Special 'Best-Of' Two-fer: March 2007

I've been looking for this article for a while - it ran back in March of 2007, and was titled "So Gay." I found it, so give it a once over. It's not very deep or thought provoking, but I enjoyed writing it and I got a lot of positive feedback from a lot of readers. So anyway.... go:

So gay that even gay guys are like "wow, that's really gay."

Lately I've been tivo-ing alot of Reno 911 because, well... that shit is hilarious. It's hilarious, because as a former law enforcement officer, I've encountered in real life a lot of what the beleagured deputies of the Reno Sheriff's Department seem to come face to face with on a daily basis.

Shit's hilarious.

So, as I'm enjoying a chicken pot pie, fresh from my oven, from a box, from my freezer, I have the tivo'd episode of Reno 911 playing in the background. And since I have it on my DVR I can skip over the commercials, and I usually do. But the timer on my microwave went off so my attention was on my delicious chicken pot pie, and not on the fact that the episode was lapsing into a commercial coma.

So imagine to my surprise, when I came from the furnace-like oven with my oven mits on and a cookie sheet in my hands, I see this commercial for the gayest shit ever....

"Guys Gone Wild" is the obvious spin off of the softcore porn DVD franchise of "Girls Gone Wild." The commercials for "Guys" seems to only play after midnight (using my detective-like skills, and my Tivo, I observed that the episodes that featured these commercials were recorded around 0100-0300) and feature hard bodied young, "college aged boys" strutting around shirtless, wet, laughing, embracing, wrestling, pushing each other into pools.... strangley, I was quick to notice, there isn't a chick anywhere around.

As "Girls Gone Wild" panders to lonely, horny men (whom obviously can't navigate the internet well enough to find actual hardcore porn, for free... ahem, AL4A.com... ahem.....) who are with a twenty dollar bill burning a hole in their pocket, who want to watch ditzy drunk chicks expose themselves, kiss each other, fondle themselves and act like good ol' American College Girls in the eyes of Al Qaeda. "Guys" it seems, is the same idea, but just supplementing the girls with Turbo Jocks with enough shit in their hair to make an oil tanker spill look only slightly more dangerous to the collective enviroment.

I watched three of these commercials for the "Guys" DVD (before my critics wittingly accuse me of being gay myself, I will quickly point out...) to get a sense of what the ad was exactly stating and where to send my money order to... I mean, uh, to ... uh... fuck it, next paragraph.

I wanted to compare, honestly. We've all seen the ad for "Girls Gone Wild" and we're all very much aware that we can expect roughly 90 minutes of conventionally hot chicks stripping down, playing with themselves, moaning for the camera, biting their lips, etc, all to Heavy Metal guitars and Hip-Hop beats. I wanted to see what "Guys" had to offer.

I mean, when you think of it, it seems like a pretty obvious idea: You take the standard formula of attractive people, attractive in the sense that we all agree on that they're hot, and have them parade around in skimpy clothes for our private enjoyment. We had girls doing it for close to a decade (if not more, ...my fact checker is out this week) so filming guys doing this would be the logical step.

I don't see the DVD sales comparing though. Those who buy "Girls Gone Wild" are lonely/frat boys who want to stare at tits, constantly stating in a monotone "dude she's so fuckin' hot." over and over again. The typical buyer of "Guys Gone Wild" will be a lonely gay guy.

After the third viewing (I didn't rewind, I just happened to sit through the ad thricely) I had gone from embarrassed, to ashamed, to amused. I was embarrassed at first because it was something overtly homosexual, and I can freely admit that I myself am not comfortable with such an... god the gay jokes forming in my head as I sit here thinking of the next line.... In Your Face (HA!) presentation of the homosexual lifestyle.

I then became ashamed because I suddenly thought to myself, what kind of stigma would be attached to these young men once these commercials air? With the girls in "Girls Gone Wild" they're kind of dismissed as either "drunk sluts" or they simply get a free pass because it's college. And then that made me think about the double standards attached to homosexual behavior. Girls can be "bisexual" to an extent and it's largely acceptable to society. Almost on the verge of encouraged I'd say. If a guy makes out with another dude at the bar after alot of drinks, even if it's one time! ...he's a fag for life.

Think about it. I'm not making this claim based on my personal feelings in this matter, gentle readers... think to yourself, how you'd react in this situation: You're at a bar, and it's a crowded friday night. It's a college crowd. You look to your right and you see two hot blondes full blown making out. There's a crowd around them, mostly guys, and their cheering them on. What're you thinking? At worst, you're thinking that they're attention whores. At best, you shrug it off. So What?

Now look to your left, and you see two attractive guys face-locked. What're your reaction? At best you're like "wow, that's ... not ... usual..." and you sip your drink and look back towards the hot blondes. At worst you pick up a bit of kindling and go to blow out one of those fag's teeth in a fit of repressed homophobic rage.

So then upon my third and final viewing of the ad, I felt amused. Why? Because these kids in this video are doing it for the money, that's why. I consider myself somewhat attractive, and if some chick (and I imagine it's a chick) approached me in a bar, and I had just too much to drink and she whispered in my ear a proposition to video tape me jacking off in some musk-smelling motel room up the road (where presumably three or four of my fellow frat brothers have previously jerked off) and was willing to pay my tab, plus give me a hundred bucks, fuck it, why not? Who's going to see this video anyway? Knowing in the back of my head that I don't even know anyone who's gay.....

The fast forward. My father... Charles W. Nason, never sleeps. He'll sleep maybe two hours at a time, and then be up for another two hours with his acid reflux. He tends to watch a lot of Comedy Central and Adult Swim (I take pride in introducing him to Family Guy and Aqua Teen Hunger Force). What made me so amused was taking the previous "for instance" and applying this bit of information at the end... my dad, up with severe heartburn, sitting on the couch, with his bowl balanced on his expanded beer gut, and then suddenly....

"What? What was that?"

And BLOOPBLOOPBLOOP goes the tivo...

And cut to a scene of me, in the aforementioned musky motel room, beating off shirtless to the encouragement of a young lady who's paying my tab plus another C note to spunk into a sock for her.

Hey, at least it beats spunking into a sock for nothing....