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

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

My 2011 Oscar Picks

BEST FILM: The Social Network
BEST DIRECTOR: David Fincher, The Social Network
BEST ACTOR: Colin Firth, The King's Speech
BEST ACTRESS: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christian Bale, The Fighter
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:Melissa Leo, The Fighter
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Christopher Nolan, Inception
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
BEST FOREIGN FILM: Biutiful [Mexico]
BEST DOCUMENTARY: Inside Job
BEST ANIMATED FILM: Toy Story 3
BEST SCORE: The Social Network [Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross]
BEST SONG: "I'll Rise", 127 Hours [Rahman, Dido, Armstrong]
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHER: Matthew Libatique, Black Swan
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Colleen Atwood, Alice In Wonderland

Well, I was 10 of 15. Not great, not horrible.

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

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

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

Heavy Sideways Hagar Maneuver

You know, even though I will always refuse to recognize Van Hagar as a legitimate band, I am more than willing to admit that I really liked Sammy Hagar's solo career pretty much right up to the point he joined Eddie and his brother and that other guy who wrestled a bass shaped like a Jack Daniels bottle during his solo portion of the live act. In fact, among the 1000 or so pieces of vinyl I haven't sold over the years, I still have four or five Sammy Hagar solo LPs.

But more importantly, Taarna holds her own against the boys.

Hotcha! Hank

Filler, 3 AM...

Ben mentioned this Natalie Portman video in this Tuesday's Tuesday's Fortune post, so I figured I might as well post it...More filler, if nothing else...

I responded that my feelings for Ms. Portman are conflicted...

If I were ten years younger, I suppose Natalie Portman might be my Winona Ryder, you know? But I'm not, so she isn't...

Adorableness aside, I generally don't like most of Ms. Portman's more notable roles and films...I do not like Leon - The Professional...Her character in Garden State annoys me beyond belief, in a film that annoys me in general...The Star Wars films? Pffft...

But I must say, I really like Beautiful Girls quite alot, and her role as a Lolita in the film is a good one, and Portman's performance stands out in a big cast full of good actors giving good performances themselves.

Anyways, here's 7 minutes of Natalie on Letterman, being smart, being cute, being a bit snarky...

Hotcha! Hank

Do You Want Celebrity Ass, Or Do You Want The Truth?

This is a peek at Ali Larter's ass. Do you still wish you were a movie star?

"A richer understanding...Of what's already understood...No meanings from the here and now...What gift could be a work of art?...Can you call it the big foist?...I'm fucking overwhelmed!" -- Minutemen

Hotcha! Hank

America! WooHoo!

Happy 4th Of July, one and all! Let's drink!

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

2009 Laminated List # 2

Tina Fey is #2 on my 2009 Laminated List, which really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's followed HOT POOP for awhile...Last year Ms. Fey ended up at #3 because of a sudden fascination I had with Evangeline Lilly. I think it was largely out sympathy because of all the "Kate Hate" one can find all over the internet. LOST fans just don't like Kate, and alot of 'em also claim Ms. Lilly is a crap actress. Whatever. Ridiculous.

But this is about Tina Fey, not Evangeline Lilly. This is about bouncing back to reclaim her rightful place at #2 on this year's Laminated List because while she is an attractive woman, it is her sense of humor and her intelligence and her subtle cynicism/sarcasm/sass that makes her one-of-a-kind, and a woman for the ages...Is it too soon to call her an icon, or did the whole Sarah Palin thing cement her place in TV and Pop Culture history?

Whatever...After 3 seasons, 30 Rock is without a doubt the best and funniest comedy on television, and obviously Tina Fey is the biggest reason why...The show is her baby, and it's a great ensemble, no doubt, but Ms. Fey has proven herself to be a really great actress after years of being known mainly as a writer...Her Liz Lemon character is a loveable mess. A smart, educated woman in charge of network TV show who can't seem to catch a break in any part of her life - her writers and actors don't really respect her as their boss, her boss doesn't take her seriously either, and her lovelife can't seem to get any serious traction, nevermind her creepy loser ex-boyfriend, Dennis...And she battles back against 'em all with a sharp tongue and mouthfuls of junkfood...I've said it before, but that scene from Season 2 when she mows down an entire deli sandwich in about 15 seconds at airport security checkpoint is one of the hottest things I've ever seen in my life...

Anyways, like so many others, I find Tina Fey to be smart and funny and cute and really, what's not to love? What more needs to be said?

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