Frequent Owner's Manual visitor Al the Retired Army Guy has delivered unto me this photo of his sausage, shaped no less into my own initials, EOB.
Here in Cleveland, we have a lot of sausages and believe me, I've got my
share of sausage experience and then some. I know a righteous sausage
when I see one and Al's sausage is top notch.
Al the Retired Army Guy
Look at the way the flesh fills the casing--it's stuffed to the perfect consistency. Al's sausage also has a lovely sheen and a respectable girth, which matters more than people think. That there is one long
tube of quality. It may be the most beautiful sausage I've ever seen.
I picture Al's sausage framed by glistening threads of sauerkraut or nestled in a cozy bun with a thick bead of Stadium Mustard dressing its glorious length.
Imagine picking up Al's sausage and wrapping your lips around it. Imagine rolling Al's sausage around in your mouth!
~~sigh~~
Any woman would surely admire such a sausage. I daresay
plenty of men would envy this hefty coil. It is a fine sausage of which Al should be proud. To
that end, Al should display his gorgeous sausage for all the world to
enjoy.
Thank you readers. Thank you Lord. Most of all, thank you Al, for allowing me to be part of your sausage's debut.
You were first delivered unto me as I sat blinking in wonder
before a new mind-blowing entity called MTV. Paradise by the Dashboard Lights
was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Your eyes drilled straight through me as
those long sweaty strands of hair whipped around your head, a living weapon. You
were the antithesis of a teen dreamboat—a fat guy in a ruffled shirt, yet I
swooned at something I was too young and naïve to recognize: your unabashed
eroticism.
And that chick! Karla DeVito stood like a virgin flame in
her white cat suit. Who cared if she was lip synching Ellen Foley's singing? With
lips rouged and blue eye shadow gleaming, she was a live-action Betty Boop. But
instead of coy giggles and batting eyelashes, DeVito had all the power. It was
concentrated at the tip of the inverted V formed by her not-so-subtly parted
legs.
When you two started making out, it was miles away from the
antiseptic kissing manufactured by Hollywood. Why, you were practically dry zocking
on the stage! My breath shortened as epiphany bloomed with sweet orgiastic
glee: This was the kind of sex they didn't want me to know about. It had a
taste and smell. This sex was alive. It was raw and honest and real.
You owned me, Meat.
The next thirty years unwound as fast as the turning cogs in
my portable cassette player. I traded in my shoulder pads and fishnets for the
punk look. Then life dissolved from college to a corporate career. The mortgage
and husband and baby soon followed.
But you never changed, always with the motorcycles and
ruffled shirts and the sublime promise that the rock & roll of my youth was
really opera. Bat out of Hell II, Bat out of Hell III. I gave you one pass
after another. When you espoused, I'd Do Anything for Love (But I won't Do That), I was baffled. Huh? I wondered, not do what? What did it
mean? You'd invite me to your bed and then promise to never break wind therein?
Aw baby, I didn't care. I'd do anything for love too, so I just
swallowed it whole. After all, you were Meat Loaf and when you set me atop that
silver black phantom bike all those years ago, it earned you hella good will.
Some things just have to be gotten through, so it was with your
unfortunate mumbling of that incredibly awkward title phrase. But like we vowed
before those dashboard lights so long ago, I would love you forever, Meat. I
was ready to suffer anything. Well, almost anything.
October 25, 2012, Defiance, Ohio.
"Meat Loaf endorses Romney," proclaimed the
headlines. You talked about the Cold War and it felt like a cold shower despite
my advanced fortysomething age. And when you said, "I want you to know, at
65, that Paul Ryan has not pushed me off the cliff in a wheelchair," you
couldn't have been more wrong. You were finally speeding into a real abyss and
this bat wouldn't be coming out of Hell ever again. And then there was this:
Frankly Meat (or should I call you Marvin?), Romney looked
as though he'd just been presented with a plate of eyeballs floating in a mold
of lime jello.
Yeah, yeah.
Now it's November 56th and Romney's still losing the
election (just ask his eldest son). I
hate to break this to you, Marv, but no one cares about your opinion on the
matter. Paradise is lost, baby. Your sweat has dried into a crust of salt. All
those ruffled shirts have long since gone yellow. In ten years or so when Mitt Romney
is reduced to a Trivial Pursuit answer card, I'm afraid you'll be just another
old fat white guy alone between your waxy sheets wondering why you ever vowed, but
I won't do that or two out of three ain't bad.
Whatever the case, Marv, you took the words right out of my mouth.
There are exactly two sorts of people in the world:
1) Those who are on the Great Sex square.
2) Those who want to get to the Great Sex square.
So how do you get into group one?
You can only get so shaved, augmented, naked and spread eagle. You can slather yourself with sensitizers for her, de-sensitizers for him, and a host of slick lubricants. You can barrel over Viagra Falls, procure oodles of obscene toys, and dive into the never-ending online porn parade. But none of those things--or even any combination of them--will get you into the Great Sex club.
Sure, you can have plenty of successful sex, full up with loud orgasms, uncontrolled vocalizations and dilated pupils, but to reach that elusive je ne sais pas, you have to incorporate components as intangible as your goal.
Sex is about emotion. It's powerful. Squander your sexuality and you'll not only get further and further from great sex, you'll damage your soul (really). The only way to achieve tremendous sex is to start with tremendous desire.
Despite the cringe-worthy title, I can't recommend
this essay highly enough. From the article:
As a society, we've
tried to simplify things by separating physical pleasure from emotional
attachment. At the same time, we've started to confuse sexiness with
physical perfection. While we're running off to our plastic surgeons for
Boot injections and beast implants, we've forgotten that what's really
sexy can't be bottled. It's an inner spark that's as distinctive as your
personality. Being hot is a state of mind, and it's subjective. It
takes two to generate heat. Desire demands emotion.
In fact, the alchemy of attraction is so personal and inexplicable, no one fully understands it.
And may we never fully understand it, although I'm not really worried. Because despite every available screen and magazine cover bombarding us with SEX SEX SEX; sexy remains as elusive as ever.
Now hush up--don't you dare say the L word--just blow me a kiss and I'll give you a wink.
"The problem in the new world of pharmacy is that we don't know how
these pills are operating in any woman at any moment," said Kathy
Ostrowski, state legislative director of Kansans for Life. "The
potential for terminating a human life is very strong in these medicines
being called contraceptives."
Erin O'Brien and associates in chilled vodka room, Restaurant Europa
1. If you live in the northeast Ohio, get your ass to Restaurant Europa and order the chilled borscht. It is rich and smooth and full up with crisp vegetables (Carrots? Radishes? Onion? Not sure. I was eating it, not inspecting it, people. So kill me already.) The soup has a slightly salty pickled flavor and is served with a side of warm and lush mashed potato. You take a spoonful of the spuds and dunk it into the chilled borscht, you put that in your mouth and the cool salty broth gives way to the warm mash. What else can I say? Oh, I know.
HELL YEAH and I love it!
2. Over the course of my 158 years on planet Earth, I have listened to this song closely at least a handful of times and have concluded that it is the perfect musical representation of heterosexual coitus. The percussion is the dude part and (obviously) Summer's vocals are the chick. I'm not sure what that says about me, but there you go.
Ciao, Donna. You were beautiful.
3. Okay, back to wranglin' these here articles. What are the chances I get out of here long enough to wiggle through the Hessler Street Fair this weekend? Dunno. Better get back at 'em.
Back in the day, getting pizza was an event. It was reserved for Friday night slumber parties or as part of a festive outing on the other side of town. Pizza was something you anticipated; and if it went bad, you made the best of it.
I had a friend who used to say: even when you get bad pizza, it's still pizza!
Now you pretty much get pizza all the time and the phrase doesn't pack the same punch. For most, it's a downgrade to: When you get bad pizza, it's just bad.
The same friend once extrapolated the concept to sex: even when you have bad sex, it's still sex! The obvious question is: has sex gone the way of pizza, with ennui souring whatever positive morsels are to be had within a bad experience? Perhaps it's a gender thing. When a man has bad sex, hey, it's still sex! When a woman has bad sex, it's just bad.
Good christ. This introduction has gone on long enough.
Behold three images. Now then dear readers, you tell me. Do these fall in the "But It's Still Sex!"category or should they be relegated to the "It's Just Bad" department?
In December 2008, I wrote a column for Cleveland Scene in which I gave a New-Years-resolution inspired list of Rules That Matter.
The third entry on the list (which I just reviewed and can say with confidence that all the rules are every bit as valid now as they were three years ago and if we all followed them, the world would be a better place), starts thusly:
The only sexual activity you need to worry about is your own.
Hey GOP? You hear that? Had y'all been heeding that advice maybe you wouldn't have gotten the (utterly delicious) tongue lashing from Maureen Dowd (“Republicans being against sex is not good,” the G.O.P. strategist Alex Castellanos told me mournfully. “Sex is popular.”), or James Carville (You've got Santorum sneaking upstairs checking the medicine cabinet to see who is taking birth control pills.), or even your own guy David Frum ferchrissake!
One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.”
It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen.
Hm. Definitely an infraction of Erin's Rule #3. Now one of you needs to scamper over to Ricky's house, strap a red ball gag in his mouth, and tell him the only dick he needs to worry about is in his pants.
The next time some oldster starts talking about how there was never any of that sort of business when we were kids, you show them this clip from Baby Doll, a 1956 film that features a teenage virgin bride.
That there is Caroll Baker starring as the title character. Her middle aged husband has promised her father that he will wait for her 18th birthday (which is just days away) to consummate the marriage. In this scene, she's sucking her (ahem) thumb in a day bed that looks a hell of a lot like a crib.
Look at her mouth, people. That is pure taboo eroticism and it ain't even all that subtle.
Considering Baby Doll debuted over a half-century ago, I say this to the codgers who get all uppity-duppity about the purity of yesteryear: Uh-huh. They were doing that sort of business back then and then some. They were doing this, that, and the rest of it. They were doing all of it.
* * *
Thanks to Kirk Jusko for turning me on to Baby Doll.
Smoking might have been the dumbest thing I ever did. I looked awful whenever I stuck a butt in my mouth and smelled worse for the entire 10 years. But when you would lean over and flick your Bic at the tip of my Marlboro Light, the sideways smile I sent over in return had nothing to do with that filthy habit and everything to do with a different little flame that ignited between us.
The way you handle your money: sliding bills toward the bartender to cover a round when no one's looking. Slipping an extra five under the sugar bowl despite the bad coffee and hamburgers that taste as though they haven't said "moo" in a long, long time. You don't hold on to your money too tightly, yet you always have enough. It's about the same with a woman.
The fact that you don't take that for granted makes it even better.
Although I laughed until tears squeezed from my eyes when I pulled it out of my Christmas stocking, I was thinking that when a man like you buys a toy like that for a woman like me, baby, that's saying something.
Don't say that. I disagree completely. In fact, I love your work clothes. I love the way the rough chinos hug your hips. I love the striped shirt and the way the embroidered name patch rests just over your heart like a promise.
Come over here. I'll unbutton it for you. Let me look at you: the shape of your lips, your eyes when you smile. Dear sweet Jesus, just let me look at you.
My god, how I love this bed. I'll take thick comforters, lush sheets and soft pillows over a chest full of diamonds, rubies and gold any time. Nestle in here with me and I'll show you a real treasure.
When you take both my hands in your hands like that, pull them up above my head and hold them there until all the tears I've ever cried evaporate.
The perfect velvet blue of dusk will be gone in an instant. It's slipping away already. But I know a secret way to hold onto it: Lace your fingers in mine and put your mouth on my mouth until the edges between us blur.
Don't think too hard, just make a wish. Now close your eyes and I'll make it come true.
The contrast of this four minutes of footage against what follows in the 1972 film Deliverance mesmerizes me. Wardrobe, set, dialog, casting and staging--it all works here.
Dig the hats, and the way the one local starts dancing. Dig the shape of the banjo kid's face. His behavior at the end of the segment embodies understated foreshadowing.
And would you look at Burt Reynolds for chrissake? God help me, would you look at Burt Reynolds?
(Everyone take a moment, please, and pay some respect to Dinah Shore, who had 20 years on Reynolds and was bedding him right around the time this film was made. Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, indeed.)
I shall not end this post without a reference to the outspoken conservative Jon Voight (who admittedly was pretty hot back then). Voight not only sired Angelina Jolie, he starred with Jane Fonda in the 1978 film Coming Home. It includes a steamy scene in which Voight's character orally services Fonda's character thereby delivering her inaugural climax.
That's the sort of thing Jack LaLanne says. You ever say anything that cool? Hell no. You're not Jack LaLanne.
Jack LaLanne was the first guy to do exercises on the idiot box for your 1950's housewives. Imagine how those broads swooned over that jumpsuit. Look at the belt on that thing for chrissake!
You have all this crap today, your "Biggest Loser," your Fit TV, your infomercials. What is that crap? It's crap. Jack LaLanne wasn't crap. Jack LaLanne was the genuine article. You can bet Jack LaLanne got his share of trim back in the day. And Jack LaLanne earned every sweet slice of pure-butterscotch-bleeding American ass that was served up to him.
Dig some original Jack LaLanne:
(Your humble hostess does not expect you to watch all eight minutes of the posted vid [although your humble hostess did watch the entire eight minutes and 23 seconds, along with too many other Jack LaLanne YouTube clips to enumerate], but your humble hostess does recommend schlepping through at least the first minute in order to view the opening graphic with the darling little cartoon Jack LaLanne.)
Your 1950's housewife chicks would watch ol' Jack LaLanne. They'd be holding the chair back, doing their leg lifts. Then they'd start thinking about reaching over and unfastening ol' Jack LaLanne's jumpsuit belt with one hand and (ahem) reaching for something else.
Pretty soon, your 1950's housewife chicks were rubbing one out in honor of ol' Jack LaLanne.
(Say "Jack LaLanne" out loud three times, just to see if anything happens. Go on, do it for your humble hostess.)
If you're going to the land of Jack LaLanne, you've got certain obligations, like dropping in on the Power Juicer square, where you'll find ol' Jack hanging out these days.
You go to the organic market? You'll see your stacks of 25-pound bag juice carrots. Jack LaLanne might be 173 years old, but he's down with the contingent that's piling those mothers into their Prius's. (Your humble hostess once had a juicer. The juicer of your humble hostess mystified your humble hostess. Your humble hostess no longer has the juicer, but your humble hostess does not allow her negative juicer experience to deter her from writing an obscure post about Jack LaLanne that is full on nonsensical parentheticals.)
You dig Jack LaLanne because Jack LaLanne is Jack LaLanne. If you had to choose between bedding Jack LaLanne and Hugh Hefner? You'd be down with the Power Juice; and that is what your humble hostess calls justice.
2) If a straight married chick makes out/plays boobie squash with Cat Cora, is that considered adultery? Please advise.
3) The Goat's smoked turkey was 100 percent kick ass yesterday, but you can't make turkey bone soup out of a smoked turkey carcass. That is what is known as a cruel irony, people.
3.4) Leftover candied yams for breakfast? HELL YEAH.
5) This note is included because you can't have a list with just four items on it.
5.7) The numbering system for this list is the product of a complex equation involving a high-thinker, editing and dumbassery. Don't ask any goddamn questions.
For $2000, a person should expect something that a) has a better name and b) packs more punch than a 5" tube that's a mere 2/3" in diameter for chrissakes. Who cares if it's emblazoned with hand-written lyrics from Dave Stewart (of the Eurhythmics)?
You can buy a cucumber three times that size at the discount grocery for 79¢. So it doesn't vibrate. So what? Your "Little Steel Tonight" only packs a two-out-of-five on the intensity scale anyway. Strap your $7 Spinbrush to your cucumber if you want to get your buzz on. You're still way ahead of the money game and when you're done, you can make a salad*. Now that's green living.
At best, this is a mutant Hot Wheels wannabe. At worst, it's a slew of amputated tongues rotating around an unseen axis.
That said, I'm pretty sure that if you give that thing enough gas and set it on the ground, It'll either make it halfway to Nebraska or mysteriously transform into a bevy of mothers-in-law. Either way, my knees are crossed tight.
Go on and click that link to view the single most depressing object ever realized by humankind. That thing will never ever achieve erection. You want to destroy a woman's self-esteem? Give her a limp dildo. Broad'll take one look at that thing; think even my dildo can't get it up for me and well up with tears for the next three days.
Christ awmighty.
Yes, smartass, I realize that this is an ill begotten fashion accessory designed for a) someone of the feminine persuasion who wants to laugh in the face of penis envy, b) a gent who's own manhood is so negligible, he sports a visual prosthetic to inspire confidence, or c) other.
Yeah, yeah. Mr. Right is a hapless schmuck who will never find his groove, or Viagra Falls for that matter.
The glory he does enjoy--those delighted gasps courtesy of stolen glances as he struts through the club on a glittering Friday night--are born of deception and woefully short lived. Can you imagine what happens when the zipper is finally down and the jib is finally up? When the cards are on the table, this is no winning hand, just a full house of flaccid.
People, the active ingredient in "Liquid Virgin" is alum, the same stuff that gives pickles their pucker. Call me crazy, but applying a pickling agent to your zorch just sounds like a bad idea.
You want me to get my Vlasic on, baby? Get makin' with your Polish dill.
I admit it: the Form 2 is sort of cute with its two curiously vibrating fingertips. Only trouble is, they're attached to that bulb-like base just like the roots of that goddamn Tommy Tooth model in every dentist's office.
Although the Doc no longer takes Tommy apart for me in order to display the hidden workings of decay, the mere site of the tooth-like Form 2 catapults me back to the most nightmarish moments of my youth, spent squirming beneath a screaming drill in the dentist chair, beads of sweat popping from my forehead.
In this realm, the phrase "open real wide" is anything but sexy.
That said, how darling is this vid? I love the part where the Form 2 tooth gets a nice little bath!
All I want from my girlfriend is to look at her after we DO IT. I mean REALLY look at her. But every time I try to sneak a peek, she rolls over and crosses her legs. Am I being weird?
--Boy who Wonders
* * *
Dear Boy Wonder,
No you are not being weird. Men can't get enough of that thing. I don't know why, but there it is. So you're 100 percent normal, but to get to the (ahem) bottom of your situation, we need to take a a couple of steps back.
So, Boy Wonder, are you or are you not delivering a splendorous orgasm unto Batgirl during the proceedings?
Methinks not.
Because if you were, Batgirl would be so full of glorious human sexual fulfillment, the aftermath would have her breathless on her back, not caring one toot if you were examining the secrets of the ol' batcave with a Klieg light. She'd probably even be giggling with that joyous intoxicated satisfaction only a true-life climax can produce. Hell, given enough big O's, she might even leave her cape and mask on, or show you a few inverted yoga poses (keep plenty of towels on hand in the case of that eventuality).
Instructing you on the ins and outs of how to properly maneuver your Batmobile in order to deliver the big O is a bigger tutorial than I can fit into this here blog post, but you might start by studying up in your spare time. Look at some diagrams and get making with the internet. Maybe upgrade to a nice bottle of vino instead of a six of Natty Light on your next date. If she loosens up enough, you might even talk Batgirl into giving you a live tour of her batcave during the opening acts of the evening, if you know what I mean.
Good luck.
* * *
Have a question about sex, housewifery, politics, culture or goat husbandry? Why not ask Erin?
First up, Cool Hand Luke. Watch the whole 10 minutes. Hell, get your hands on the movie and watch the whole thing. You will not be disappointed.
But if you only watch the first minute and a half of this excerpt, you'll see what I'm talking about when I'm talking about homo-erotic tension amid heterosexual men.
That scene: the content, Newman's performance, the staging, wardrobe, dialogue .... it's all so good, it might make you forget George Kennedy's terrible fake accent.
What draws me so intently to Luke and the boys is beyond what's on the screen. It's that guy-on-guy chemistry I can never witness first hand. A woman walks into a room full of men, and the chemistry changes. That's true whether she's in fishnets and stilettos or baggy jeans and sneakers, whether she's 22 or 62, whether she's gay or straight.
Although some chicks admittedly alter the (ahem) chemistry more than others:
Behold the ying yang that rules human sexuality and gender. On one end of the spectrum lies 100 percent masculinity, with 100 percent femininity on the other end. Same goes with orientation: 100 percent straight faces off against 100 percent gay, but very few of us live on those edges. We're all scattered somewhere in between like dots on a graph. Every woman has a dose of masculinity, just as every he-man has some measure of homo-eroticism floating inside of him. Some of us move around a little bit, trying to find the perfectly sized white dot to fit into our black swirl or vice-versa.
Yeah, yeah.
Enough of my penny-candy philosophy. Here's some clips from other movies I love that play with the concept of homo-erotic tension among heterosexual men.
Jaws
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Deliverance
And just to mix it up, A little sugar from Hedwig and the Angry Inch:
I'm not about to throw out just any filthy image. I want a special filthy image. One that is at once explicit, pornographic, pro-woman, and probably still illegal in some states.
Do I have one? You bet I do!
I've been saving this for just the right occasion. So dear readers, you can thank the SEC and their big fat porno mess for finally giving me an excuse to let this baby fly.
For the dear love of God, I don't know what I love best about that pic. It gets better and better every time I revisit it. For starters, the shoes and the outfit are darling. Even her hands are demurely placed. Her hair looks really nice as well.
LOOK. AT. HER. MAKEUP.
This might be a black and white photo, but I can tell that chick is wearing lipstick. And dig those eyebrows. A girl does not get out of bed in the morning with eyebrows like that, baby.
But in the end, it's the look on her face that clinches it for me. She is at once smirking and victorious; confident and poised. That's saying something for a girl in her (ahem) position.
How satisfying it is to know that, by simply viewing this photo online, I have something in common with a bevy of SEC employees, as do all of you who have chosen to partake.
* * *
Thanks to 404--not found for today's link and to Babeland for the embedded graphics, which included the Sqweel (?) and the Jimmyjane Form 2 (which looks like an upsidedown tooth to me).
If a good milkshake is like good sex, than a vanilla bean apple pie bacon shake with a shot of bourbon is like great sex with a guy who's got good breath and a really big dick.
I know what I'm talking about, I had that very shake the other day at Michael Symon's newest joint here in Cleveland, B Spot Burgers, and I got the pix to prove it (sorry, no pix of good breath/great sex/big dick--you'll just have to trust me on that part).
Hey man, you're good-lookin' and you're bringing me a burger? Down.
I'll have the "Thin Lizzy" thank you very much, after all, if the boys wanna fight you better let 'em.
Vintage beer cans and it's cool.
Give your Goat some 'nilla pie bacon bourbon shake.
Hell yeah, celeb chef Michael Symon's a Clevelander! Just dig the bottle of Stadium Mustard on every table.
Big boob mural chick with a tat.
Antlers and the big B beer can wall.
Relish bar from heaven with pickled everything and gimme some of those peppers.
Self portrait in weird mirror in unisex bathroom. Hi, Self.
This short film reminded me of a piece of flash fiction I wrote, Pan and the Housewife. Although I had never heard of Kitchen Sink when I wrote that violent little story, the two are completely different and wonderfully similar.
Here is Kitchen Sink, in two parts. I just loved this; fourteen minues never flew by so quickly. I suggest watching it in full screen mode.
One of my favorite online buds took a business trip to **The Happiest Place On Earth** earlier this month. When he returned, I poked him about updating one of his sites. He obliged.
Now do you think this resulting post* is a normal response when one is released from the land of the Mouse, or is it a proper reaction to an Erin O'Brien request?
