Dancing With The Undead

If Hugh Hefner still has a sex drive, someone should take away his license.

His most recent choice of “girlfriends” gives off a distinctive whiff of desperate hucksterism, and I think the old boy would really probably prefer a glass of warm milk and get to bed early … alone.

But there’s no fool like an old fool, and in announcing he is officially moving on from former playmate Holly Madison to 19-year-old twins Karissa and Kristina Shannon, a mere 63 years younger than he is, Hef is obviously bucking to be recognized as The Oldest (And Biggest) Fool Still Standing (Hunched Over The End Of The Bed Squinting and Trying to Remember Where He Put He The Viagra Division).

You probably think I’m just jealous. Of all the stuff to blog about about, why else would I decide to pick on Hugh Hefner? If I ran into Karissa and Kris, er, Krissie, er, Kristina on the street corner, they wouldn’t give me their spare change, never mind their phone numbers, even though I am only 39 years older than they are.

But it’s not jealousy that moves me to take on the Sagging Satyr of Chicago, it’s something even more fundamental. It’s revulsion. Hugh Hefner makes me sick!

And if you have a shred of decency, he’ll make you sick too.

This is a form of childish pornography. The kids in question, Kartoona and Kebobsky, were convicted earlier this year of aggravated assault for attacking one of their fellow Wing House co-workers at a party and ordered to pay restitution. Karissa already had a previous assault conviction. As TMZ puts it, K&K put the jail in jailbait. Watch out, Hef! Could be a little elder abuse comin’…

Anyway, they’ve moved into the Playboy Mansion and so far, the old goat hasn’t called 911 or the exterminators, although it’s a little early. Give them time. I suspect that unlike the “Girls Next Door”, Hefner’s previous feline posse, these Doublemint twins will be harder to get rid of. Once they’ve moved into the Mansion, how’re you going to get them back to the Wing House? Even with extra security—the Katzenjammer Kids pack a mean one-two punch.

It is true that these people deserve each other and probably don’t carry on a conversation without a lawyer present, never mind sharing the act of intimacy, but this stuff gives May-December romances a bad name, undermining all the good work that Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher have done to make it possible for old people and young people to go to bed together.

Anybody remember Harold and Maude? Now there was a poignant treatise on romance with wrinkles. Harold, the peculiar, angst-ridden teenager, hooks up with 79-year-old Maude. He plans to ask her to marry him on her 80th birthday, but she decides to take control of the aging process and takes an overdose and dies. See, Hef? See what happens?

What on earth could Hef and K&K have to talk about? Like, OMG, didja hear that at the Brass Knuckles listening party in Vegas, Nelly said he was gonna form a supergroup with Akon and Pharrell? OMG that’s awesome s*it!"

Old people and young people are essentially sexually incompatible because young people, especially young women, preface every utterance with “Like…” As in “Like…he’s so old, but he’s like, so cute…he, like, reminds me of my Dad.” This has a softening effect on even the most determined old hickory.

The other reason that old people and young people are essentially sexually incompatible is that they are never, ever in bed and awake at the same time. Young people don’t go out until 11, as it takes the previous six or seven hours to style their hair. Old people are out all right at 11 – out like a light. Old people then get up at 5, and make something called tea, which is nothing like the tea you get at Starbucks that comes with chai and soy. At 5, young people come home and crash…and sleep it off until it’s time to get ready to go out again. They don't even see each other. Ships in the night.

Speaking of which, there are many Old Fools wandering the street mooning about the young women who see right through them to the young guys they really want to go out with. It’s as if the Old Fools aren’t even there. When asked to consider the idea of old men, most young women think oral history – as in, “OMG, like, someone should record what it was like to live before HDTV, before they, like, die!”

The sad truth is that old people don’t like to go out with old people either. Because they’re OLD! And wrinkled. And bitter. And they drink something called tea. Gawd.
So on all the dating sites, the old folks calculate their current age, then divide by two and then subtract 25, and then they go looking for victims. This is an age-old story…like Dracula.

And if there’s one guy still stalking the world, or at least Chicago, who reminds me of Dracula, it’s 82-year-old Hugh Hefner. He manages to sustain a kind of Undead Existence by preying on young women, who get to be Undead for 15 minutes themselves. I just think that in the twins K&K, this time the old bat has met his match.

"This Sucker Could Fail"

It’s the biggest, weirdest story ever. I think I’m glad that I’m around to live through it. So far, my income hasn’t dried up; my house hasn’t been repossessed and the fridge is still well-stocked. So far.

Meanwhile in Washington, George Bush, after eight years of stumbles and malapropisms, has finally uttered a quote that will outlive his sorry presidency:

“If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down.”

“This sucker”, we’re led to understand, is the United States of America.

If you thought the 9/11 terrorists struck at the very heart of America – New York’s Wall Street – what do we call the CEOs and speculators who have looted Wall Street, stole all the money, and now stand around with their hands out, waiting for American taxpayers to bail them out to the tune, once it’s all in, of $1.5 trillion dollars?

I don’t think there is one that would make it through our banned word filters.

And do the American taxpayers have a choice? If they don’t bail out the financial fiddlers, “this sucker could go down.” (Could it be that the real George Bush is a whole lot more interesting than the stiff who showed up at the Oval Office every day for the last eight years?)

And if you think this is just a Made in America crisis, think harder. Just as the Wall Street boys ended up holding bales of worthless paper, (well, not completely worthless; recycled paper is going for a couple of hundred bucks a ton) bankers around the world are experiencing the world’s largest financially-induced hangover.

As I write, they sit at splendid desks made of exotic, extinct tropical hardwoods waiting for the value of their paper to evaporate, which is exactly what will happen if the US government does not agree on a bailout. And that’s the signal to head for the ledge – there’s a recession coming that will rival the great meltdown of the 1930s. And it all started with 50-year, no-interest mortgages in SoCal.

The sad truth is that we’ve all been addicted to easy money since 1981, when it cost more than 20 per cent of the value of the loan to borrow money. Once interest rates began to creep down, we all became hot to spend money we did not have. Lots of great excuses: own my own home, put my kids through college, take that vacation, buy that SUV, stock that wine cellar. And the banks and credit card companies, in a frenzy of greed and competitive paranoia, just kept throwing money at us. Then people borrowed money to invest in all that debt in order to get tax breaks and live comfortably in retirement.

The idea of investing in poorly-secured debt is traditionally the province of Guido and the boys, who can break your kneecaps as collateral. Unfortunately for the US economy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have no such enforcement resources and people just walked away from their debts. Stopped paying, as if they could ever pay in the first place. So, all of those houses, SUVs, vacation condos, college educations built on air are merely elaborate sand castles. That great sighing sound you hear is the collapse of the sand.

So we’re left with a bad gamble. If we bail the authors of this monumental fraud out, they’ll continue as if it’s business as usual, for the most part, evading arrest. They might not even lose their 13 houses, 11 luxury autos and priceless pop art collections. If we don’t bail them out, “this sucker could go down.”

An interesting sidelight…how the US presidential nominees are reacting. Barack Obama’s for the bailout. He understands that if it doesn’t happen – and fast – this sucker, etc. John McCain, on the other hand, has turned into Mr. Dithers. He’s obviously in way over his head. Obama has figured out that the climate in America the day after tomorrow will favor the Democrats. He’ll get some criticism for bailing out the fat cats, but he can condemn the laissez-faire, devil-may-care, damn-the-torpedoes Republican distaste for “red tape” that got us here in the first place. Time for change indeed.

McCain doesn’t know what to do. His new conservative pals don’t care if the whole thing sinks; they can crawl into their survivalist foxholes where the gold is buried and hunker down. His First Bimbo, the honorable Sarah Palin, will stomp her feet and demand her allowance. And he’s left holding the (empty) bag. He should just do the right thing, which, he never tires of telling us, is the McCain Imperative.

In this case, the right thing is to bail those monkeys out and wait until tomorrow to figure out how to get them back into the barrel. I think it’s safe to say there won’t be a tomorrow if he doesn’t.

What do you think?

5,000 Correspondents Can't Be Wrong

Congratulations to Orato.com’s 5,000th registered correspondent, who, as far as I can tell, is “Millionholder”, who registered Friday, September 12th at 11:01 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

Although our sincere best wishes are all you can expect for becoming our 5,000th correspondent, please be assured that we think this is one of those gratifying milestones that add up to the success of Orato.com and citizen journalism.

Because when you think about it, that’s quite a team we’re fielding every day. Five thousand people, well 5,017 as I write, chronicling the world in their own words. We’ve come a long way from writing letters to the editor.

Millionholder, I’m not sure why you registered. I hope it’s because you decided to pitch or write a story for Orato.com or comment on a story somewhere on the site. Maybe it’s because you want to be a member of our global village…or maybe you just like registering. If you read this, leave me a comment and let me know.

There is no doubt in my mind that you and your 5016 fellow Orato.com villagers are the future of journalism. Now that the technology of the media and a global audience are in everyone’s reach, information is no longer the property of a few elite news barons and their employees.

If you published your story on Orato.com last month, your piece had the opportunity to be seen by the 300,000 visitors who viewed more than a million pages (1,076,652 to be precise, according to WebTrends). While we’re not the New York Times, Orato.com is a powerful showcase of human life, and you’re part of it.

Your Orato.com stories have been picked up by AP, featured on CNN and debated on national radio. In the last six months, Orato.com has been cited by the Webbies as one of the top 15 news sites in the world and just recently was named one of PC Magazine’s 100 sites of 2008. You did that. That’s you.

Meanwhile, the newspaper business continues to ride off into the sunset. Newspaper circulation continues to fall at a year-to-year rate of 2.5%; advertising was down 7% in 2007 and newspaper stock has taken a beating: McClatchy was off 70%, and Gannett 35%. Cutbacks and layoffs are more common than paper cuts.

Here at Orato.com world HQ, we have a paid staff of three which is a net increase of 33% in the last year. Big expansion underway!

We have a small footprint but a big reach precisely because of you, our correspondents. And we keep looking for ways to give back. As we have often promised, we’re now paying for stories that are pitched by you and accepted. If you haven’t already pitched a story, why not get swept up in the spirit of the 5,000 and pitch your piece by clicking here. We look forward to adding your story to the 2700 already on the site. And although they come and go off the home page, they live permanently in the archive…Heather, Jessie and Mike will often the best ones back in the spotlight when the timing is right. You and your voice have a home…as long as we’re online. Ten thousand…here we come.