J Lo Dislodges G-Spot

(fabricated news inspired by the pop icon) 

Jennifer Lopez suffered what doctors described as a severe dislocation of the vagina while on location filming her latest music video at the Acropolis in Athens. According to eyewitnesses, during a particularly challenging set of high-speed abdominal undulations something appeared to go awry, and the sexy singer/dancer/kind-of-actress/retailer/talent judge dropped to the ground writhing in what was later interpreted as agony.

A crewperson in charge of the wind machine had a clear view of the mishap from nearby. “One minute she’s going at it like a Jack Russell in heat. The next she’s in a ball on the ground holding her whatsit. After a while we start to think something’s up, so I go over to see if I can help out and she clocks me! At which point she’s on her own as far as I’m concerned.”

A medevac unit airlifted Lopez to a private airport, where she was then transported by chartered military stealth bomber to the Hospital For Special Patients in Manhattan. There Dr. Herman Hyman, chief admitting surgeon, was the first to observe her condition.

“Vaginal lateral percussive dysplasia. That’s what I’m calling it. Never seen anything like it. Everybody pretty much knows where a vagina goes. Hers wasn’t anywhere near there. Never seen anything like it before. I might’ve said that already.” He made the decision to call in a specialist group from the Mayo Clinic headed by Dr. Harold Kuntner.

“I’m not sure why we were brought in, actually. This isn’t usually our sort of thing, though Dr. Hyman and I were fraternity brothers in med school. When we heard of the unusual circumstances, the team and I agreed to come have a look-see.”

The surgical team requested copies of the video to aid in their diagnosis. “We were told the incident had been photographed by three separate high-speed, ultra-high-definition cameras, and we were anxious to get our hands on the footage. In fact the hospital conference room was packed for the screening, as there were a lot of staff members hoping to gain some insight into this rare condition.”

A hospital administrator who requested anonymity described the sequence. “It was stunning.  The patient wore a shear gold lamé toga hemmed just below the crotch. Gorgeous. A satin ruby sash was cinched at the waist. Nice Detail. Period-style sandals with braided leather straps rising above the knee. Absolutely to die for…"

Dr. Kuntner interjected, “Technically the traumatized area was covered, but we got a pretty good peek at what was going on. We continued to review the footage until we heard the nursing staff was waiting for us with the patient in the OR. I’m not sure we learned anything from the screening, but I feel it was the right decision to make an effort."

“I’ll never forget what I saw up on that screen,” commented maintenance worker Herbie Hind, who’d happened by the open door of the SRO conference room. “I had to be by myself for a while after that. I used the room where we store all the mops, by the slop sink.”

Lopez had been attempting to nail a particularly demanding section of the eagerly awaited companion video to the song, “I Got Something I Think You Want Boy, So Come Get It Quick Before It’s Gone.” She’d enlisted the talents of the legendary choreographer Miss B for the project. Miss B, still visibly shaken by what he’d witnessed, agreed to speak with reporters.

“Hon, ain’ nobody shakes it like my sweet Lo. We wanted something super special for this video. I mean it’s the Acrapolis and all, birthplace of love goddesses and whatnot. I went way deep on this one. Anybody on the planet gonna pull this off, gonna be my girl J. I guess she just wanted it too bad. Oh my. To think of the ironicness of the title now.”

Miss Lopez was on the operating table for seven hours as the surgical team worked to relocate internal organs wrenched out of place by what might have been the most physically demanding dance sequence attempted since Beyonce’s “Put A Ring On It”.

Miss Lopez is said to be recuperating at an undisclosed location more fabulous than could be provided by the hospital. Says Dr. Kuntner, “I think the procedure was a success. We’ve never done anything like this before, so we’re playing a wait-and-see game right now. And I'd wait before I took a look if I were you.” He added that what the mega talent needs right now is plenty of R&R. “Obviously any kind of sexual activity either real or theatrical is out of the question.”

“We’re all pulling for a quick recovery so we can finish up the video,” said J Lo’s long-time agent and confidante, Tina Lola. “Naturally, we’ll only let her do moves she’s comfortable with. We’re already reworking the choreography, and the search is on for a body double to handle the more rigorous stuff, which is going to be the real challenge. We might need three or four different bodies to give us a good match for all the featured parts. I don’t know where we’ll find another signature backside like that, though. We’re presently in negotiations with James Cameron's people to see if a computer generated J Lo would be the more cost-effective way to go."

Rumored current boyfriend and back-up dancer Casper Smart, when asked to comment about Miss Lopez’s current condition, had this to say: “Naturally my main concern is for her health and well-being. But if things don’t turn out to line up jus’ right and sh*t, I’ll be needin’ to get me my sumpt’n from somewhere’s else real soon, aw’ight?”

Reality: What A Concept

It must be really hard for a conscientious TV programmer to come up with the next bright idea, one that blends the poignancy of the human condition with the piquancy of zero-cost production value.

I’m here to help. Here are my ideas for shows that haven’t been tried yet. Nope. Nothing like them that I’ve ever seen. Most of these you could shoot with your iPhone and air by the end of the workday. All you need are maybe two college interns that come with their own cars and petty cash.

Paul's List of Bona Fide Blockbusters:

All America is Lip-Syncing

Dust Bunny Hunters

Wait, I’m Going To Cry Any Second Now

Real Morticians of Reno

Top Grocery Clerk

Extreme Leisure Addicts

Polka Planet
Fridge Contents Gone Bad

Returns Desk Altercations

Out Of Control Quadriplegics

Jigsaw Puzzle Wars

Mom Is A Cheese-aholic

Thirty Minutes To Waste

Survivor: Akron

Guy Versus Another Guy

Look Who Plays The Kazoo!

Race For Last

Myth Believers

Pimp My Chest Of Drawers

Fattest Man Standing

World’s Most Monotonous Jobs

Laid-Off Lumberjacks

Battle of the Network Has-Beens

Junk Food Chef

Outdated Records Elimination

Undercover Amnesiacs

Library Detective Stories

This Old Condemned Rattrap

Useless Garbage Road Show

Picnic Mayhem

Reptile and Amphibian Whisperer

Celebrity Napping

Skip That Challenge

Emergency Locksmiths

Bad Weather Avoiders
Really Crappy Mechanics

Parking Lot Sagas

Some Couple With No Kids

Following Eric Estrada Around

That’s A Woman’s Job

Tool Shed Tinkerer

Obscure Historical Accidents That Turned Out Okay

Caught On Security Cam Minding Their Own Business

My nod for celebrity judges for any show that needed them would be that stutterer from Iron Chef, the ghost of Farrah Faucett Majors channeled through John Edward wearing the orange swimsuit, and needless to say, anyone who's fabulously gay.

The End of Us All

I find myself daily deluged by supporters of the “America Is Awesome” movement. We are, its rabid supporters froth, the most greatest country on the Earth in every which way, and if you don’t think so you’re a commie socialist and should leave forthwith.

This flies in the face of all empirical evidence, not the least of which is the pap we nightly choose to ingest on TV.

The guys who maintain my building (we live in a co-op in NYC), a great bunch, by the way, despite the fact that they are to a man Yankee fans, were filling me in on what passes for awesome entertainment these days. While I consider Louie the pinnacle of fine art (and not just because I draw a paycheck from the production company), I was told that what I really should be watching is The Walking Dead. I tried to explain that neither zombies nor any other iteration of raving preternatural creatures compels me to tune in. This includes all manner of superheros, even those played by Robert Downey Junior while he’s clean and sober.

Nothing in the manner of childish fantasy gore attracts my interest. Aside from their mandatory requirement to feature thick strands of hanging drool, I find it a sad commentary on the American fetish with the sickeningly banal. Dexter? Eat me. Or rather, please don’t.

But no, seriously, this zombie show is way different. It isn’t about zombies so much. It's more about, you know, like,  serious human emotional stuff, when the zombies aren’t hot on the scent of a raw meal. Oh… well then.

After the lecture concluded, I walked outside and was immediately presented with the image of a bus plastered with ads for The Walking Dead. Then another one. The second bus was accompanied by a running commentary from a young couple walking ahead of me. The male was waxing euphoric over what a remarkable series it was. I nearly severed his Achilles tendon to get a clean listen of his review. The female said it was incredible how totally excellent television had gotten in recent years, and to support her argument she had a fine ass.

Perhaps I was missing something. I looked again at the bus, now stopped in traffic. I saw words used to describe the show. Words like “Powerful” and “Provoking” and “Powerfully Provoking.”

The words all had one thing in common: they were cloaked in quotation marks. Here’s another word dressed up the same way: “Bullshit”.

Whose words were these? The words of network flacks, of course. I went home after these visitations and Hulu’d the only show available (zombies rule  Internet streaming), the Season 2 premier. It was an hour of gross hokum dressed in grisly production value. Which didn’t stop me from passing the virus along. My wife was the next victim, and from there it was a wave of genetic retribution.

We ended up watching Tivo’d shows at Deb’s sister’s home. I was amazed we all endured the carnage. A fifteen year-old was allowed to attend, and I was there too. My cheap-seat commentary would normally be enough to clear a room.


We’ve since seen everything that has aired to date. It's all nauseating, to say the least. Not to mention incredibly stupid, which cannot be mentioned enough. Incredibly stupid. It would shame me to say I wrote for this show all the way to the bank.

The atavistic attraction is inexplicable unless you look up the word "atavistic."  I occasionally find myself drawn to closer inspections of road kills, and I'm always sorry for it. There is no respectable reason to watch this show unless you're working on a doctoral list of every way to kill a person from the neck up and wish to check your list off against this benchmark.

What can zombies do? They can do whatever their metrosexual authors desire them to do. If required to be clueless, lethargic lawn ornaments, that is what they will be. If they need legions of bags of protoplasmic ooze to silently materialize out of thin air, loaded to the gills with highly attuned feral senses, they will oblige. They will take just as much time to level a barrier, be it of cinderblock or cellophane, as is required by the featured humans to decide on the worst possible choice of retaliatory action.

And the humans? Their antics are even more noxious to swallow. They manage to incite unfounded empathy in the worst of us even as they act in ways more disturbing than an over-baked Winnebago full of Pennsylvania pigskin coaches.

The show’s first Jump-the-Shark moment (were I a shark I would need a bigger ocean) comes way too soon in Season 1, when a despicable hillbilly (every human in this show is reprehensible enough to deserve a sickening on-camera death, particularly the hillbilly sheriff, who insists on wearing his Dudley Do-Wrong costume no matter how entrail-caked it becomes) who really deserves to die, so he’s left to do so by his compatriots, he handcuffed to a thin rod on the rooftop of an Atlanta building (in this world there is only Atlanta and the woods), with nothing to comfort him but his military training memories and a conveniently placed hacksaw.

Given the choice of hacking through the rod (piece of cake), or perhaps the handcuffs (harder, but doable, a cop friend tells me),  he chooses a third option: the removal of his own hand, thus providing a more compelling visual for us to return to after the station break. 

The hand is all our remorseful rescue team discovers, after having risked their dubiously calculated lives to save the rat-bastard. Which means he’ll show up again down the road, like a bad penny, or Newt Gingrich. Count on it.

Confessions of an Up Home Country Boy

What follows is a review of a review of a song entitled “Barefoot Blue Jean Night”.  Said music reviewed by the dyspeptic, bed-wetting reviewer Ben Foster. His diminutive piece can be read here:

http://countrymusicreview.net/2011/05/10/jake-owen-barefoot-blue-jean-night/

Here's to bad behavior repeated ad infinitum

If there’s one thing I think all Americans can come together on, it’s that there’s nothing so deliciously cheesy, so self-referentially anthem-driven, so eminently mockable as Country Music. To label a “Nashville” song derivative is to accuse the sky of being blue.

Toss a couple of indigenous ingredients in front of the wind machine: simple-minded pride and home-grown pick-ups, backwoods babes at beer-sodden barbecues, faithful dogs and the holy wurd. Package in Tony Lamas, fire up the wind machine and hit the slo-mo button. Time to review the lessons our Momma done taught us.

We breathlessly tune in and pretend these affected crooners are yodeling about their own lives. Yes Carrie, I feel your formulaic pain as you sidle across the salt flats in a gait lifted from some NYC catwalk. Gotta love the pipes on that gal, though, and the gams are fine too, funky stride notwithstanding. What’s her wagon train hitched to? Why Mr. Paisley a’course, his Fender plugged into nothing in particular. Be still, their cheatin’ hearts.

As a biblical sage once observed, “There is nothing new under the sun,” and he figured that out a couple millennia ago. So do we really need another ballad defending the simple virtues of country living? Or a wailing lament from the same honey-throated honky-tonker who can’t wait to hightail it out of his or her  pissant town?

No sir, nor do we need the observation of some crayon wagger who figures one hillbilly template has finally been tapped for good. Seriously, guy? I was just plain befuddled at the level of derision slung at a song I’d recently listened to a whole bunch of times in a row because it was so dang catchy and the girls was so spankin’ hot. Please do check out “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” y’all!

All I was looking to do was find out if Jake Owen did his own water stunts. What I googled into was a hissy tirade by a wannabe kritic with a mess of personal issues. Maybe he’s got a thing about hygiene, as Mr. Owen does seem to go light on the shampoo. And I think he spat at me during that first stanza too.

But our writer guy is disingenuous to argue that his is not a personal attack ignoring the fundamentals of legitimate criticism, and he protests too much by defending the indefensible to every comer calling him out. Finally, his school girl use of emoticons makes any man with a pair want to puke his guts. Yup, I speak for everybody past the age of fourteen everywhere, Benny boy.

It most certainly is about right and wrong, son. Get your process right, or take up the juice harp and feel free to show us all how it’s done.  ;)

This Great Nation

I was sitting in my car waiting for the Enterprise carnival barker to finish his insurance pitch to my sister-in-law. She’d just been t-boned by a clown from the Bronx who’d taken issue with her having run a green light on him.

It turns out her car was drivable, but she’d only discovered this after the grease monkey the Keystone Cop forced her to use (the responding officer must take charge of the accident scene, I was told by the precinct ticket-taker, despite the fact the other driver, a male, got to call AAA) boosted it onto his flatbed, effectively robbing a traumatized woman of her transportation, the thieving putz.

It further turns out resetting a car deactivated by airbag deployment is a cinch if you know which buttons to push, but then the towing company, whose owner in all probability is porking the sister of a Lake Success gumshoe, would be out three hundred bucks in extortion fees. So Tip Top Auto Body of Garden City Park can kiss my cash-only ass (and as a side note, one should avoid any company that insists on calling itself some literary form of “Super Duper”).

Prices exclude taxes and surcharges

Ditto public servants who do what they can to flee the scene of an accident so they can score Krispy Kremes while they’re still hot. I look forward to the next crank call from some public servant making six figures plying the seatbelt infraction racket, as he solicits funding for his PAL T-ballers.  I’ll gladly pass along Tip Top’s number.

So I’m sitting there, a handicap space directly to my left, when an SUV the size of Oklahoma pulls into it. Well let’s see what kind of ailment we have here, I’m thinking.

SUV is an acronym for “sport utility vehicle,” not the kind of thing you’d expect to be piloted by an edema-sodden invalid. I strained to get a look at the driver through the smoked glass. She looked to be in her mid thirties and was affixing the requisite tag to the rearview mirror. Hey, maybe she was short a limb, having lost it in a violent shopping spree. Maybe she was allergic to asphalt. Maybe fuck her, the lazy bitch.

I’ve become sensitized to this scenario. The plenitude of this prime real estate would make you think handicappers outnumber healthy Americans. When the slots do get occupied, they rarely go to actual victims of poor health. More often they’re commandeered by the kind of assholes who make this nation a legitimate terrorist target.

She hopped out of her Cadillac Escalade, went to the rear side door and occupied herself with something out of view. Hey, maybe she was assembling her walker. Maybe her osteoporotic grandmother was folded over in the cargo area. Maybe… She picked something up and moved with no sign of an asthmatic condition past the front of the car. At that point I could see she was toting an infant carrier with normal effort. Clearly nothing wrong with her twat.

Newborn in tow, our handicapper trotted into Red Hots Spa. Hey, maybe she had a skin problem that made her emotionally unstable. Maybe without the ameliorative effects of that parking spot she’d feel compelled to toss her offspring into a pond and bolt for the nearest Equinox. I certainly can understand the urge to throw someone into a pond.

I looked back at the tag hanging from the mirror and then noticed a sticker lower down on the windshield. Ah! NYPD. There was the answer. The wife of a cop felled in the line of duty, dunked by too many donuts. Case closed.

The First Amendment Rules

I have a friend who’s in jail. Oh, you’re judging me now, aren’t you? Fair enough. Here’s what I have to say about his incarceration. The thugs who arrested him, denied him his constitutional rights, perjured themselves in court, falsely tried him, and now conspire to delay the proceedings that would see him released are all criminals who ought to be behind bars themselves. In fact I’m starting to rethink the whole capital punishment thing, and I say we start with “law enforcement” officials and ex-presidents. I’ll tell you this: Third World regimes have nothing on Suffolk County. And God bless America.

My friend is taking it all with remarkable equanimity, to the extent that in a fit of frivolity he recently sent me a list of ten things that would make life “on the inside” more tolerable. They included such chuckles as the request for a PETA-type organization that would watch out for the wellbeing of inmates with the same level of concern humans reserve for feral cats. I particularly like the one about being given only a fork on soup day and a spoon on spaghetti day. There is nothing so American as fucking with a man’s head.

Unless it’s whining. Which is why I responded with my own list for those of us on the outside, to give my friend some healthy perspective…

The List Of Ten Things That Would Make Me Quit Whining Maybe Just A Little:

Thing #10: Eliminate Sexy Billboards – These abominations must be made illegal. I’m a pathetic old goober and I do not wish to exit this world while ogling a poster of a seventeen-year old nymphet spilling out of her push-up bra. Let me rephrase that. I do not wish in my last moments on earth to consider that my loving wife, whom I’ve known longer than the age of the cleavage towering over me at the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel, will be receiving a visit from the State Police informing her that her husband impaled himself on a lane divider while staring at an ad for women’s undergarments. How did they determine this? From the calcified woody the county coroner had to fend off with forceps while determining cause of death.

Thing #9: Eliminate Handicapped Parking Places – 97% of them anyway. I mean, Jesus! They take up half the lot and are always empty. Actually, I’m lying. They do get used. When they’re in use, they’re generally commandeered by obese suburbanites who’d have healthy knees if they didn’t snort bacon and cheesecake for their four daily meals. The actual people these spaces were intended for are reasonable, responsible humans. They stay at home and die without fanfare.

Thing #8: Eliminate Television – The last thing worth watching on TV ended when Mr. Ed the talking horse became Elmer the glue stick. Everything since then has been a steaming pile of cattle turd. There is nothing worthwhile on television now except for the show I’m presently working on. And if they fired me, something they’d do if they knew what they were doing, that show would be worthless too.

Thing #7: Eliminate Cell Phones. They never worked, and they never will. They were invented by Nazis bent on ruling the world by keeping the populace preoccupied with the search for a useable signal. There never was a signal, and there never will be. There are only signal strength icons, which are randomly flashing bars inserted by a graphics program. Want to get some real work done? Head to Toys R Us and get an Etch-A-Sketch. With it you can design a useable stairway to heaven.

Thing #6: Heaven – Forget about it. There isn’t one. Just listen to all the believers out there. Add up all their half-baked hopes and fears and what do you get? An IHop with no wait on Sunday mornings. Certainly there must be one of those in Idaho. And right now real estate is cheap everywhere. You can probably own your own Waffle House franchise for the price of a short stack of buttermilk pancakes.

Thing #5: Eliminate Four-Way Stop Signs: There are so many of them in my town that I literally cannot get anywhere in a car. In fact I am not here right now typing on my computer. I’m at the corner of Mackey and Murray attempting to move along some old biddy who came to a complete stop two minutes before I did, but insists on waving me through. No, that isn’t the way it works, Enid, because see, you got to the intersection first. Look: now she’s waving at me again, and so I’m inching forward, but she’s inching forward, because she’s a stupid, pathetic old biddy and she’s buggered the system. And you will never hear about it because I’ll never make it home to expose this common American atrocity.

Thing #4: Eliminate Old Biddies – And hey, I’m not sexist. Get rid of the old goobers too. They really don’t want to be alive in the first place. I know because they tell me this every time I bother to give them the time of day. “Why am I alive?” they always ask me. “I should never have lived this long,” they moan. I’d agree with them, but that’s considered bad decorum. What I want to say is, “You are so right, you petrified pile of dinosaur droppings. You totally should be dead. You are a waste of oxygen. You are a toxic carbon Bigfootprint. Stop slobbering to me and go raid your medicine cabinet of all those prescriptions I’ve co-paid for with my tax dollars, and down them with a bottle of Kaopectate, you wrinkly old bag of distressed leather, you.

Thing #3: Eliminate Planes – They never actually go anywhere anyway. More specifically, you never get to go where you wish to, because if you time out all the things you must do in order to board the plane (this includes passing through the infinite number of four-way stop signs on the way to the airport) you never actually make it. And soon the TSA will have such ridiculous requirements in order for you to be able to fly, you will be better off building your own covered wagon and raising a team of oxen to drag you to your destination. Remember to pack a snakebite kit.

We can all thank the shoe and underwear bombers, not to mention our own irrational national mindset, for our present security mess. Personally, I’m expectng the day when some douchebag attempts to become the first anal sphincter bomber. After that it’ll be the “special wand” line at security checkpoints till the end of days.

Thing #2: Eliminate the Red Light Cameras – And I am so totally serious about this one. Forget what I said about Nazis before. This is Hitler’s crowning achievement. This is Satan’s Swirly. This is the most anti-American piece of technology since the voting machine. These are automated cameras that photograph you going through a stoplight a nanosecond too late. They take a picture of your license plate and send a copy to you along with a fifty-dollar fine. I tell you what: if they privatize this industry, I want in!

It’s argued that these devices reduce the number of accidents. It’s a diabolical lie. They increase accidents. Why? Because there are two kinds of drivers out there: the kind who know that the light they are approaching is guarded by one of these monstrosities, and the kind who don’t. And I damn well can tell you that when I know I’m approaching one I’m primed to pile on the brakes in a big way the instant that yellow light pops on. And one of these days, just as sure as there are lawyers, I’m going to get rear-ended by the guy behind me who’s hell-bent on making the light because that’s how people have driven since the aforementioned dinosaurs were blended into asphalt. And that’s the day I’ll sue my town for everything we’re worth, if I survive the impact.

Thing #1: Eliminate Me: What an incredibly noxious windbag I am. But then I think you’ve already come to that conclusion on the merits of the previous nine observations. So you know what? You’re next on my list.

The Rapture

I’ve been sitting along the sidelines for a couple days now, watching in disgust at the proceedings swirling around the Arizona shootings. As the oh-so-symbolic ordinance whizzes back and forth I’ve been tempted to lob one in for the home team (Note to Time Magazine: Want to sell some issues? Put Palin on your cover framed by a riflescope reticule! Call it “Caught In The Crosshairs”). There, I said it. Which illustrates something about the animalistic urge to vent, not to mention the need to establish copyright precedence.

American culture as a whole strikes me as a particularly violent one, and I do believe that there is such a beast as a national culture. We are a people that go nuts when a breast inadvertently falls out of a dance costume, yet sit back expectantly in our Barcaloungers as humans are savaged for our nightly entertainment. Martin Scorsese, that national treasure, seems not yet to have unearthed every form of human carnage imaginable. Dexter surfaces each week to tickle our collective fetish for the gruesome. What is it with us?

Humans feed on a hubris that convinces us the cosmos has been intelligently intended as our personal playground, we perched at the apex of some divine handiwork. I say bring on the meteor, the second coming, whatever Armageddon fantasy tickles your fancy. I am done with the species. To hell with us all.