm gonna be taking on the persona of Sal Masekela, mostly because he's the only black man I've ever really known/seen to be associated with a winter sport (more to come about this). So I'm stoked that the Winter X 13 is now in session, which means: fresh gear, fresh snow bunnies, deep powder, and gnarly wipeouts. Now growing up in VT, there's something special about powdery snow that really is indescribable to someone who wasn't really raised on crud, granular, and soft flakes. I akin it to something like, if fresh powder was a 1 girl (using the Binary Scale via Sleazer) who came over to your house once a year on a cold December morning, you would lick her asshole everyday til the grass came out again. Er.
These mountain lovers are the Rastas that you so fondly admired and envied in high school, with their laid back West Coast demeanor, positive vibes, unruly care towards personal hygiene, and impressive ganja-inhaling capacitance. How did they fail pre-algebra and still manage to take Airwalks to the next level? You got me. And while they don't run 4.3 40's, can't squat 700 lbs, and probably have chest sizes smaller than Keira Knightley, that doesn't make them any less hardcore than most athletes. The only person who has even dared traverse the "hybrid" designation of land to snow to land athlete is Jeremy Bloom, the sexiest punt returner/wideout to ever grace the turf, and unfortunately, didn't cut it to play with McNabbulous coming out of college, or with Ben Hamburgler and Hines Ketchup this season.
I guess the Olympics will have to do.
Introducing: Warren Miller, the godfather of freeskiing and ski films. This gramps ain't your typical crack walnuts by the fireside old man. With 59 ski classics and counting, I'm ready to anoint this man Abner Doubleday of the slopes. I've seen a handful of his films, and just like watching each successive bastard version of the Real World, why fix something when the junkies love it?
While my experience with snowboarding is limited to bunny hills, playing 1080 Snowboarding, and watching Mahktar metamorph into a fetus body (a la Benjamin Button) attempting to get down the mountain, that doesn't diminish my appreciation for one-plankers. In fact, given a chance to choose the diverging path between skiing and riding, I would have taken the latter. Skiers still hold the crown for snow supremacy, but only by a smidge, and the gap has been quickly closing. I'm constantly jealous of the boarder's lifestyle, full of rebellion, No Fear t-shirts, and unimaginably gorgeous women. This would be the appropriate moment to bring up everyone's flying tomato favorite, Shaun White (an astoundingly perfect blend of part Carrot Top, part RJ). Undeniably the best in his sport, the kid was hucking off cliffs while the rest of us were still trying to figure out the functionality of our dicks in relation to females.
Another man I am obligated to mention here is Levi LaVallee. At the time that I am writing this, he is about to dare history by transposing the infamous double backflip in the form of snowmobiling. He'll probably die doing this. I'm no Stephen Hawking, but I understand enough to know that twisting a 500 lbs machine two full rotations = BROKEN. ANKLES. Typically, I'm indifferent to snowmobiling, but anytime I can include Travis "My Hero" Pastrana, I will plug his name without shame.
Finally, I'll finish off the roster with Tanner Hall. There's a lot of things I could say about this kid. Besides ushering a new era of freeskiing, this technician slam dunks just about every competition he has ever participated in. Everything looks like a video game with him. Along with that, he's fostering a healthy rivalry with Simon Dumont, more of a raw talent, a Malone nipping at the heels of Jordan. Speaking of heels...
Tanner Hall And The Chads Gap - Awesome video clips here
BROKEN. ANKLES.
These mountain lovers are the Rastas that you so fondly admired and envied in high school, with their laid back West Coast demeanor, positive vibes, unruly care towards personal hygiene, and impressive ganja-inhaling capacitance. How did they fail pre-algebra and still manage to take Airwalks to the next level? You got me. And while they don't run 4.3 40's, can't squat 700 lbs, and probably have chest sizes smaller than Keira Knightley, that doesn't make them any less hardcore than most athletes. The only person who has even dared traverse the "hybrid" designation of land to snow to land athlete is Jeremy Bloom, the sexiest punt returner/wideout to ever grace the turf, and unfortunately, didn't cut it to play with McNabbulous coming out of college, or with Ben Hamburgler and Hines Ketchup this season.
I guess the Olympics will have to do.
Introducing: Warren Miller, the godfather of freeskiing and ski films. This gramps ain't your typical crack walnuts by the fireside old man. With 59 ski classics and counting, I'm ready to anoint this man Abner Doubleday of the slopes. I've seen a handful of his films, and just like watching each successive bastard version of the Real World, why fix something when the junkies love it?
While my experience with snowboarding is limited to bunny hills, playing 1080 Snowboarding, and watching Mahktar metamorph into a fetus body (a la Benjamin Button) attempting to get down the mountain, that doesn't diminish my appreciation for one-plankers. In fact, given a chance to choose the diverging path between skiing and riding, I would have taken the latter. Skiers still hold the crown for snow supremacy, but only by a smidge, and the gap has been quickly closing. I'm constantly jealous of the boarder's lifestyle, full of rebellion, No Fear t-shirts, and unimaginably gorgeous women. This would be the appropriate moment to bring up everyone's flying tomato favorite, Shaun White (an astoundingly perfect blend of part Carrot Top, part RJ). Undeniably the best in his sport, the kid was hucking off cliffs while the rest of us were still trying to figure out the functionality of our dicks in relation to females.
Another man I am obligated to mention here is Levi LaVallee. At the time that I am writing this, he is about to dare history by transposing the infamous double backflip in the form of snowmobiling. He'll probably die doing this. I'm no Stephen Hawking, but I understand enough to know that twisting a 500 lbs machine two full rotations = BROKEN. ANKLES. Typically, I'm indifferent to snowmobiling, but anytime I can include Travis "My Hero" Pastrana, I will plug his name without shame.
Finally, I'll finish off the roster with Tanner Hall. There's a lot of things I could say about this kid. Besides ushering a new era of freeskiing, this technician slam dunks just about every competition he has ever participated in. Everything looks like a video game with him. Along with that, he's fostering a healthy rivalry with Simon Dumont, more of a raw talent, a Malone nipping at the heels of Jordan. Speaking of heels...
Tanner Hall And The Chads Gap - Awesome video clips here
BROKEN. ANKLES.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
You know Cuthbert's Hotter
Every once in a while, you come across something on the internet that makes you just sit back and say, "Whoa." For me, this generally comes from some melange of the infamous Aurora Snow Gag Factor 5 clip (REALLY NSFW: Audio Here) and reading Kim Peek's Wikipedia page. However, today at work, I was left awestruck, not once, but twice--here are the nuggets of truth that left me speechless:
1. Kobe Bryant has played exactly as many seasons as Michael Jordan did with the Bulls.
and
2. Anne Hathaway is Askmen.com's #5 most desirable woman.
I'll address both in this post. Sports and chicks, that's what Fegonomics DOES!
1. Kobe Bryant has played exactly as many seasons as Michael Jordan did with the Bulls.
and
2. Anne Hathaway is Askmen.com's #5 most desirable woman.
I'll address both in this post. Sports and chicks, that's what Fegonomics DOES!
Jordan vs.
Kobe's currently playing in his 13th season with the Lakers, which is exactly the number of years that Jordan played before hanging it up for the Bulls. Of course, this doesn't count the one and a half year secret suspension that David Stern forced Jordan to serve between the '93 and '95 seasons. (Sidenote: Is there anything better than a David Stern conspiracy theory? Between the videographic evidence of him RIGGING the 1985 draft, rumors that the Council of Foreign Relations of which he is a member, is actually the New World Order, and him phantom suspending Michael Jordan for his gambling problem, this guy is involved in more seedy activity than the Juice himself).
All heresay and speculation aside, one thing is certain. No one in the NBA right now will ever match Jordan as a player, or transcend the game like he did. Not Kobe. Not Xanax Duncan. Not even 'BronBron (Even though he is making a concerted effort to become a "global icon").
I arrive at this conclusion for two reasons, one obvious, the second a little less so
I mean, clearly, a player's going to be VERY hard pressed to be as clutch as #23 was. Think about how ludicrous it is that he has his own clutch shot mixtape. Most players have trouble even having their own Dunk mixtape. Case in point: The Birdman.
All heresay and speculation aside, one thing is certain. No one in the NBA right now will ever match Jordan as a player, or transcend the game like he did. Not Kobe. Not Xanax Duncan. Not even 'BronBron (Even though he is making a concerted effort to become a "global icon").
I arrive at this conclusion for two reasons, one obvious, the second a little less so
I mean, clearly, a player's going to be VERY hard pressed to be as clutch as #23 was. Think about how ludicrous it is that he has his own clutch shot mixtape. Most players have trouble even having their own Dunk mixtape. Case in point: The Birdman.
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