Sweet Connie is a groupie who boasts that she's had sex with somewhere between 700 to 1,000 musicians and roadies. Maybe you heard about her in the Grand Funk song, "We're An American Band":

Sweet, sweet Connie, doin’ her act
She had the whole show and that’s a natural fact.

In a new VH1 documentary about groupies called Let's Spend the Night Together, Sweet Connie talks about inducting Don Henley into the Mile High Club:

I had my eyes closed, because that's what you do when you're making love, before feeling another set of hands on me and it was the pilot. Then I realized, who could be flying this thing? Don tells me not to worry, it’s on autopilot. My only complaint is they didn’t ask me how I felt.

Don Henley:


Typical Pilot:

Oh. Well, I guess it's cool.

Things We Learned From Today's New York Times

Today's New York Times has one article telling us to budget up to $50,000 for holiday decorating, and another saying 300,000 roses for a party might be a little much.

You know what that means, right? Jesus' birthday is coming up!

If you don't have time to read design and party tips because you're frantically searching for someone to fluff your foyer, here are the two articles broken up into bullet points.

1. When you have three or four homes, hiring someone to decorate your Christmas tree isn't an option: it's a necessity.

2. This year "hundreds of volunteers" decorated the White House following Michele Obama's theme of “Simple Gifts.”

3. Words used by decorators in order of increasing frequency: (3) if, (2) and, (1) zhoosh.

4. Asking someone the size of their family farm is like asking how much money they make. Besides, who can remember if it's bigger than Ecuador or Peru?

5. Out? Christmas stockings. In? Curated tote bags.

6. It's important to make your job look effortless. Well, unless you have a boss, of course.

7. Remember that these are tough financial times, so make sure your party doesn't go over the top. Under the top? A Christmas tree decorated with ostrich feathers and a six-foot disco ball.

8. On a budget? Think about bartering with, say, whoever does your PR.

9. Before you become an event planner, ask yourself a couple key questions: Is there a freeway named after your family? Does mummy's bio include the words "spent her childhood traveling in Europe"?

10. Vulgarity "is the garlic in the salad of taste." Fickleness? The baby corn.

11. If Robin Bell is your holiday fluffer, I hope you like suspenders that match your bow tie.

Okay, so the Catholic Church doesn't move so quick. It took 600 years for God's loving children to call off their fatwa on Galileo, making the Islamic activists who put a price on Salman Rushdie's head look like amateurs. And yesterday they formally announced that yes, the Virgin Mary really did appear to a woman in Wisconsin 151 years ago.

There's no explanation of how they finally decided, which makes me curious. I mean, it's not like miracles leave evidence. You can't exactly prove that Jesus intentionally zapped his likeness onto that dude's french toast. When somebody sees the Virgin Mary floating over a corn field, you can't follow her footprints back to heaven. Holy folks don't leave DNA behind.

In this case, there was only one witness. Adele Brise, a 28-year-old Belgian immigrant who had lost an eye in a childhood accident, saw a woman in white hovering over the ground. On the third visit, the woman identified herself as Mary.

Which seems a little redundant to me, because so far nobody's spotted a woman floating in the sky who identified herself as Flo, the Prudential Insurance lady. Really, does Jesus' mother need to introduce herself? You wouldn't think so. When I met Johnny Depp, though, his first words to me were, "Hi, I'm Johnny Depp," so maybe this isn't as strange as it sounds.

Mary conveyed a message to Ms. Brise. "I am the queen of heaven," she declared. This strikes me as tacky, like what Zsa Zsa Gabor would say if she was dating Russell Crowe. It's definitely egotistical, though I bet it gets her a good table at Le Cirque. Still, this could be sour grapes on my part. "I'm a relatively popular blogger" doesn't get me extra chocolate sprinkles on my latté.

Mary told Ms. Brise to pray for the conversion of sinners, and then said something that strikes me as bizarre. "You received the Holy Communion this morning and that is well. But you must do more."

See, as someone with nearly a degree from a major university, I'm a logical kind of guy. Since I was a kid, I've used the various bits of hard data provided by the Bible and a semi-religious education to piece together a picture of heaven. Mary's declaration, though, just raises a question in my head.

How, exactly, does she know when somebody's had communion? I can only come up with two options. Either Mary is watching us too, or somebody told her.

We all know from Charlton Heston movies that God is the all-powerful dude who watches over us. Maybe Jesus watches over us. But Mary? I never thought she was looking. I've always pictured her like the First Lady of heaven, shaking hands with kids and exhorting people to recycle.

Frankly, I'm not thrilled with the idea of a whole bunch of people up there watching. In fact, I'm picturing some kind of sports box up in the clouds. It makes me wonder if there's a vendor who occasionally wanders by selling beer and peanuts.

I'm going to scratch this option. I don't like picturing heaven with a VIP area. It conjures up an unpleasant scene where regular humans are kept away from the special folks by a velvet rope. "That's not fair!" your sainted grandmother yells at them. "I wanna look at earth!"

"Yeah?" Mary snaps. "Check back when you give birth to the Light of the World!"

Instead, I'm going to assume that somebody told her, and by "somebody" I mean either Jesus or God. But honestly, are they going to update Mary every day about who went to communion? That'd make Reader's Digest look interesting. Maybe this Brise woman was like the Brett Favre of Christians, and over coffee every morning they updated her stats. It still strikes me as gossipy, though. I'd hoped that information re my immortal soul would be shared on a strictly need-to-know basis. I mean, I'd think less of Santa if, a day or two before Christmas, some elf's girlfriend walked up to me and said, "You're not getting any presents, because Santa thinks you're a jerk."

Still, it seems pretty clear something happened in Wisconsin. After the visions, Ms. Brise built a church and a school that still stand today. I'm thinking that's what swayed the Vatican, and it'll buy reasonable credence from me. Because the folks who see Jesus on a tortilla usually just end up making nachos, and Santa and I both think that stinks.

Household Tips

RomanHans' Household Tip #487: Flip your mattress and then rotate it twice a day. It may not get rid of bedbugs, but at least it'll make them barf.

Conjoined Gingerbread Men Cookie Cutter

You might think this would be a fun holiday gift, but you'd be entirely wrong. It's creepy. I made some, and when I bit into one side, the other side twitched.

According to a study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media that surveyed animated movies from 2004 to 2009, not one of the animated female characters had a shape that was possible in real life.

"Well, blow me down!" replied Popeye.

So, the folks at Harvard now say the urine-soaking of the LGBT books in their library wasn't an act of vandalism: it was the odd synergy of two odd, perfectly understandable acts.

One person just happened to leave a bottle of urine near the books, and somebody else found it and accidentally spilled it all over the books.

In unrelated news, I accidentally left a paper bag full of dog shit and a Zippo on Sarah Palin's front porch.

How Dee Snider Drives

He muscled the Hummer onto Northern Boulevard, slipping through holes in traffic that, frankly, no one but a former heavy metal frontman who once sang "We ain't gonna take it! You're all worthless and weak!" would think to attempt.

The New York Times Eliminates A Couple Explanations For Disappearing Appliances

The appliances did not develop legs and walk away, and they did not simply disappear.

A new computer game called Heroes of Newerth has a special "flamboyant" option where you can replace the announcer's voice with a stereotypically queeny one that squeals things like "Diva!" during the game.

A former staffer with S2 Games says the voice was intended to sound “faggoty” and “queer.”

"Oh, it was just harmless fun," said the graphic designer who made the box look like Liberace's bathroom mirror.

Loved Paul McCartney singing Beatles tunes on Saturday Night Live. In related news, Debra Messing will be appearing at Radio City Music Hall to re-enact scenes from Will and Grace.

This is so cool! I was going to write an angry letter to a local business, but luckily I found a form letter online. It's Form 8701, "Complaints Concerning Exclusionary Holiday Displays." All I had to do was fill in the blanks!

---

DeRego Deli
872 Flatbush Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11201

Dear Business Owner:

I've been a customer of your establishment for twelve years, and in that time I've seen your store go through many changes. You've stayed up-to-the-minute in business trends. You've constantly updated your merchandise. You've adapted to fit the styles.

You work tirelessly at keeping your store current. Which is why I was shocked to walk by your store yesterday and see a holiday display seemingly straight out of the Dark Ages.

Our government acknowledges its responsibilities. As America becomes more and more diverse, official publications are offered in the native languages of the emigrants. In New York, for example, you can find voter manuals in 112 different languages! To ignore these potential new customers would be a fatal mistake for a business. Yet that's exactly what your Italian deli is doing.

While years ago a Christmas tree and a menorah would have been a fine, balanced holiday display, now it's sadly passé. A full 12% of Americans are either Satanist, pagan, or heretic, and we too demand equal representation. We want our beliefs to be shown the same respect as traditional Judeo-Christian displays.

On behalf of this segment of the population, then, I'd like to politely request that, next to the little silver Christmas tree and plastic menorah in your window, you display our traditional holiday symbol, Satan's Funeral Pyre of the Damned.

This oversight may not sound like a big deal to you, but let me assure you that it is. Satan's Funeral Pyre of the Damned is fraught with meaning to fervent believers. The weather-dried bones symbolize the rank carcasses of the godless, the scattered piles of dirt symbolize the ashes of the damned, and the thin yellow fluids symbolize the pus of the syphilitic. Our rich tradition has much to celebrate.

I hope you find this letter the impetus to correct your oversight. I look forward to the day I can pass your store, look at your holiday display, and feel the anger, confusion and disgust that constitute the basis of our religious heritage.

I hesitate to think what will happen if you ignore this missive, because without Satanists, pagans and heretics patronizing your establishment, who's going to buy your sandwiches?

Sincerely,
RomanHans

I'm hoping there's a future with Andre, but all the signs say otherwise. It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that when somebody tells you about the people they're sleeping with, they're not going to sleep with you.

"I met this guy online," he says, neglecting to mention whether it was at SierraClub.org or SuckThoseTootsies.com, "and we talked a couple times on the phone. Finally he says we should meet, and he tells me to bring a bathing suit."

I stop stirring my coffee. I've never been a multi-tasker, and feeling incredulous is work for me.

"Naturally I'm curious," he continues. "Nobody's ever said that before. But he sounded perfect. He's available: he lives with his ex-boyfriend, but they don't sleep together. If anything, he says, he's too honest. I'm consulting my mental checklist, and the guy sounds perfect. So I said okay."

My mouth actually drops open at this point. The guy sounds like a disaster, though I don't have a mental checklist. I've got my Red Flag Rules that nobody's supposed to break, and flags are flying inside my head.

First, a swimsuit, on a first date? This is Manhattan, not Redondo Beach. There's no sand. The surf is not up. Options for the evening do not include playing volleyball and then listening to Moondoggy play his guitar.

Second, "too honest"? This translates roughly to, "When I get drunk, I'm going to tell you exactly what I think of you."

Third, if this guy isn't sleeping with his ex, then they're spend every morning arguing about why not. Maybe you don't mind squeezing into the middle, but I find all the drama distracts from my enjoyment of bacon.

"So he picks me up and takes me to this hotel," Andre says as another flag flies in my head. "We go inside, and he goes up to the desk clerk and gives her a credit card." Outside I'm smiling, but really I'm waiting for duct tape and knives to appear. "We go up to the penthouse and there's this enormous pool! There's a DJ and a bar and all these gorgeous people in swimsuits, so we change and we swim! I had an incredible time. And I talk to him two days later and he's in Miami with another guy."

Now, obviously I'm sad for Andre. This was a miserable experience. I hate how people wave the Colorful Umbrella of Positivity and get stomped on by the Giant Boot of Reality. But I'm also thinking, "God, what a rube," and congratulating myself on the vast superiority of my Red Flag Rules over his mental checklist.

As a public service, I share the rules and this guy's violations with him. "No swimsuit on a first date?" he asks incredulously. "Why not?"

"It's too early! It's like saying, 'Hey, I've got to see you nearly naked!' and the first meeting is too soon for that."

"So which is the Swimsuit Date?"

I think for a minute, trying to place it. "The fourth, I think."

"When's your sex date?" he asks.

I blanch. Really, you're not supposed to admit this. "Somewhere around the third," I say.

"So you'll have sex with somebody before you'll go swimming with them?"

I shrug. Hearing my words repeated back, they don't seem to make a lot of sense. I think for a minute, then realize they do. "My hair won't get wet, my deodorant won't wash off, and I won't have to worry about accidentally swallowing other peoples' bodily fluids," I say, and I can almost see the flags go flying in his head.

The European Union is telling the Czech Republic to cease testing the homosexuality of gay asylum seekers by hooking them up to a penile tumescence monitor while they watch straight porn.

Call me crazy, but I have no problem with this. How else will you know if somebody is gay? I think they're going to a lot of extra work, though. I'd just ask, "Do you mind if a doctor slides a plastic ring onto your dick?" and anybody who says, "Are you kidding me?" is cool.

It's open season on bears in New Jersey, because they're an annoying, predatory species that's always hanging around with trash. No word on when it'll be legal to shoot at the cast of Jersey Shore.

Miley Cyrus was caught on video smoking a bong.


It's kind of bittersweet, isn't it? It reminds me of that movie scene where Bambi tries to stand up, except Thumper's got weed and a cellphone.

"I don't give a shit about Lady Gaga," Christina said. "Look: I got a penis in my mouf."

Ling Ling was beloved by millions once, and after her adorable nephew disappeared she'd be beloved again.

I'd rather have a relationship with a sexy guy than a smart guy. With a sexy guy, your day may be dull, but you go to bed with a smile on your face. You think, "It took us a while to get here, but it sure was worth it!"

With a smart guy, though, the day ends with fake enthusiasm and pitiful coitus. Regardless how intellectual you are, you're not going to sigh happily to yourself and think, "Well, we sure had a great conversation about Kirkegaard!"

While Michael gets his botox, Dina Lohan exercises her facial muscles for the very last time.

Really, this is smart. It's good for a pastor and his same-sex congregants to sit around a table with a trained ombudsman and iron out whether he fucked them or not.

Why Christians Can't Wait for The Rapture

1. Ever since Richard Dawson left "Family Feud" life has seemed like a trivial sham.

2. In heaven, straight people get to be interior decorators.

3. They love you, mama, but they just can't face another dinner of Jeno's pizza rolls and Hot Pockets.

4. Every Sunday it's "Go to church, go to church, go to church." Isn't it about time somebody came to them?

5. Hey, sweatpants don't last forever, you know.

6. That vague empty feeling deep in their souls will be filled when they're finally reunited with their schnauzer, Buffy II.

7. After breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts and lunch at Cinnabon, they're pretty sure they can't get out of their cars by themselves.

8. It's about time all the God-fearing Christians were rewarded and the popular people were burnt to a crisp.

9. If they have a spare second between the sky opening up and Jesus lifting them off the ground and floating them up to heaven, they can finally put on their "See, Assholes? I Told You So!" t-shirts.

10. Really, c'mon. Jews?

I'm moving to Sweden.

Now, I went to school in California, so basically all I know about Sweden is that they invented porn and furniture that collapses if you have any hardcover books. I just read in the paper, though, that there's this guy named Julian Assange, and the Swedish government is spending literally millions of dollars and thousands of hours of police time to extradite him from Britain so he can be tried on two counts of having condoms break while he's having sex.

Is that incredible? Millions of dollars, thousands of man hours. The country must be a paradise. In New York, if somebody rapes you, you call the police and they refuse to write up a report. They say, "Hey, count your blessings! Just be grateful he didn't shoot you in the head!" Something tells me if you call them up and say this guy wouldn't stop fucking you when the condom broke, you shouldn't actually go outside and listen for sirens.

In Sweden, though, this serial condom breaker is Public Enemy Number One. You can imagine his photo tacked up at the post office, next to a photos of this year's yodeling contest. Under "Description" it'll say, well, part of his dick is kind of beige.

It makes you wonder about the Swedish penal code. I'm picturing undercover policemen in the public restrooms waiting to catch a dude who leaves the toilet seat up. You can picture the scene outside jail on Monday mornings: "Say goodbye to your sister, Bobby," a tearful mother would say. "She used her teeth when she gave her fiancé a blow job."

Of course, this no-crime wave could be a temporary anomaly. They might totally forget about Mr. Assange if, like, some kid steals a tulip out of his neighbor's yard, or somebody's grandma gets a flat tire on her Schwinn. Maybe Mr. Assange will stop making the news when some senior citizen announces he's going to build the world's largest cuckoo clock. But this just means I've got to head there at the earliest opportunity.

Now, I'm realistic. I know life in Sweden isn't going to be some glorious heaven with all-you-can-eat gravlax and lingonberries. I shudder to think about living in the same country as this lawless monster. Still, I believe in karma. I know that while I'm with the law-abiding Swedes discussing recycling in some cement sauna left over from the sixties, the police will be searching the penal code day and night to find something on the dude to justify the bucks they've spent catching him.

And I have faith. At the very least I know they'll lock this bastard up and teach him the basics of sexual lubrication before setting him on his way. I think that'd teach him. He'll get no high-fives, no "Yo, dude, when you're chillin', sounds like the women be willin'!" No, just set him free amid a barrage of judgmental glares. Because even if there's no legal way to justify more than a few minutes in jail for Mr. Assange, I think we can be content in knowing that for the rest of his life he'll stew in his own private hell where the whole world knows he's got a giant dick but isn't entirely sure how to use it.

A Michigan woman is suing a restaurant after her hand was broken while she was reaching for toilet paper.

58-year-old Sheri Schooley says the cover on the dispenser fell on her right hand, permanently disabling her, and she's asking for damages.

She's asking for half a million dollars because she can't type any more, a quarter million because she can't bowl, and eight million because now she has a crippling fear of homemade kazoos.

Another mistake? Asking her husband what was up with all the short, curly hairs on their phone.

Dear Republicans:

You were angry. You were so angry you told the Democrats "No more!" and voted a bunch of Republicans into office.

And the first thing those Republicans said was, "You're not getting this

until rich people get these."


Anyway, you fixed it. Congrats. Thanks to your keen political intellect, Candy Spelling won't have to disable any of the Glade Plug-Ins in her Scotch Tape Room.

Keep up the good work,
RomanHans

Is this crazy? The New York Times prints a totally innocent headline using the abbreviation "mo" for "moustache" and every gay blogger in America freaks out. God, some people really need anal.

What? Oh, you are fuckin' kidding me! We can't abbreviate analysis these days?

Rock singer Pink and her husband Corey Park love whiskey so much they may name their forthcoming child Jameson if it's a boy.

"Sounds like a plan," says my friend Boodles Schwartz.

"We don't have the advantage -- the animals have the advantage." -- Sarah Palin on hunting

And that's exactly why I don't go hunting. Goddamn caribou with their night-vision riflescopes.

"I don’t think I have ever met a homosexual who didn’t inform me of his or her homosexuality within minutes of our introduction. " -- Pamela Grothaus, columnist for the Naples News

Dear Pam,

Let me get this straight. If they didn't tell you they were homosexual, then they weren't?

Curious,
RomanHans

P.S. You need to introduce yourself with the word "pretty," because otherwise nobody's gonna suspect.

Ohmigod, San Francisco has gotten so ruined. It was heaven when I lived there, with the Castro and the clones and the Jefferson Starship and free love. And then I went back, just for old times' sake, and south of Market consisted of eighteen tangerine and teal Marriotts and a dude selling bongs.

The heteros had moved in, and everything good had been paved over. Now, apparently, there's one last vestige of freedom left -- it's legal to walk around nude -- and according to an article in the SF Weekly the residents want to squash that too.

"What about the children?" they scream, like seeing a full-sized penis would make their tiny heads explode.

I don't get this. San Francisco means freedom, right? It's like moving next door to Mario Batali and then freaking out when you smell cheese. They get the cops to harass the naked dudes, but since it's not illegal there's nothing they can do.

Really, how hard is it not to look at these people? If my brain can identify and ignore anything wearing Uggs, I'm pretty sure it can skip past six feet of wrinkled orange flesh.

One boy broke into tears after seeing a man's Prince Albert piercing. "He wanted to know why [the man's] peepee was broken," a cop said.

Kid, it's not broken. It's called a "piercing." Dude caught it from your mommy's ears.

A 7-year-old girl called the city's service line to report a nude man. "I don't know why they're doing it — shock value or what?" she asked a reporter. "The Castro's a place that's supposed to be for everybody, and if you're excluding the kids, that's not being accepting of everyone."

Uh, girl, who's excluding the kids? Feel free to slip out of those Garanimals if you want (though I'd prefer it if you'd stay clothed until you've got Tom Selleck's chest). Note to her parents: yeah, that "Palin 2012" t-shirt will be the perfect Xmas gift.

Anyway, I just wanted to (1) complain about the cliché that there's an inverse correlation between public nudity and attractiveness (it's about freedom, and if only attractive people can be free then the Tea Party will have won) and (2) piss off the whiners by offering an alternative headline to this article.

San Franciscans Complain That Children Can't Handle Large Penises

Yeah, that's why I'm anonymous.

Police in Pittsburgh mistook a blood-splattered movie set for a real life murder scene -- for eight hours.

One officer labeled the room "the most grisly murder scene" he'd witnessed in 35 years in law enforcement.

Firefighters responding to a call at the George Washington hotel happened upon the room. They saw blood splattered everywhere, bottles of alcohol scattered about the room and "a piece of a scalp with hair still attached."

Eight hours into their investigation, police realized the "blood" wasn't real and they were dealing with a set left over from a film shoot. According to the hotel's owner, it had been left untouched in case the filmmakers needed to come back for re-shoots.

"You are kidding me," said Helen Mirren from Death Row.

Two weeks later you had a corn on your lip.

Really, it's not my fault. Through sheer willpower I can pace myself so I'm just mildly drunk when the club closes, or the open bar shuts down.

Last night, though, there were two open bars.

The first -- the one I knew about in advance -- was at the screening of "The Vice Guide to Everything," which premieres on MTV December 6. I downed three or four Dark & Stormys, ably fortifying myself for an hour in a quiet theater. Introducing the screening, though, Vice founder Shane Smith announced the afterparty, and said there'd be "complimentary drinks and co-- . . . . I almost said cocaine."

C'mon, like you'd just go home afterward.

I was absolutely knocked out by the two preview episodes. The show is fascinating, intelligent, and manly, like Spike TV with a brain. Unlike Spike TV, though, the show offers substantially more information than just the odds that you'll be killed by a woman's cleavage. Jackass and Punkd pale in comparison: their stakes are way too low. So Steve-O gets punched in the balls. So Ke$ha gets humiliated. It's definitely not educational, and in fact it's totally erased from my brain the second the screen goes black.

Now imagine Steve-O sneaking into North Korea.

You wonder why we've got thousands of boring news programs (Hi Katie!), yet nobody's thought of doing this. It's 60 Minutes in American Apparel. They confirm our suspicions that organized crime rules Naples, Italy, and its pop music. (Unbelievable, right? I mean, Nicki Minaj is clearly famous because of her talent.) We get visible proof of the craziness of Kim Jong Il, who puts on a stadium show of Olympic caliber, with a cast of 150,000 and an audience of several dozen. We visit a Mexican theme park where you pretend to sneak into the U. S. (Look out for Lou Ferrigno!)

A couple segments veer into Spike TV territory. They imply that DIY strip clubs are a real trend yet show us only one, run by a disabled dude in his mother's basement. A Yemeni skateboarder talks about the dangers of dating women in burqas. (Avoid the ones with really pretty eyes!)

Still, it's entertaining, informative, and consistently outrageous. The segments are over long before they wear out their welcome.

At the afterparty, at trendy Lit nightclub in the East Village, there was no mention of cocaine, but the alcohol overflowed. The crowd was attractive and diverse, like where you had to spin people around a couple times before you could take a stab at gender. Thank God for the facial-hair trend. Downstairs was a live band, and upstairs the DJ played a time line of hard rock, offering golden oldies like X's "Johnny Hit N' Run Pauline" and Plastic Bertram's "Ca Plan Pour Moi." I chatted briefly with Mr. Smith, who's quite charismatic on TV (emphasize the last two words there; still, he explained that he was drunk and had just flown back from Afghanistan) and absolutely adorable cast (and team?) member Ryan Duffy, who introduced himself by name despite the fact I'd just watched him for an hour. He confirmed that his lap dance was "epicly sad" and appreciated my praise for the show.

I stumbled out three hours after my mouth stopped working, and this morning can't put together a thought. As always, Vice has a work of genius on its hands. Its ambitions have thrown it into bold new territory. Once again they've proven that they're the folks to watch, offering the template that the middle-class media needs to follow, and shown that there's a reason why reasonably mature people squeal like Ned Beatty when they spot Vice invitations in their Inbox.

Vacation Snaps: Istanbul

Despite his owner's best attempts, cat refuses to have gay old time.

We all know how it happens. You're sitting around the campfire and notice Clem has something a'danglin' in his muttonchops. You slide over to get it, and just then you notice his blue-as-the-Montana-sky eyes, his rough, bee-stung lips, the way Wrangler jeans steadfastly refuse to flatter his manly form. "Whah," you say, "iz jez a bean, left over from -- from -- MWAH!" And before you can say, "Git along, little dogie," the two of you are on the ground naked, rolling past tumbleweeds.

This photo is heaven for us butch-loving gays. It's like Britney kissing Miley. It's better than any of that celeb porn we've seen recently, like "80 Wangs Up Paris" or "Kox, Kox & Kardashian: Two Lawyers and a Whore on the Loose."

Of course, these aren't real cowboys. On the right, that's the we-sure-thought-heterosexual Terry Richardson, photography's equivalent of American Apparel. On the left, that's fashion designer Tom Ford.

For some reason -- while discussing their collaboration on the upcoming French Vogue, I imagine -- they decided to kiss.

We look. And look. And eventually we say to ourselves, Terry, we forgive you for being a skeeze who's existence centers around photographing naked hipster chicks, and Tom, we forgive you for Chanel's plaid dickeys from Fall of 2003.

And we smile, content that such small parts of two nice-looking guys can awaken such large parts of us.

According to a new study of Norwegian business productivity practices, some bosses draw a hard line when it comes to using the bathroom. Two-thirds of the managers surveyed kept the bathrooms locked, one-third had the bathrooms under video surveillance, and one boss made his female employees wear red bracelets during their periods "to justify more frequent trips" to the bathroom.

Apparently the women always complain about having to wear them, but, well, you know.

Beauty pageants are a rich part of the culture in Colombia. Some prisons have their own pageants, and one town in northern Colombia takes it even further, putting makeup and wigs on its donkeys then parading them for its annual Miss Burro celebration.

Hey, call them ugly, stubborn, and stupid if you want, but not one of them made a speech about finding the Iraq on a map.

Kate Plus Two But They're Armed

Two of Kate Gosselin's eight children were expelled from school this week for bad behavior. Collin and Alexis, both 6, are seeing a private tutor until they are ready to return to their private school in Pennsylvania.

It was quite sad: evidently there was a horrible misunderstanding when a teacher told the kids to draw.

Yesterday morning Nate Berkus was a guest on NBC's Today show, though he wasn't feeling well. He finished his segment about decorating for the holidays -- creating centerpieces, draping pine garlands, and putting stockings on the backs of chairs to make seating more festive -- then immediately rushed to a hospital, where he was told his appendix was about to burst and he might die.

"Suck it up, wussy!" Martha Stewart said.

Mattel Outraged Over Lesbian Barbie Calendar

A couple of Brazilian artists put together a perfectly tasteful Lesbian Barbie calendar, and Mattel completely freaks out.


It's an outrage! It's unbelievable!


Dr. Stephanie Wegener, Mattel's European spokeswoman, said, "We don't want Barbie portrayed in this way."


"We will be taking legal action against the creators," she declared.


I say go screw yourselves, Mattel!  Instead of suing, you should be celebrating the love between these two Sapphic sisters, because life is short and love is fleeting, and just judging from the chicks I know, January 2012 is going to look something like this.

Construction worker Joe Cooper was left in agony after a bikini waxing by mates in a pub went wrong.

Joe, 24, agreed to the stunt to raise cash for a local hospital. Onlookers placed bids to pull the strips off but one of the strips stuck and an over-energetic tug ripped off most of Joe's skin.

"I lay down and closed my eyes," the hapless man said, "and the next thing I know I'm in horrendous pain and bleeding."

Doctors repaired the damage, but told Joe he had come within half an inch of losing a testicle.

Half an inch? Well, I don't mean to brag, but I would have lost the testicle.

In one of the strangest World AIDS Day campaigns ever seen, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga and Ryan Seacrest are declaring their "digital deaths" and refusing to use Twitter or Facebook until they've raised a million dollars.

So let me join the voices of millions of Americans in saying, DON'T GIVE MONEY TO FIGHT AIDS.

Pick Your Own Ending News

28-year-old prostitute and aspiring "television showgirl" was driving in Milan one night when she stopped for a red light. A good-looking man pulled up alongside, and they started talking. "He said I could earn €5,000 ($6,600) by meeting important people," she told journalists.

She gave the man her phone number, and he promised to pass it along. Then one night someone called.

"He said, 'I am the dream of Italians.' I said, 'Who is this?'"

Now you get to pick the ending!

a. "I am Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi," he said.
b. "Just some guy with too much hair gel and a cannoli," he said.

If you're planning to see the New York City Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker, be warned: According to the New York Times review, one character wasn't completely believable.

Though Alastair Macaulay enjoyed the performance in general, he laments that he was forced to look at a less-than-svelte dancers, writing "This didn't feel, however, like an opening night. Jenifer Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, looked as if she'd eaten one sugar plum too many. . . .

In this instance, at least, the word "Nutcracker" was less a role than a premonition.