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

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

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

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

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

Buzz Doesn't Need Your Money

The Melvins crack the Billboard Top 200 albums chart with their latest release, The Bride Screamed Murder! For true!

Hotcha! Hank

2010 LAMINATED LIST # 5

Sugar Street is the last book in Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. To get to Sugar Street, I'd first have to make my way through Palace Walk and Palace Of Desire - that's 934 pages, babycakes! Add Sugar Street's 309 pages, and that's an infinite jest... That's entertainment I most likely will never read...

I had picked up a like-new trade paperback edition of this trilogy for $9 at a rummage sale last summer. How could I, or anyone who reads, not snatch up a Nobel winner at that price? 1243 pages about three generations of the Gawad family in Cairo from 1919 to 1944...

Three books, 1243 pages, that might as well be laminated. Might as well be sealed in plastic because I'll most likely never read them. I think there will always be other, more interesting and relevant books for me to read.

Sugar Street, and the whole Cairo Trilogy, are not unobtainable to me, of course. They're well within reach, unlike Rosario Dawson.

Hotcha! Hank

Sideways Sideways Sideways

We've all of us always wanted to know what it felt like to be Bono...This is Sally Timms singing Johnny Cash's first single, "Cry, Cry, Cry"...I bet Bono has always wanted to know what it felt like to be Johnny Cash...I know I have...More than I've always wanted to know what it felt like to be Bono, in fact...

Anyways, I bet Sally Timms has always wanted to know how it felt like to be Johnny Cash too...I never wanted to know what it feels like to be Sally Timms until about 41 seconds ago, and I suppose in another hot minute or so this feeling will pass...

Hotcha! Hank

Happy Birthday, Winona!

Because I am 100% certain that Winona Ryder reads HOT POOP regularly, I would just like to take this opportunity to wish her a very happy birthday, so...

Happy birthday, Ms. Horowitz!

Dare I say you are more lovely and talented and intriguing than ever? Yes, I dare...Time brings a kind of grace...

Hotcha! Hank

Sideways Maneuver Just Wants To Be Your Everything

Only a manchild as sexy as Andy Gibb could get away with wearing an unzipped satin cricket jacket, even in 1977. 78% of male America was unbuttoning their shirts back then, due in no small part to cocaine, and it was simply a bad decision for all of 'em, save Andy and possibly two of his older Gibb brothers from the BeeGees...Linda Ronstadt coulda pulled it off, if it wasn't for her perky tits. America was almost as afraid of perky tits back then as we are today.

But I digress.

I think this video proves my long-held theory (nay, belief), that the bigger one's teeth, the bigger the success. Whiteness certainly counts, but size matters most. Try thinking of a famous person with small teeth. I can't, but I don't really want to right now.

I digress.

I might be wrong, but I'm fairly certain Andy Gibb was singlehandedly responsible (Rex Smith and Shaun Cassidy probably factor, but barely enough to mention) for my sister Starsky going through puberty when she was 10 years old, and what I mean, you pervert, is that he exuded soooo much sexiness on his album covers and posters and Tiger Beat photo spreads and appearances on American Bandstand that my sister literally willed herself to become a woman. That's fucking sexy, babycakes, and Andy had it 100%. The only man who possibly had that much sex power in 1977 was Burt Reynolds, but he wasn't for the little girls like Andy was. Burt was for the ladies, like my mom, who had her copy of Cosmo with the naked centerfold neatly tucked at the bottom of her stack of cooking and sewing magazines in the dining room. It was the only copy of Cosmo she ever owned, such was the power of Burt on the housewives of that decade, but now I'm really digressing...

Hotcha! Hank

Beefcake Equality!

Gotta balance things out a bit...A little Ali Larter ass, a little Nathan Fillion ass...

Hotcha! Hank

2009 Laminated List #1

Surprise, surprise! Winona Ryder has been #1 on my Laminated List for the better part of two decades now, and there's absolutely no reason to change that in 2009...She's still my muse, quite literally, and still the most beautiful woman in the world in my mind.

At the age of 37, she still radiates youthfulness, and a pure kind of beauty that belies the years of (alleged) pill-popping. Maybe it's all the (alleged) sex with flash-in-the-pan rockstars that keeps her looking so young and radiant. Whatever.

I don't really care about all the sex and pills and shoplifting. Well, I do, but I can't judge Ms. Ryder. I've had plenty of experience with indiscriminate sex and random drugs (whom among us hasn't?), and when I was 11 years old I got busted for shoplifting a fucking 7" of Sweet's "Love Is Like Oxygen" from Kohl's Department Store, so who the hell am I to cast stones?

Damn, she's gorgeous...

My sweet grunge pixie princess. Her eyes forever pulling me in...forever falling for her...

Forever #1 on my Laminated List???

Eh, probably.

Hotcha! Hank

HANK RANKS No. 23

The 6* Hottest CBS Crime Show Blondies

If I did the math correctly, there are currently 10 crime dramas on CBS, including 3 versions of CSI, and a second NCIS show debuting next fall...
Of these 10 crime dramas, at least 6 ( *possibly 7) feature blonde hotties as secondary co-stars of said shows. Furthermore, they all wear their hair fairly long and definitely straight, and their characters, if I'm not mistaken, all wear tight slacks as they fight crime and solve mysteries. Plus, I believe they all have daddy issues of one sort or another, that tends to make them a bit cold, a bit hard-nosed...

Now maybe this is all just a coincidence, but I happen to believe that there's somebody very powerful at CBS, possibly in Marketing, that has a thing for petite blonde hotties with chips on their shoulders. Or maybe that's just what research is telling 'em.

I may be wrong, but it's still an excuse to post pictures of beautiful women, even if blondes really aren't my thing, and even if I only regularly watch two of those CBS crime dramas. In fact, Amanda Righetti is the sole reason I watch The Mentalist...And she's more of a redhead on that show...

Meh, if nothing else, it's an excuse for a HANK RANKS, of which I don't do enough...

HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP

06: Kathryn Morris [Lilly Rush, Cold Case]

05: Poppy Montgomery [Samantha Spade, Without A Trace]

04: Lauren Lee Smith [Riley Adams, CSI]

03: Emily Procter [Calleigh Duquesne, CSI: Miami]

02: A.J. Cook [Jennifer Jareau, Criminal Minds]

01: Amanda Righetti [Grace Van Pelt, The Mentalist]

Hotcha! Hank

The Ballad Of Ed McMahon

Hank Mohaski: Millions Sigh: "Call Me 'Mr. Second Hand' (The Ballad Of Ed McMahon)" [mp3]

I meant to post this Tuesday night, when Ed McMahon passed away, but I gotta be honest - I've been completely absorbed in The Wire. I've been watching the complete series on DVD, straight through, and Tuesday night? Let's see - I was probably somewhere in the middle of Season Three...

Anyways, I don't think I've ever posted any of my own music on HOT POOP...I'd have to check...I'm typically not one to self-promote too much...

This is a simple song I wrote and recorded to 4-track in one take with two microphones around 2002. It's a song about sidekicks, and how being second best, and knowing yr second best, can be a mighty sad place to be...It's not a great song by any means, but it's a song, innit? And it's relevant, right?

Rest In Peace, Mr. McMahon.

Hotcha! Hank

R.I.P. Sky Saxon

Sky Saxon was the singer and bassist for The Seeds, a 1960's Garage Psyche band, and quite possibly the worst lip-syncher in Rock history.

He died today. So did two other famous people.

Rest in peace.

Hotcha! Hank

2009 Laminated List # 3

Christina Hendricks is stacked, and that's a fact...She's a brick house...She's mighty mighty...She makes old men wish for their younger days...In other words, Christina Hendricks is a Commodores song...

She's a throwback to a time when being voluptuous in Hollywood wasn't a crime, it was the norm...When actresses ate steak and didn't blast their cores at West Hollywood gyms...In an age before silicon and saline, if a woman had an ample bosom, you can bet she also had an ass and some hips to go with it, not to mention a soft belly...And isn't that they way it should be, rather than the norm today - starlets with 22 waists and C and D cups full of chemicals...Like bags on sticks...

I wonder if fashion had anything to do with the more voluptuous look of old Hollywood, if it was the cut of the dresses and the bulkier undergarments of the era...All I know is Christina Hendricks never looks more beautiful than when she's in character as Joan Holloway on Mad Men, a show set around 1960...If the show had actually been produced in 1960, I imagine someone like Ann Margaret playing Ms. Holloway...

Anyways, the Commodores-worthy body of Christina Hendricks is one thing, and the other is her face, so pure and delicate...She really is quite lovely, like an Ivory Soap commercial.

Hotcha! Hank

2009 Laminated List # 4

There...That's 5000 words I don't have to write about Rosario Dawson's magnificence...

Hotcha! Hank