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Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers. Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.
-------------------------------- I quietly skipped last week without tell you all, sorry about that. Sometimes work gets in the way. Sometimes, however, Alex gets hammered on a Thursday night and is so hungover that she locks her office door all day and cranks out this 4,500 word pile of genius. Every week is different, really… So, fresh off an opening week Fantasy Football Victory, Alex is back this week to tackle your problems for you. Daryl has more questions because Daryl has SO. MANY. QUESTIONS!!! FastFreeFall is feeling sensitive about his turn-ons, and I feel the need to put him at ease, Jimmy may or may not be sexually harrassing me and Rex needs some help ranking NFL running backs. After that, we tackle the second half of Sicariothax’s stripper question from last week, talk progressivism with JH Walz and close it out by helping Dan choose some fashionable accessories. Submitted by: Daryl Do patent lawyers wear patent leather shoes? Funny you should ask… Patent leather is is leather that has been treated and finished with a shiny, glossy coat. The process was introduced to the United States by Seth Boyden, a Newark, NJ-based inventor who further improved the process into a commercially-viable manufacturing process. His process used a linseed-oil based lacquer coating and created a much dressier kind of leather that very quickly became a standard part of formal dress. Boyden, in a bit of historical irony that even Alanis Morissette would appreciate, never patented the process;-) But, since most patent attorneys that I know are hella-rich, lake house-owning, private jet-flying bigwigs, I am guessing that, yes, they do in fact wear patent leather shoes. No one is rolling into court in her $2,000 Escada suit wearing workboots... Who was born in Boston and would have gone by the Twitter handle "Silence Dogood" if he were alive today? This is super easy. Obviously, it’s Uma Thurman. Oh, wait, you said “he”... Well, I guess I need to change my answer then. Like all of the best founding ideas, Ben Franklin was from Boston. He was born on Milk Street (in what is now a Sir Speedy that I might sometimes walk past going from home to office) and attended the Boston Latin School. Which leads me to this week’s “Lessons on Boston”...the Boston Latin School. Harvard University was founded in 1636, which makes it pretty old...so old, in fact, that it had already churned out a full sixty graduating classes by the time the second-oldest college in America, William & Mary, was founded. Harvard is, however, not even the oldest continually operating school in Boston (yea, I know it's not in Boston, just go with it), as it remains one year younger than Boston Latin. There is, in fact, a joke among Latin School alum that Harvard was founded only so that Latin School grads had someplace to go after they graduated. That’s probably not true...but it's not definitely not true. BLS is also a pioneering “Public Exam Admissions” school, like Stuyvesant or the other specialized high schools in New York City, or Chicago’s selective enrollment schools, and somewhat of an oasis in the decrepit morass of the Boston Public Schools. It is something of a tragedy that Boston, which is so often considered to be the education capital of the World, operates a public school system that is barely even accredited. That, however, is a VERY long story for another day. Do you ever beam with pride while walking down a cobblestone street in Boston? No...usually while walking down a cobblestone street I am cursing the bastards who paved the roads with this shit and at no time in the last 300 years thought to make the road, you know, passable!!! Yea, I get it, they are quaint and they have great history and they look great in pictures...have you ever tried to walk on them in anything other than sneakers? There are Olympic gymnasts who couldn’t traverse Acorn Street in heels without falling on their absurdly toned asses. Anyone who tells you that they “beam with pride” when walking down a cobblestone street is completely full of shit. Walking down a cobblestone street actually requires some pretty intense concentration...there is no casual strolling with a toothy smile. Walking on real cobblestones requires a head-down focus that leaves little room for thoughts other than “richest neighborhood in New England and they can’t pave the fucking road.” Here’s the thing...there are very, very few actual cobblestone streets left. Acorn Street (which I gave you a picture of a couple of weeks ago!) is really the only one that I know of, plus some random spots nearby where pavement laid over the cobbles has broken away. Real cobblestones were rounded stones pull straight from the ground and then fixed into a street as a driving surface. They had the advantage of being much sturdier and more rain resistant than a dirt road, with the obvious drawback of being horribly debilitating to any wheeled vehicle. Today, that discouragement of traffic is most of the attraction for the people who live on or near those streets. Much of what is referred to as “cobblestone” through the North End and Faneuil Hall is actually “sett”, a construction of hewn granite blocks made to provide for a smoother surface to drive on. They are still, it should be noted, brutal to navigate with heels, but they much more wagon-friendly than cobbles, and a whole lot more walkable in better walking shoes. Do you think Hillary will wear a red pantsuit when she visits Boston for her book tour in November? Hillary doesn't pick out her clothes until the morning of, and she doesn't own a red pantsuit. Oh, wait, you mean Hillary CLINTON!!! My mistake, I was thinking of someone else entirely... But, you know, Daryl, we are taking new residents...you could move here. I mean, other than a desire to live here, how else could I explain the never-ending questions about Boston? Unless...wait...do you have a crush on me? That might explain it, too. Which is totally cool, I am quite flattered! I am married and all, so that part is going to be a touch awkward, but I’m super adorable, so it’s understandable. No one is going to blame you! This question caused me to actually look into Hillary’s Boston book signing, and now I am staring at my computer with my jaw dropped and my stomach muscles aching from laughter. Because this isn’t a book signing, it’s a fucking concert tour! And you can get into the Opera House to see Hill for the low, low price of only $146. ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX DOLLARS!!! To see a washed up, multiple time Presidential loser who is pimping her universally-panned, self-absolving, everyone-else-blaming revisionist history on a miserably executed 2016 Presidential Campaign. And who is, by the way, absolutely operating right now as if she is running for President in 2020. I have a feeling that big donors will squash that idea, but for now, she is 100% thinking that she will run again. Some men, as the Captain notes in Cool Hand Luke, you just can’t reach. Also worth noting? The Opera House seats 2,677, which puts the total gate for this naked cash grab at somewhere on the order of $450,000. I could probably sit and figure out an estimate of how much money Hill is taking in for writing and promoting this book, but that seems to be kind of a redundant exercise. It’s a lot, and while I would never blame her for taking it, I wonder very sincerely about why anyone would choose to pay her. She has nothing interesting left to say, and nothing at all to say that she isn’t willing to say for free. She’s living like Linda Evangelista, only she isn’t hot and her price to get out of bed is a lot higher than $10,000/day. Hillary has become the Metallica of politicians: she was good at one point a long time ago, and now she is just gleefully sucking in huge amounts of money from her idiot acolytes who feel like she still has something to offer. At least Metallica can still play shit off of Ride the Lightning to give people their money’s worth. Hillary is charming $150 a pop to blame Jim Comey and talk about a tax credit she voted to reauthorize in 2003. ![]()
Submitted by: FastFreeFall
Dear Alex, For years, I've suffered from a raging case of foot fetish. The sight of a woman's shapely foot short circuits my brain. Lately, I've been catching hell from friends and associates for this sore affliction. Does a cure exist and if it does, should i seek the treatment? All the best, FFF Feet are, honestly, kinda gross. They get blisters and callouses and they get weirdly deformed and dirty. Also, they are generally the worst smelling part of any person that doesn’t usually get touched only with products made by Charmin. But to each his own, I guess...foot fetishes certainly aren’t super weird, and it’s not real hard to figure out how feet might be incorporated into your totally not weird sexual activities. In answering this, I Googled "sexiest feet in Hollywood". And don't even pretend I don't make real sacrifices to write this column for you, because I will never, ever be the same after that. The only good news is that the first results that came up were for Salma Hayek, and any one who has ever met me knows that Salma Hayek is my oldest, and most intense girl crush (ok...she and Kate Beckinsale are tied). Further, I would posit that Desperado Salma Hayek is very possibly the single most attractive woman who has ever lived. So, duh, there is no way that I am passing up the chance to post a picture of Salma Hayek for my foot-loving readers. This is clearly sort of subjective but I (don’t) get paid to render my opinions here, so my opinions are more or less fact: I don’t think foot fetishes fall into the category of bizarre sexual deviances, and I see no need for you to "cure" yourself of this fetish. No one is making an episode of My Strange Addiction about someone with a foot fetish. {I just realized that my favorite episode of that show was, in fact, not really an episode of that show but was an episode of Intervention about a chick who sniffed aerosol all day long. Good news, though, Allison seems to be handling her recovery quite well.} It’s not like you are in love with your car, or you eat couch cushions...there are some legitimately bizarre people out there, so I am not going to get too hung up on your love of feet. Also, it is a pretty easy fetish to work into a healthy relationship. Honestly, if you start with “I am going to want to give you a lot of foot massages and do a lot of shoe shopping”, you are in a pretty decent place with most women. She’s gonna think it’s weird if all you ever want to do is make out with her feet, but so long as you take care of your other responsibilities, I really can’t see how spending a relatively larger portion of your attention on her feet during sexy time is going to be much of a drag on the overall relationship. Special Friday bonus, I will let you know that at least two of the #BeckySquad have foot tattoos, but I will let you try and wrap your mind around which ones. So, I say...own your fetish! Also, stay tuned, because... ![]()
Submitted by: Jimmy Chemtrails
Can you post pics of hot Misfits and fans in Stilletos, including legs? For the people in Texas. Or just me. So...this is probably not the creepiest question I’ve gotten yet, but...actually, no, wait. I think it is the creepiest question I’ve gotten so far. But, we are here to please, so @molratty, @jholmsted, @vixenrougue, @BlazerMc88, @_cchayes and I took a day off for a girl's trip to the spa, got our gams all waxed up and took some pictures for you. We put the camera away before the pillow fight, but we hope you enjoy... Since I am kind of a wiseass, I first went looking for pictures of Glenn Danzig in heels, only to find that there actually are things that you can’t find on the Internet. (Also on this list...bakeries in Olympia, WA that will deliver cupcakes to the divine Kayla on her birthday!!! Everyone wish Kayla a two-day-late birthday!) That did, however, send me down a bit of a Wikipedia rabbit hole and taught me all sorts of stuff about Glenn Danzig. First of all, he was not in the Misfits that were rivals to Jem and the Holograms. Turns out that is a totally different band. This is a good time to note that, at the next Misfits Annual Meeting, I am submitting a proposal to make this the official theme song of this website. Also, I have lined up enough shareholder support to submit my own slate of directors, give myself control of the board and oust J.R. in a potentially messy proxy fight. But keep that a secret...I don’t want her to know. Glenn Danzig did, however, write some classical music (Black Aria, Black Aria II), and also wrote songs like this somewhat pedestrian Johnny Cash ditty and this interesting, subtly creepy throwback for Roy Orbison. Also, he is now 62 years old, which really seems super fucking old, and makes me think it is a good decision that he is no longer wearing ridiculous makeup and acting all goth-weird while playing metal. Did you see this story about the woman with the World’s Longest Legs? She is 6’9” and has 52 inch legs. As a reminder, I am just over 60 inches tall. I think that Kim Ann is a good inch shorter than I am...which means the two of us barely reach past that woman’s waist!!! And if she is wearing the heels she has on in that picture...well, let’s just hope that she’s not wearing a miniskirt. Or, maybe that she is, depends on your perspective, I guess. ![]()
Submitted by: Rex
I'd like to know who the best running back who ever played pro ball is / was. Good question, Rex, and you’ve definitely come to the right place. There is literally nobody on the Internet who has a deeper well of sports knowledge than Alex F. Baldwin. The F, in fact, stands for football!!! {cuts and pastes answer from her friend} Running back is a unique position in all of sports, in ways that make it hard to judge the greats just by their accrued statistics. The production of the guy playing the running back position on any team is more dependent on the rest of his teammates that any other position in sports. The talents of the offensive line, the scheme employed by the coaches and the level of danger posed by the passing offense all contribute to the environment in which the running back accumulates statistics. Also of note: due to the extremely punishing nature of the profession, they have incredibly short shelf-lives. As a mathematical demonstration of this, compare rushing yards to home runs for reference. In the 100 year or so history of “modern” Major League Baseball, there have been 44 seasons of at least 50 home runs, including Giancarlo Stanton this year. The modern NFL has about half as much history, so drawing a line for a similarly outstanding season for a running back gives us about 1,750 yards (there have been 27 such seasons.) In other words, a 50 home run season is more or less as impressive as a 1,750 yard season...and each is an outstanding season. The career home run record, depending on your feelings about Barry Bonds, is either 762 or 755...that equates to 15 outstanding seasons by a hitter. Emmitt Smith’s career rushing record of 18,355 represents only about 10 ½ outstanding seasons for a running back. What’s more, Smith is much more of an outlier than Bonds or Hank Aaron are - he is nearly 10% ahead of second place. It would take 13 ½ seasons outstanding seasons for a hitter to crack the top 5 on the all time home run list, but only 8 seasons of outstanding performance for a runner to crack the top five. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that the career rushing list isn’t a great way to measure the greatness of running backs. It is overwhelmingly dominated by the longevity of the players in a way that other popular statistical metrics are not. And it is why Emmitt Smith’s hugely impressive rushing total doesn’t make him the greatest of all time (other reasons: he played behind historically great offensive lines and averaged a good-but-not-legendary 4.2 yards per carry.) Here then, beyond reproach, is your list of the greatest running backs in NFL history: 10) Tony Dorsett 9) Emmitt Smith 8) Eric Dickerson 7) Earl Campbell 6) LaDanian Tomlinson 5) Barry Sanders 4) O.J. Simpson 3) Jim Brown 2) Gale Sayers 1) Walter Payton Dude, I’m from Chicago...what were you expecting? Submitted by: Sicariothrax What's your opinion of bachelor parties? This question came in right after “Why do strippers exist?” and I assume is related. And the answers are sort of related, too. I have been a full attendee at two bachelor parties, one of which involved a weekend in Miami with one other girlfriend and like 8 guys. Part of the irony of that was that his fiance, a good friend of mine, strongly encouraged the idea of me going because she thought I would keep them out of trouble. It’s like she doesn’t even know me!!! My guess, based on limited information, is that they usually turn out to be less debaucherous than threatened. There is a lot more drinking than is good for anybody involved, and probably too much gambling whenever that is around, but I really don’t think that most normal guys at most bachelor parties end up snorting cocaine out of a hooker’s asscrack. Bachelor parties, like many other things involving a lot of alcohol, dramatically amplify a person’s natural characteristics. Bachelor parties often (usually?) make a mandatory trip to at least one strip club, which for most of the guys is a pretty harmless, if kinda dirty, experience. Honestly, I feel like a large portion of normal guys aren’t totally comfortable in strip clubs...there is the initial sensory overload and the sheer joy of seeing a bunch of boobs bouncing around and feeling like you are somewhere that is somewhat forbidden...but pretty quickly it just turns into an odd sense of shame combined with a feeling that this experience is much more expensive than it is fun. Every group of guys has one or two friends who really, really love it, though. Chances are you know who it is long before you walk in, and every woman knows which of her husband’s friends is the dirty one. Important note, ladies...if you are not sure who it is, then it is very likely your husband!!! That guy settles himself right up against the stage and starts throwing down $1 bills like he is Puff Daddy. This may also be the guy who is pretty sure that he is going to get a blow job from one of the strippers in the back room for like $60. This guy is, I am almost certain, a complete douche. So, you get a lot of talk about “What happens there stays there…” and whatnot, but for the most part, bachelor parties are just an excuse for guys to hang out together, drink too much and act like they are at a fraternity party. Sure, the married dirtball is going to use it as an excuse to try and pick up girls, but that is basically because he is an asshole, not because he is at a bachelor party. He’d be trying to do the same thing somewhere else, it’s just that here he tries to pretend that it is only because nothing counts during a bachelor party. So...true story! Three or four years ago, my husband and I went to like seven weddings in a single summer, and most of them were his friends, so he went to a whole bunch of bachelor parties. One of them, for a high school friend, was on the third consecutive weekend of bachelor parties and the plan was to play golf on Saturday, then have a cookout at the groom’s brother’s house and then head to Providence for the night (there is nothing at all useful in Providence, but there are a bunch of strippies.) Early in the week, he told me that he was probably just going to golf and eat but skip the overnight...he was, in his own words, kinda strip-clubbed out. I’m sure that a part of this was a general feeling that his adorable wife was probably going to get tired of being alone with the kids every weekend while he was hanging out in seedy bars with naked chicks;-), but mostly I think there is a limit to how often you can rage for three consecutive days and recover in time for work. Skip ahead to Saturday afternoon, and he called me from the car on the way home and told me that he lost his wedding ring on the golf course. My first thought was “Man, that sucks.” His first thought was “Holy shit, did I ever pick a good weekend to skip going to a strip club, because this is MUCH hard to explain on Sunday morning.” Submitted by: JH Walz (somewhere around Newark) Why are Progressives angry and hateful? I’ll start by saying that I know a lot of progressives who are not angry and hateful, and a lot of conservatives who are. No political ideology has the market cornered on anger and hate. But, to the implied point of the question, there is a certain form of condescending hatred that really insufferable liberals (looking at you, tentacle-porn guy) love to spew while preaching diversity, equality, inclusion, tolerance, etc. It starts with a core belief of progressivism: we can play lip service to equality, but some of us are just WAY smarter than others, and we should be the ones making most of the decisions that impact your lives. We definitely value the unique life experiences enjoyed in our diverse communities across regional, social, racial, ethnic and religious strata (and, of course, by our xixters in each of the 217 genders) and feel like we all have important lessons of tolerance and understanding to be learned from all cultures. But holy shit, plebes, you don’t really think we should let people govern who went to public schools, do you? Why do you think we invented Harvard in the first place!!! It’s so the unwashed rubes like you don’t make the mistakes that tiny intellects are bound to make if they aren’t guided by a benevolent ruling class of educated elites. Anyone, therefore, who dares to disagree with the accepted dogma of those elites is literally committing a crime against humanity. They know what is best, and if you disagree with them it can only be because you hate poor people, or brown people, or less fortunate people. So, really, you started it, not them. They’re not angry and hateful, they are simply reacting to you being a morally grotesque bigot who deserves to be publicly shamed, humiliated and ruined. RUINED! Submitted by: Dan Are fanny packs back in style? FANNY PACKS NEVER WERE IN STYLE!!! It is one of the great accidents of American history that fanny packs ever became a thing. I mean, I guess they are practical, but how much can you possible have given up on life that you are willing to be seen in public with a fanny pack rather than just putting stuff in your pockets? Or, maybe think about leaving it in the car!!! There are, of course, some exceptions. Search and rescue folks or EMT’s sometimes carry fanny packs, because it is the easiest way to carry life-saving supplies without occupying their hands. The key, here, is “life-saving”. Fanny packs are acceptable only where there is a reasonable chance that it could literally save a person’s life. Not because you need to carry your lip gloss and you don’t want to put it in your camera bag. Google tells me that there are some hunting and fishing fanny packs, too. I still feel like you should carry a backpack instead, but maybe that gets in the way of wielding your gun...and I don’t really want to complicate the process of firing your gun, so feel free to tote your man purse right out into the river with you. I do have to stop here to note that @sirensoIiIoquy is a defender of fanny packs, and I hold her opinions on all fashion-related issues in extremely high regard. So, I am willing to accept that there may be some wiggle room on this, but mostly I just feel like you need to acknowledge that, just because something looks good on her doesn’t mean it will look good on you!!! Fanny Packs are, somewhat counter-intuitively, not quite the fashion tragedy that cargo shorts are (don't @ me on this...@ Anabel, and good luck with that). Fanny Packs are a greater fashion atrocity, but at least they have the decency to be patently ridiculous. Very few people think fanny packs are stylish, but there are huge numbers of otherwise reasonable adult males who still wear cargo shorts as if they are the subject of an Avril Lavigne song. Wait...can I stop for a second? Of course I can. But I have a confession to make, and I want you all to sit down and listen. I adore Avril Lavigne. Yea, manufactured, candy-coated, shallow pop...yada yada yada… I don’t care. She is utterly adorable, and she barely looks older than she did in 2003 (she’s only 32, so she is still like 20 years from Diane Lane/Jennifer Aniston “How does she never age?” territory, but I am calling it right now...she will still be gorgeous at 50). And while you are mocking my love of vapid pop music, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SIGNING ONE OF HER SONGS IN YOUR HEAD. Don’t even try to lie about that. I am somewhat saddened that her Canadian SuperMarriage to Chad Kroeger of Nickelback dissolved, but maybe that is for the best. He's not the least bit adorable or charming, and he dramatically reduces her level of adorable charmingness. If she is going to form a Canadian Marital Super Group (like The Traveling Wilbury's, only Canadian, and married to each other), I'd suggest we find a strapping, super hot and politely understated hockey player. Carried Underwood has already proven that the business model can work, and Avril's Canadianness is going to up the intensity a couple of notches. Now I just need someone to point me to a super cute, single Canadian hockey player that we can set Ms. Lavigne up with. Get to work on that, people. Before I wrap up for this week, I can’t, or course, talk about Avril Lavigne without mentioning the second greatest rumor that has ever surfaced, anywhere, about anything. (“Damnit, I don’t wanna be first anymore!” - Richard Gere’s hamster) Enjoy your weekend, everyone;-)
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MisfitsJust a gaggle of people from all over who have similar interests and loud opinions mixed with a dose of humor. We met on Twitter. Archives
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