2011 LAMINATED LIST #1

Surprise, surprise! My adoration and lust for Winona Ryder is neverending. What else can I possibly say about her that I haven't already said? She is my hope.

Hotcha! Hank

HANK RANKS No. 32

My 9 Favorite Milwaukee Brewers [1976 Season]

09: Darrell Porter [C] Porter had a Fu Manchu, and the requisite '70s sideburns, and that's good enough for me.

08: Gorman Thomas [OF] "Stormin'" Gorman was reckless (but good) in the outfield, and all or nothing at the plate. He was popular in Milwaukee because of his everyman image - beer drinking, Harley-riding, hard-working, and I liked him too, but in the end, he was only ever an average baseball player. Years later, when I was old enough, I went to his southside tavern that he owned with pitcher Pete Vukovich, Stormin' & Vuke's, but it was only an average tavern.

07: Pedro Garcia [2B] Pedro Garcia was small and fast and had no teeth.

06: Sixto Lezcano [RF] Sixto was always on the verge of greatness, but never quite attained it. In 1976, he had the team's highest batting average, but at .285, that's nothing to really brag about. I always liked Sixto. He was a great outfielder, and even won a Gold Glove in 1979.

05: Kurt Bevacqua [OF] Bevacqua didn't start many games for the Brewers in 1976, and when he did, he was a complete non-factor. However, he was crowned the Bazooka Bubble Gum Blowing Champion of 1975, and believe it or not, my dad's factory's holiday party that year featured a variety show that included Kurt Bevacqua blowing bubblegum bubbles up on the stage. For the record, the Hudson Brothers (featuring Kate Hudson's dad, Bill Hudson) headlined that party, and when they did their big hit "Rendezvous", I squealed like a 10 year old girl rather than a 10 year old boy.

04: Don Money [3B] I thought a guy with the last name "Money" was the coolest thing when I was 10 years old. I still do, really. Aside from that, Don Money was one of those solid, dependable players whom sportswriters like to call "scrappy".

03: Robin Yount [SS] The young phenom from Arizona! Robin Yount was the future of the Brewers' organization, and would eventually lift the team out of the malaise of the 1970's with the help of another phenom, Paul Molitor. But that was the '80's. This is the '70s, and man, did the Brewers suck.

02: George "Boomer" Scott [1B] As legend has it, George Scott wore a necklack made out of Pedro Garcia's teeth. He also hit his fair share of home runs, which always pleases the crowds.

01: Hank Aaron [DH] Hank Aaron has been one of my heroes since I was old enough to understand that I was named after him. Not only is he one of perhaps the five greatest baseball players of all time, but a man who's demeanor has always reminded me of the Buddha.
Hotcha! Hank

2011 LAMINATED LIST #2

Alison Brie plays Annie Edison, sexy nerd girl on NBC's Community, and it isn't hard to imagine her as younger Liz Lemon, which is to say Ms. Brie seems a younger Tina Fey to me.

I don't know if that's why she hopscotched over Ms. Fey into the #2 spot on my Laminated List this year, or if it's because none of this actually matters.

Hotcha! Hank

2011 LAMINATED LIST #3

In an effort to shake things up on this year's Laminated List, I've decided to drop Tina Fey down to the #3 spot for no reason whatsoever. If you need a reason, let's say it's because she is currently 5-6 months pregnant, and quite frankly, pregnant women don't "do anything" for me.

If nothing else, it's a reminder that she's married to someone else, but more to the point, that this whole Laminated List thing is rather ridiculous.

Hotcha! Hank

2011 LAMINATED LIST #4

Kat Dennings just turned 25 on Monday, so...Happy Birthday, Ms. Dennings!

I'm not sure if 25 is age-appropriate or not. She's young enough to be my daughter, and more to the point, she's at the age where I would have helped conceive her my freshman year of college. Thinking back to my Hazeltine House days, yeah, that definitely could have happened...

I suppose Kat Dennings is the bombshell on this year's Laminated List - the Reubenesque stunner with the big blue eyes, impossible to miss or ignore.

What's best, however, is that Ms. Dennings will be playing one of the two leads on a new sitcom called 2 Broke Girls, premiering this fall on CBS. Considering CBS' success with sitcoms, I expect to get a weekly dose of Kat Dennings for several years to come. Will it be enough to keep her on this list of mine? Who knows.

Hotcha! Hank

Perbert

I don't know what to make of this. He looks like a perverted Bert, so I call him Perbert.

Hotcha! Hank

2011 LAMINATED LIST #5

Is it weird, or even creepy, that a middle-aged guy such as myself posts an annual Laminated List on this stupid, pointless blog of mine?

Would it help if I said I feel young? Would it help if I told you that three of the five women on my Laminated List are completely age-appropriate?

Connie Britton, for instance...She's 44 years old. Under completely different circumstances, we could have dated in high school.

As it stands, she's simply a gorgeous redhead playing what I believe is the best female character on network television (Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights), and giving one of the best performances as well. It's impossible not to adore and admire Tami Taylor, the no-nonsense high school guidance counselor, mother and wife of the school's football coach - the character I believe is the absolute center and anchor of the entire show. And human psychology, being what it is, it's difficult not to imagine that Connie Britton is a similar kind of awesome woman in real life.

Whether she is that kind of cool or not, I still find myself transfixed by her beauty, and with this being the final season of Friday Night Lights, an excellent TV drama that I'm sad to see going, I've been thinking more about her and her character these past couple of months, and I realized just how attracted I've been Connie Britton over the years, going all the way back to Spin City, which debuted in 1996.

This Laminated List, being what it is, will probably not include Ms. Britton next year, but for now, for 2011...

Hotcha! Hank

HOT FIVE: Winona Ryder Films And/Or Grunge Albums

05: A Scanner Darkly: A Philip K Dick novel turned into an animated disassociative disorder full of bright colors and a dull sense of dread. Plus +++ Winona's animated boobs.

04: Lucas: Winona's debut film at 15, as tomboy Rina who has a crush on Corey Haim's Lucas. It's possible that Winona Ryder (or maybe actually Goldie Hawn) shaped my preference for women with shorter hair.

03: Heathers: Teen angst illustrated. The film that ended my infatuation with Molly Ringwald, and put the '80s to rest. What's your damage?

02: Mudhoney: Superfuzz Big Muff Plus Early Singles: I considered In Utero, Ultramega OK, and Melvins' Lysol, before deciding that for my purposes, Superfuzz Bigmuff Plus Early Singles is the definitive Grunge album. Touch me, I'm sick.

01: Night On Earth: My favorite Jim Jarmusch film, and therefore one of my 10 favorite films, wherein a 19 year old Winona kinda mostly holds her own with Gena Rowlands in the first 20 minutes of this hilarious and oftentimes poignant film about five cab drivers in five cities around the world during one night on earth. Plus +++ Scored by Tom Waits.

Hotcha! Hank

Wow!

I'm not sure if I'm the first to make this observation, but Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson on Parks & Rec) has certainly got his shit together over the past 8 years. The man cleans up nicely.

Hotcha! Hank

ROUGH RYDERS 2010: Week Three

Well, our beloved WINONA ROUGH RYDERS defeated THE HAIRY NIPPLES this week to bring our record to 2-1, but I gotta say, I'm still not entirely happy with my team's performance this week.

Namely, my running back corps have been fairly abysmal thus far this season, and in hindsight, it was likely a mistake to draft Maurice Jones-Drew, a good running back playing on a really shitty offense. Another week, another failure, although he was able to break double digits in fantasy points. Meanwhile, Brandon Jackson appears NOT to be the answer in Green Bay as Ryan Grant's replacement, and here we are in week three, and when all is said and done, this fantasy season might very well boil down to Grant's injury in week one. Losing him, and unable to find a comparable replacement, automatically takes our beloved ROUGH RYDERS from serious contenders to middle-of-the-pack also-rans. Sigh.

Elsewhere, Tony Romo played well, Donald Driver had another great game, and the Steelers' defense played huge again, but it was Anquan Boldin (Fuckin' Anquan!) who saved the day and led us to victory with a whopping 40 FP. Unbelievable.

Anyways, I'm glad we won, but I'm not exactly happy.

Forward!

Hotcha! Hank

ROUGH RYDERS 2010: Week Two

Our beloved WINONA ROUGH RYDERS destroyed BUGMANIA in both meetings last year, so this loss must certainly taste sweet for Gregor...

I'm not bitter...Oh sure, I'm pissed at Maurice Jones-Drew, who has been useless through two weeks, but even if he had played to his stud potential, I probably still would have lost. If we were going to lose this week, it's good that MJD hopefully got this shit out of his system. 6.8 FP, and 3 of those were for tackles after turnovers. Unacceptable for the third pick in the draft.

Aside from MJD, I can only bitch about my fucking kicker, Lawrence Tynes and my DL's, Julius Peppers and Aaron Kampman. Certainly my first mistake was drafting a NY Giant named Lawrence who isn't named Taylor, and I'm gonna need to do something about that in the next week or two...Peppers is on alert as well, and I can only imagine how the Bears' front office is thinking right now, giving the dude a six-year, $91 million contract, with half of that guaranteed. For that kind of money, he oughta have six sacks already.

$45 million guaranteed for a defensive lineman. I played DE my JV year. I was pretty decent, but I wanted to be a linebacker. I wanted to be Jack Lambert. Jack Ham. Lawrence Taylor.

Now I'd want to be Clay Matthews. That dude does have six sacks already. I don't expect him to keep it up, but as a Packer fan, I'd say he's a real-deal ballhawk and all-around free-range lunatic.

Poor AJ Hawk. He was the crazy white linebacker hope of Packerland just two short years ago. He was a beloved Rough Ryder, for chrissakes! He was doing car dealership commercials and that PSA about manners that they play before every film at the theater around here. Poor AJ Hawk is seemingly dead. Long live Clay Matthews. If he shows up in a Culver's commercial, we'll know for sure that the torch has been passed.

Anyways, on the other side of the ball for the Packers (and our beloved ROUGH RYDERS) all I can say is Brandon Jackson ain't Ryan Grant, but he could be. I mean, he was poised to be the Packers' starting RB until Grant showed up from the Giants.

This week's MVP for the ROUGH RYDERS is the Pittsburgh Steelers' Defense. Not only did they hold the Titans' offense to 11 points, but they had four sacks, four fumble recoveries, three interceptions, and a kickoff return for a TD to start the game. That all adds up to a stunning 36 FP.

The beloved WINONA ROUGH RYDERS still lost, but I'm not bitter.

Hotcha! Hank

ROUGH RYDERS 2010: Week One

Another NFL season is upon us, babycakes, and that means another year of fantasy football!

Another year of the WINONA ROUGH RYDERS!!!!! Another year demanding CAPITULATION every single week, and hopefully destroying those foes who won't...

And this year, unlike most, began with a victory in Week One.

Rather poetically, the stud this week for our beloved ROUGH RYDERS was FUCKIN' ANQUAN, who you might remember exploded for 41.2 FP in my league's championship game in 2007 and singlehandedly cost us the TICPL crown that year to Thee Fractioneer.

But here he is in 2010, playing for us, and he had a great (not stellar) 18 FP to lead our team to a somewhat convincing victory over the BLATZ BLASTERS, a team that was flat once you got past the foamy head that is Manning and Wayne at the top of their roster...

Meanwhile, I had MATT FORTE putting up a rather beastly 41.1 FP while sitting on my bench. I opted for TERRELL OWENS in my flex spot, and he contributed a relatively meager 12.3 FP instead. Luckily I didn't need FORTE. With RYAN GRANT, my RB2 going down with a season-ending ankle injury early in the game, this week could have been disaster with or without him. Thankfully DONALD DRIVER started out this season with a BANG, adding 15 FP of his own to solid performances in the top half of my roster.

Things were a bit disappointing on the defensive side of the ball, and rest assured that ERIC WEDDLE and RAY EDWARDS have already been tossed back into free agency in exchange for (hopefully) better defensive numbers next week. I can get rather impatient with defensive players.

So say hello to OSHIOMOGHO ATOGWE, a tackling machine in St. Louis who put up great numbers for our beloved ROUGH RYDERS last year.

Say hello to AARON KAMPMAN, the ex-Packer DE/LB who now calls Jacksonville home.

Say hello to the Packer's own CLAY MATTHEWS, who had a monstrous week one game while hanging deep and unclaimed in the free agency pool.

Hello, Clay!

So here we are, the WINONA ROUGH RYDERS, 2010 edition. I had a great draft, and if I can avoid any more serious injuries like GRANT'S, I believe I've got a real solid chance of reclaiming the TICFL crown this year, which I haven't worn since 2004 when DONOVAN McNABB and MUSHIN MUHAMMAD led our team all the way to the mountaintop.

Muhsin Muhammad!

Next week we take on BUGMANIA, whom we utterly destroyed in both our meetings last season.

Here we go again...

Hotcha! Hank

Things I Liked Last Week 071810

01: R.E.M.: The Athens Demos: "Life & How To Live It" [mp3] Once more for the record - Fables Of The Reconstruction is my favorite album by my all-time sentimental favorite band, R.E.M. Capitol Records has just reissued Fables in a very deluxe kind of way, although once you move beyond the poster and postcards, and the packaging in general, one is left with a remastered version of the original album, and a second disc of demos from the sessions for the album. These demo recordings probably only hold interest for a serious and longtime fan like me, especially of this particular album, and the quality and progress of the songs are all over the place, but that only helps to illustrate just how great the Fables album ended up being. Producer Joe Boyd does an excellent job fashioning the moodiest album in REM's catalog, and the album that has come to best represent the "classic" R.E.M. of their IRS Records years, at least for me.

02: Lego Architecture: Seattle Space Needle: We're quite literally right in the middle of moving our offices over to the other side of town, into a smaller, but fancier, building. Since I'm one of only 4 people in the Operations Department, I've been busting my ass for the past two weeks, and will be busting my ass for a couple more. I'm going to miss the old place - for the last ten years we've had a fantastic view of Lake Mendota, and now, for at least the next five years, we'll be able to see the West Beltline Highway. Which is almost beside the point except to say that I bought myself this Lego model for my new workspace. I can see a Starbucks from there. I've never been to Starbucks, though I've been to Seattle three times, and I've been to the top of the Space Needle twice. Fuck, the West Beltline might as well be Omaha or Jacksonville.



03: The Good Guys [Fox, Mondays 9/8c]: Colin Hanks plays Jack Bailey, a cop as straight as his name, and he plays the character well, or at least wears the hairdo well. But he doesn't wear that square, lacquered hair as well as Bradley Whitford wears his moustache, which is my way of saying this is Whitford's show, and so far, he's doing alright. He plays Dan Stark, an aging, seemingly washed-up detective who still manages to show the guts and tenacity that made him a golden boy once upon a time for the Dallas PD. Of course, Dan Stark is a fool unafraid to rush into stupid, often unavoidable danger, and this is why The Good Guys is an Action-Comedy. Dan Stark has a lot of balls and just enough brains to be dangerous, and so far, Bradley Whitford is making the character come alive, and really carrying the show. For his part, Hanks is doing a solid job as Stark's straight-laced partner, Bailey, who's function, obviously, is keeping Stark's bravado in check. As actors, Hanks and Whitford play this typical good cop/loose cannon buddy cop dynamic well. Add the lovely and radiant Jenny Wade as Liz Traynor, an assistant DA with a "complicated" romantic past with Jack Bailey, and well, a show like this pretty much writes itself. A loud, funny and action-packed show that's currently eating up an hour of my life these past few weeks. Will it last? Will Whitford continue to make Dan Stark a brash and bold character worth watching? Ach, who fucking knows?

04: Wu-Tang Pizza: This one is pretty self-explanatory, I think. Black olives rule everything around me and those jalepenos ain' nuttin' ta fuck wit'.

05: 66 Mailboxes: I took this picture somewhere in Marin County, California, circa 1996. (As always, click to enlarge) I've counted 66 mailboxes, and I know there are more.

Hotcha! Hank

8 Flaggers

Hotcha! Hank

2010 LAMINATED LIST # 1

James Joyce's ULYSSES is the one book in my collection that I'm 100% certain I will never actually read all the way through...When I think about what little I know about this novel, I imagine WINONA RYDER as Molly Bloom. And in the winter months, when my beard is full-blown, I imagine myself Odysseus, trying to make my way home to my beloved Penelope, as played by my beloved Winona... I've read plenty of Joyce, but I'll never read this book, front to back. Maybe back to front, but that seems like more of a Finnegan's Wake maneuver.

This particular picture looks like some sort of Great Gatsby scene...Winona as Daisy Buchanan. I've read Fitzgerald's novel. It's okay. Fitzgerald lucked out with that novel, that's for sure - assuring himself a permanent place in American letters on the strength of one fairly mediocre novel. Whatever.

Now, supposedly Winona is a smart, literate person. She's read plenty of good and important books, supposedly, if we believe the interviews and bios, so I assume she's read Gatsby as well. I bet she's never read Ulysses, though she's probably read The Odyssey. Either way, she remains the dearest to my heart, atop the laminated list in my mind for the past two decades.

Hotcha! Hank

2010 LAMINATED LIST # 2

Way back in May of 1998, when I moved back to Madison, some of my mail got lost/misplaced/delayed along the way, including that month's QPBC (Quality Paperback Book Club) catalog. The featured book in that particular issue was Infinite Jest... And because I didn't send back the order form with the appropriate box marked to inform QPBC that I did NOT want Infinite Jest automatically sent to me, they automatically did. And so I came home from work one day about two weeks after moving into this place only to find a fairly large cardboard box lodged between my doors. Before I had even unpacked the beast within, I was pretty damn sure I was never gonna read it. 1079 pages! If I didn't have the juice to conquer a tome like that when I was 32, you can bet yr ass I've got less juice now. Now...Now I could have simply sent the book back (free shipping) for a full refund, but I felt like the title of the book was the true jest for me - new city, new home, new job, new friends - a full-blown load of unknown. Twelve years later, and I can once again say Paul Simon is a prophet, because the more things change, the more they stay the same. Infinite Jest sits square in the center of my main bookcase in the living room, as it has for twelve years so far. I have read its spine countless times, every day. I've got my own ideas about God's sense of humor, the nature of fate, and the fortune of DNA, but don't ask me what this book's about. I'll never know.

Scanning Infinite Jest's character list at Wikipedia, I'd have to say if they ever made this 5 pound book into a movie, maybe they could get TINA FEY to play Joelle Van Dyne § (aka "Madame Psychosis" aka "The Prettiest Girl Of All Time")...I'm willing to say Tina is crazy pretty, and sometimes pretty crazy. There's also the acid-scarred face of this character, and the scar on Ms. Fey's face to consider. Whatever. I'm 99% sure I'll never read David Foster Wallace's magnum opus...Alas, poor me.

§ Joelle Van Dyne is the primary figure in the deadly Entertainment. ¶ In the work, which is filmed through a wobbly "neo-natal" lens, she is seen reaching down to the camera, as if it were in a bassinet, and apologizing profusely. This is said to trigger an addictive pleasure complex in the viewer, which makes even partial viewing of the Entertainment suicidal. She wears a veil to hide her face. She is a member of the "Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed (U.H.I.D.)", she may be disfigured; based on an account by the unreliable Molly Notkin. It is not made clear throughout the novel whether in fact she is disfigured; she herself states that she wears the veil because every man who sees her flawless face falls in love with her. Although it becomes clear that she was indeed disfigured by an acid attack, it is possible that the acid attack post-dates her adoption of the veil. She tries to "eliminate her own map" (that is, commit suicide) in Molly Notkin's bathroom via massive ingestion of freebase cocaine, which lands her in the Ennet House as a resident. [1]

¶ The plot of Infinite Jest partially revolves around the missing master copy of a film cartridge, titled Infinite Jest and referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat". The film is so entertaining to its viewers that they become lifeless, losing all interest in anything other than viewing the film. The video cartridge was the final work of film by James O. Incandenza before his microwave-induced suicide, completed during a stint of sobriety that was requested by the lead actress, Joelle. Quebec separatists are interested in acquiring a master, redistributable copy of the work to aid in acts of terrorism against the United States. The United States Office of Unspecified Services (USOUS) is seeking to intercept the master copy of the film in order to prevent mass dissemination and the destabilization of the Organization of North American Nations. Joelle and later Hal seek treatment for substance abuse problems at The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House, and Marathe visits the rehabilitation center to pursue a lead on the master copy of the Entertainment §, tying the characters together. The text indicates that Hal and Gately dig up the grave of Himself (under the supervision of John N.R. Wayne) in search of the master copy. The novel ends in the Year of Glad (the first chapter of the novel), during which Hal's physical deterioration is made evident. [2]

§ Wallace's working title for Infinite Jest had been A Failed Entertainment. [3]

Hotcha! Hank

Sideways Sadie Hawkins Maneuver

Not only have I never known a woman named Sadie, I have never been asked to attend a Sadie Hawkin's dance by any woman named Sadie or not...That's probably because we didn't do Sadie Hawkin's dances in our town. I was asked to Senior Prom by a girl named Cindy, but that's a different story for later, if ever...

Did you know the origins of Sadie Hawkin's Day and Sadie Hawkin's dances can be traced to this Lil Abner comic strip from November 13, 1937?

BOOM!

Hotcha! Hank

2010 LAMINATED LIST # 3

I've read Vineland, and The Crying Of Lot 49, and I kinda want to read Thomas Pynchon's newest novel, Inherent Vice, if I can work my way through this Lem Phase™ I've been travelling lately. I probably won't read Inherent Vice, actually, and I'm 94% certain I'll never finish reading Gravity's Rainbow. I read maybe the first 150 pages about 20 years ago, when I was in the last half of a 2 year relationship with a girl who I couldn't equate with any of the several hundred characters strafing through this maze of a place and a time before me, beyond me.
Gravity's Rainbow mostly takes place at the end of WWII, and concerns Germany's V-2 rockets...Christina Hendricks is an eternal bombshell.

Hotcha! Hank

2010 LAMINATED LIST # 4

I really like William T Vollmann. I've read four of his books so far, books about prostitutes and drugs and murder and war and death and am right on the verge of diving into his Seven Dreams cycle of novels about the clash of Native Americans and European explorers and missionaries across North America, from Virginia to the Pacific Northwest, and up to the polar north. A heady, post-modern collage of fiction, history, journalism, mythology, fairy tales and legends. Vollmann has written four of the proposed seven volumes so far, and now seems like as good a time as any to get going. 4 volumes, 2500+ pages.

And counting...

Yeah, most of Vollmann's books are loooooong. He emerged on the literary scene at the age of 30 with his 700 page debut novel, You Bright And Risen Angels in 1987, and in the 23 years since, he's written another 16 books, including the seven-volume, 3352 (!!!!!) page treatise about violence, Rising Up And Rising Down, in 2003.

Two years later in 2005, Vollmann published Europe Central, an 832 page National Book Award winner. Like so many of his books, Europe Central is a "sweeping" and "epic" story which brilliantly fuses fictions with history. In this instance, generations of countless characters living out their lives from Germany to Russia throughout the 20th century, against the backdrop of two world wars, the holocaust, fascism, communism, a cold war, and beyond...

Even if I happen to read my way through the entirety of the Seven Dreams cycle, which I admit is a long shot because I've also got a couple Stanislaw Lem books sitting here on the coffee table, and they're calling to me... "Polish sci-fi, Mohaski! You Polack!"

Anyways, I don't have the jam for Europe Central, even if I have the long-range Vollmann focus. Might as well laminate it.

That reminds me - Alison Brie plays the smart/cute/perky/uptight/annoying community college coed on, Annie Edison on the NBC sitcom Community. On that show she usually wears the kind of tight, colorful sweaters you might expect from a geeky rah-rah type who's never read Vollmann and has no idea who the fuck I am.

Hotcha! Hank

The Eternal Cart Return

Consumeroborus!

Hotcha! Hank