GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1084: PLAYBOY 3

 I have a shit-ton more excerpts from my Playboy collection that might be of interest to us now, in the modern world, as opposed to, say, 20+ years ago when I first got them. So here's a few interesting images:

You can probably guess that was written by Hunter S. Thompson. It was a letter to Hef celebrating the 50th anniversary of the magazine, but it might as well have been written 5 minutes ago. Nothing has changed. Or maybe we're currently living in the future he predicted . . . ?

Alfred Kinsey is a subject of fascination for me. If you've never read TC Boyle's The Inner Circle, I highly recommend it. But good luck scrubbing these pigfucking stats from your brain.

That is a lie from a lying liar. Not one year later he was running for Congress, so . . .

My Favorite Playmate is usually a pretty boring feature, but every once in a while a celebrity says something so outlandish I can't help but laugh. All the same, he didn't choose Nicole Narain?

That's a pretty good author photo of Irvine Welsh. It encompasses his subject matter and tone very well.

Nine. The answer to Edward Bunker's question is nine.

The Beef's got some serious problems. When you're going to Harvey Weinstein for advice, for example, it might be a good idea to keep your mouth shut and your head down instead of doing a Playboy interview.

Speaking of Tarantino, I forgot that he did this. He also did one for Django Unchained.

Any guesses as to who is telling this story? I'll put the answer at the end of this.

I bring this up because this is possibly the worst timed bit in US comedy history. This was published just a couple of months before 9/11. *pulls collar* In case you couldn't tell, this was written by George Carlin.

Ah jeez.

Speaking of Silent Bob, Kevin Smith also did the 20Q feature. That Michael Jackson idea is absolutely insane. Considering *that scandal* I'm glad it didn't happen, because HOLY SHIT.

Tarantino says something here that I identify with 100%. I've read so many books that I'm bored with the things that many people find enthralling. That's why I write outlandish things. The reason I do that is because I hate boredom, and if I ever bore someone with something I've written, I would consider that a crime against humanity. Every book has slow parts, but I try to make them at least interesting.

I used to be a Ron Jeremy fan. Ever see Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy? I thought he was funny in a cornball sense ("How big is my dick? Three inches . . . from the floor!"), and I was fascinated with the fact that he came from such a high pedigree (look up who his parents were). I even learned how to detail my pubic hair from him (shave the shaft and balls bare, trim the bush until it matches the rest of your body hair). But . . .

Knowing what we know now? Define "boink," please. 

Well. He turned out to be a huge piece of shit. Also, if you looked at that and thought, uhhhh, pandering? It has an interesting legal definition. The hell with it. Don't look that up. You need some sleep.

That ended on an ugly note, but I'll have more for you in a bit. Donald Trump and Mark Cuban did the big interview, and I'm probably going to dedicate a night to a compare/contrast of the two and what they said. I've got a long way to go before I'm through with my collection, so who knows how many more editions I'll have for you? To be continued . . .

____________________________________-

I almost forgot: It was Denis Leary. That's right, Dean Martin called Denis Leary a pussy. I have two words for you, oh-KAY?! That's fucking funny.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1083: FOUR YEARS

My first author photo.

Whenever I talk with a friend I haven't heard from in a while, as I did recently, they inevitably say something along the lines of how they thought for sure my drinking was going to kill me. There are a lot of people out there surprised by the fact that I'm still alive. I am one of those people. As of today it's been four years since my last drink.

It's been four looooooooong years. I thought maybe I'd still drink for special occasions, like my birthday and Christmas and so on. In fact, I lied my ass off so I could get out of detox and get something to drink in time for my birthday. I planned to buy a fifth of Wild Turkey 101, but when I went to the liquor store, I drove right past without stopping. I still have no idea why. All the same, that special occasions plan would have failed. That was my SOP for maybe a year back in the early 2010s, and I strained to find ways to qualify stuff as a "special occasion."

I miss the whole thing. I miss hanging out in bars and bullshitting with my fellow drinkers. I miss the fucked up adventures boozing used to bring. I even miss hangovers, the price to pay for greatness.

Who knows? Maybe I'll take it up again. There are a few things that might force my hand, like losing my bad foot or getting fired. Or maybe I'll live to one hundred and figure, fuck it. What's the worst that could happen?

Probably not, though.

I beat my alcoholism without AA, and that makes me proud. I think of all the court ordered AA people get stuck with and think, that sounds like a First Amendment violation. AA claims to be a non-religious organization, but they're lying. It pleases me that I beat this without the industry standard. All I needed to do was beat the physical addiction. The rest of it was a breeze.

I'm not condemning AA. It didn't work for me because Step Two sounds like a great excuse to blame my problems on something other than myself. Make no mistake, I am to blame for going down this path. But they do help people, so if you need help, give them a try. Or you can do what I did and go to RCA (Recovery Centers of America). From what I understand, they have locations across the country. I personally went to the one in St. Charles, which is pretty nice. It costs, yes, but if you have medical coverage, you'll be OK.

There is an added benefit to writing about this stuff here, and that's you lovely fuckers. I typically don't give a fuck what people in general think of me, but for some reason I do in this case. I think of all the people who congratulate me, and I realize I'd let them down if I started boozing it up again. That disappointment is one of the things that prevents me from drinking on shitty days, so thank you.

Have I done anniversary posts every year? I'm too lazy to check, but I suspect I have. Maybe I'll do one for five years, but after that? I won't bring it up again until the 10 year anniversary.

Unless I've been killed in a horrific car accident. I probably won't post if that happens.

Anyway, goodnight fuckers.

For many years I had that author photo on my business card, too. A friend of mine said, "You have a picture of you drinking on your business card?" I nodded, proud, and said, "Of course." Bliss in ignorance? No, bliss in stupidity.

Special thanks to Alicia and Chris Stamps, who always remember my anniversary.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1082: 12 MONKEYS

 

I remember when I saw the movie, 12 Monkeys, in the theater on opening night. It was a perfect time travel flick, and it made sense 100% of the, uh, time, which is unusual for such fare. If you want to impress friends with movie trivia, did you know that one of the two writers of this movie also wrote Unforgiven?

Anyway, when they announced a TV series was being made out of it, I had to wonder how. How could they stretch that story out over the course of a season, much less more than one? They did a pretty good job of it, and the show went off in a lot of crazy and unexpected directions.

But I lost Syfy before I could watch the final season. My provider dropped the channel for whatever reasons, and ever since I've wondered how they ended the show. When I gave up cable for streaming, I always kept an eye out, hoping someone would eventually have it.

And now, while watching the new season of From and the final season of Billy the Kid, I discovered MGM+ had it. At first I thought, I remember enough of the show. I can probably just plunge myself back into it with nothing more than the previously-on walkthrough.

That was a terrible idea. I'd forgotten so much about the first few seasons that I really should have started from the beginning, but I didn't have time for that. I'm not going to pay for another month just so I can do that. The problem is, I am a completely different person from the guy who watched those first seasons. Number one among the changes: I no longer drink three-quarters of a handle every night. No wonder my memories were hazy. I was probably blacked out when I watched a majority of 12 Monkeys.

Cumulatively I'm missing about a decade's worth of my life. It's not like I turned 30 and boom, the next thing I know, I'm 40. There are bits and pieces I recall, but booze effectively erased a lot of that decade. It's more like 33 to 43, maybe 44.

So picking up the show again after so much time was surreal to me. The time travel show sort of . . . sent me back in time. I had the sensation of being that person again for the first three episodes to the point where I reached for my drink once and recoiled in horror at it *not* being whiskey.

As for the show itself, I managed to get back into the correct mindframe when that feeling of time travel faded, and I understood the story again. I recalled more until I realized there was a plot twist I'd been waiting for when I watched back in the day. The twist did, indeed, come but it was not the twist I expected. Related, sure, but different nonetheless. I won't say what it was, in case you planned on watching at some point, but I thought Cole would somehow turn out to be his own father--like a test tube baby, not the other way--hence his importance as a paradox to the story. I was close, but that didn't turn out to be the case. The actual twist is pretty sweet, though, and you should give it a shot.

In fact, the whole show is just great. If you have MGM+, check it out.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1081: A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY

 We recently, as a nation, celebrated a most historical birthday. I can't believe such a concept has survived for this long. It really is astonishing, when you think about all the years that have passed since this grand notion found its feet and started to walk, then run. When I think about the whole thing, I stand mute in awe.

I am, of course, referring to Goodnight, Fuckers. Believe it or not, as of today I've been writing these things for twelve years. In another year it will be allowed to watch the PG-13 classic, My Stepmother is an Alien. Happy birthday, GF!

Twelve years ago I began this thing without warning. Usually if I start to do something, I at least introduce the concept so everyone knows what to expect. Nope. I charged in with something exceptionally personal that I should absolutely never have shared with anyone under any circumstances.

Don't click on this. Seriously, don't. If you must know, I'll TL;DR it for ya: I developed early as a child, and when I was writing one of my Hardy Boys rip-offs on my mom's piano bench, I had an orgasm. I wasn't doing anything other than writing. It just sort of happened. There. See? Don't click that link. There are more details if you do.

I never quite intended GF to become what it did. I thought I was mapping out who I was in case any future archaeologist wanted to know. That kind of stuff still happens, but I never intended the political stuff and the history lessons and the oh-look-at-this-weird-shit profiles to be more than just points of interest instead of the whole point.

All in all, I'm proud of all that stuff. I'm glad this is how it worked out. Not all 1,081 of these things are good--can't all be zingers--but twelve years of purposely spilling my brain on the internet is pretty good, all things considered.

And GF cannot be killed. I've tried to stop on several occasions, but it's more stubborn than *I* am, and that is saying a fuck-ton. So I guess I'll still be writing these for the rest of my life.

Brace yourselves. To quote Frank Reynolds(ish):

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1080: PLAYBOY 2

 I've gathered a few more images for my ongoing revisit of Playboy magazine. I've been going through my collection, saving the issues that are important to me, rereading about what life was like in the early 2000s. So here's more of what I've found.

President Creep doing what he does.

Looks like this was a new article published posthumously. And no, wrong Robert Crane. That one died a long time ago.

Ah jeez.

I wonder if Vidal would still say that if he was alive today.

Vidal really knew how to charm our corporate overlords.

"MADLY IN LOVE WITH BATMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I like to think that Elvis would have appreciated having Nic Cage as a son-in-law. He probably knew, too. After all, Elvis is probably still alive . . .

Jim Carrey is going to turn 90 in 2052. I'll obviously be gone by then, so someone planning to live that long: please check back on this. And then have your kids check back on him when he turns 120, please and thank you.

This is how I first read Chuck Palahniuk's infamous story, "Guts."

Speaking of the Joker . . .

OK, I think that's enough for now. I'll get back to this again some other time. I did find quite a few doozies including the Donald Trump interview . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1079: HYALURONIC ACID

 I don't give much of a shit about sports of any kind, so this sort of news flies waaaaaaaay under my radar, but when I saw a headline regarding skiers who have found an innovative way of cheating, I had to take a look at it. Quite honestly, I think these guys shouldn't be punished. They've suffered enough.

Because ski jumpers have learned to inject hyaluronic acid into their dicks. A lot of it, from what I understand. That's got to be punishment enough.

How the fuck does this help a ski jumper cheat? An excellent question, one of the first I asked, myself. It turns out that, much like fighters in boxing or UFC, skiers have to be weighed and measured because the regulators want to ensure that their outfits have a tight fit. If they don't, then a loose flap of cloth will help them out aerodynamically, giving them more distance.

So if you walk in with a fat hog for your fitting, when your equipment sheds the acid it will be back to normal size, and the cloth between your legs will hang just enough to give you that advantage.

I have no idea how the hell anyone figured this out, much less got caught. How did that go down, exactly? Perhaps a trainer one day said, "Dude, if I shove this needle into your dick, it's gonna swell up so much that" etc. So of course the other guy has to say, "DUDE! That's awesome! Stick me, bro!"

And then a judge has to go, "Hm. That's weird. He got more distance than he should have. I think his crotch is flapping in the breeze. Hey, wait a minute! Did he inject his cock with hyaluronic acid so it would swell up and we'd get an inaccurate reading of his crotch area during his fitting? Now if only I can catch him red-handed so I can prove it . . ."

I watched Cemetery Man. I didn't need to see the needle go into his penis to feel the pain. But even that's not the worst of it, because if you get the dosage wrong, you might disfigure your dong. It might not stand at attention anymore. It could cause you "penile discomfort," whatever the fuck that means.

You could also get infected and have to have your dick amputated.

Could you imagine having to explain that to your friends? "Yeah, I got gangrene and had to get my dick removed."

"Jesus Christ, man. How the hell did you get gangrene? What did you do to yourself?"

"I wanted an extra meter on my ski jump, so I stuck seventy cc's of acid into my . . .  you know what? It's a long story."

It brought back memories of the guy who went in for a circumcision only to wake up from the surgery without his glans. The doctor at the time said he'd found cancer in it, so he made an executive decision. What I think happened is, he cut a little too far down by mistake. It would have been a simple matter of asking the patient's wife for permission to amputate, which he didn't do despite the fact that she was on hand.

Which reminds me, John Wayne Bobbitt is back in the news. People Magazine thought to ask what he's been up to. Turns out, he lost a few more body parts. This is allegedly related to his service as a Marine . . . at the dreaded Camp Lejeune.

I did not expect this to be heavy on penis trauma. I just thought it was pretty funny that the Winter Olympics had a scandal called Penisgate, which was going to be the title of this GF, but I didn't want you to know that off the bat. At least now you know . . .

You know the rest.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1078: PLAYING MUSK

 It's been a staple of SF for so long I'm not sure I even remember when I first heard about the concept of terraforming a planet. I suspect it was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but I don't know for sure. All the same, it seems like the only way we'll be able to live on planets within our reach. Because outside of our solar system? That's a pipe dream, at least for now.

The most obvious subject would be Mars, and Elon Musk has been jacking himself off thinking about making that planet habitable for humans. Whether he's doing it for altruistic purposes (for humanity) or dictatorial purposes (the first private person to make it there gets to rule the planet), I'll leave up to your imagination. You know my thoughts on this.

But how likely is it to actually transform Mars from the wasteland it currently is to a thriving planet-wide metropolis? Is it even possible?

Why not try your hand at playing Musk? Nature put together a simulation. Go ahead. See how successful you are.

It's harder than it seems. I generally have a good understanding of science, and it was a lot harder than I expected. In fact I scored 50%, which would be a solid F- if I was still in school.

Brave enough to share your results in the comments?