Esteemed television actress Meredith Baxter, who portrayed Elyse Keaton on 1980s hit sit-com Family Ties, recently revealed during a slightly awkward Today Show segment that she is a Lesbian. But for those of us who have been following her IMDB history over the years, this is no new revelation. Why, just looking at the names of some of the projects she’s worked on over the years, it is clear that she has been trying to tell us something for a very long time:

Bound by a Secret (2009)
“Half & Half” (2004)
The Wednesday Woman (2000)
Let Me Call You Sweetheart (1997)
“The Rosie O’Donnell Show” (1997)
Betrayed: A Story of Three Women (1995)
My Breast (1994)
A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story (1992)
Bump in the Night (1991)
Jezebel’s Kiss (1990)
The Kissing Place (1990)
Kate’s Secret (1986)
The Two Lives of Carol Letner (1981)
Little Women (1978)
“Police Woman” (1976)
The Impostor (1975)
The Stranger Who Looks Like Me (1974)
Stand Up and Be Counted (1972)

But LULz aside, congratulations Ms. Baxter for having the courage to talk publicly about your private life. This blog and its sole writer wish you and your partner success, happiness, health, legions of support and good fortune.

[c] 2009 Russ of America

I set back and thought about the extra pauses in the forced intro of this song by Milli Vanilli. It really mean a lot to me.

YOU mean a lot to me.

Well.

Girl.

You know it is the true.

Cool though he was back in the day, and made cool once again with the proliferation of the dead, beaten horse known as the “Rick Roll”, Rick Astley’s coolness might have waned slightly when he wore a denim tuxedo replete with MOM JEANS in his most famous video ever.

Fortunately he wasn’t singing “Never Gonna Give You Up” about the jeans; He gave those up pretty easily.

[c] 2009 Russ of America

Do you remember when PCs used to have a “TURBO” button? What the hell was it for? The button had two settings, right? Selected and UNselected. Turbo and UNturbo. There was usually a little round light next to the button that would indicate Turbo was turned on. Or if you were really lucky and had a deluxe PC, there was a green LED readout that would jump from something like 13 to 26 when you pressed TURBO. I never understood that shit. Under what circumstances would you ever have UNpressed the Turbo button? “Hmm, it’s 1989 and this computer is processing data waaaay too quickly, I’d better cut the processing power by 1/2 before something bad happens!”

Did anyone use their computer in UNturbo? I bet there were a bunch of people who did that and they probably fell under two main types: Type A had never looked at their computer or read the manual, so they had absolutely no idea they even had a Turbo button. They would use and use and use and complain and complain about how slow the damned thing was running, and eventually they’d buy a new computer. Type B knew that there was a Turbo button on their PC, but only used it on special occasions because they had a superstitious fear that running it with the Turbo on all the time would wear out the gears. Gears? Yeah, my hypothetical person is an idiot.

Did the Turbo button really even do anything or did it just make the LED read-out change from 13 to 26? Beats the hell out of me, but I am glad that I don’t have to worry about shit like that in the 21st century.

Hey, wait, what does this Scroll Lock button on my keyboard do?

[c] 2009 Russ of America

Movie piracy is just not right. People work very hard to create a quality product like the Wolverine movie and it is not cool to steal that movie called Wolverine just because someone took it and turned it into a torrent so that you can steal it. You’re not special. Why do you get to see it when nobody else does? You didn’t work on it! Did you make his knives? Did you grow his sideburns or do his sit-ups? Did they invite you to have a private screening? No, they did NOT invite you to a private screening! What, you plan to never pay for a movie again? Just everything for free? “Gimme gimme gimme and I won’t give anything back!” Or do you have some stupid rule where you’ll pay for every 10th movie you steal? Or maybe you feel that you can steal movies because, “Hey, they’re going to show it on TV for free eventually, so I should download the movie a month before it’s released so I can see it now instead of having to wait until 2011 when it’s shown on TV for free, censored and interrupted by commercial advertisements.”

That’s bullshit dude. It’s wrong, no matter how you slice it. You know that. They didn’t say, “Sure Josephine, go ahead and download our movie, it’s cool.” You know that you’re not allowed to pirate movies, buddy. It’s immoral. Morality is what our society is founded upon. You have to be moral. If there were DVDs around when God wrote Exodus, He would have said, “Thou shalt not steal, and that includes ‘borrowing’ or ‘watching’ things when you’re not supposed to.” That’s what God would have said because he wants everybody to be moral. I am moral. I am a man of strong morals and honesty. What about you? Are you a man of strong morals? Or even what about a woman?! Are you a woman? Heard of morals? Are you a woman of morals? If you’re a man or a woman of morals and you are going to pirate things, then you should only pirate pornography. Since pornography is inherently immoral, they shouldn’t be making it, so they’ve got “dirty hands” in the eyes of moral law, so there’s no reason why you can’t steal pornography because it shouldn’t have been made to begin with. Therefore it’s okay to steal pornography and you should definitely do that if you’re going to be a stealer of things like movies like Wolverine.

But to steal fine cinema like the Wolverine movie is wrong and you better not do it. You should pay to see that just like everybody else should, and that’s what I plan to do when it comes out on Netflix. But only if my bebbeboo adds it to her queue because she’s the one paying for it, not me.

[c] Russ of America

They gave me a pad of paper from the hotel. They gave me a cheap pen from the hotel. They gave me a boring meeting to sit through at the hotel.

I had nothing constructive to contribute to the national conference, so I created this:

If I learned anything from the meeting, it was that winning is not everything, and that patience doesn’t always yield a fruit.

Medium: Ink & Paper circa 2003. Costa Rica.

[c] 2003 & 2009 Russ of America

I’ve had this magazine clipping since 1991. For almost 20 YEARS I’ve been looking at it and I *STILL* can’t tell if this ad is racist or not. I *suspect* that it is, but I can’t tell for sure because I got it from a magazine aimed at a black demographic.

Chuck D of Public Enemy if you’re reading my blog, three things: 1) WTF are you doing reading my blog? 2) Tell everybody you know! 3) Would you please shed some light on this ad and help me to decide if it’s racist? I want to think that it is, but I’m having trouble because Malcolm-Jamal Warner looks so goddamn happy, and who the hell am *I* to decide whether or not a young black man is allowed to be happy about Kool-Aid?

If any of you happen to be Twitter or Facebook friends with Chuck, can you please send him over here for a look-see? And if you are black and reading my blog, I’d appreciate your input as well. And shit, if you’re tight with Malcolm-Jamal, I’d love to get his feedback on this ad too! I guess I’ve convinced myself over the years that Kool-Aid is a tool of black suppression wielded by white corporate America, as throughout history they have aggressively marketed a beverage with zero nutritional value and ridiculously high sugar content directly to a people who are, statistically, gravely at risk of developing diabetes. And let’s not forget Jonestown. Sure it was cyanide-laced “Flavor Aid”, but was Flavor Aid much different from Kool-Aid? On the other hand, Kool-Aid is playfully mocked as a charming, folksy staple of urban black culture in movies such as House Party, so I dunno what position I’m supposed to take. I trust Chuck D on these matters, so I’ll yield to him. Jesse Jackson, you’re free to vocalize as well, but Al Sharpton, please stay out of this until you get a respectable haircut. I don’t need you coming up here looking like a 1990s DJ Quik, leaving provocative comments and shit.

“Who drank all the Kool-Aid? I did…And I’m ready to make some more.”

[c] 2009 Russ of America

Hi, I’ve gotten a lot of interest on this product lately, but it is still out of stock. Please check back at a later time.

LiveJournal’s Rjdaae has incorporated my excellent giant foam hand into actual Phantom performance.
Good show, mate! GO PHANTOM!

[c] 2009 Russ of America

The duty of a blogger is to take all of his or her petty, insignificant frustrations and to communicate them to his or her reader. Often, this is literally one reader. And so, I would like to communicate to my reader, a man I call Josephine, my petty, insignificant frustration with the way the Rambo film series was numbered. It’s totally on drugs!

The first movie in the series was called First Blood. It was a story about a Vietnam vet named John Rambo who, while hiding in an American forest, goes back in time in his mind to kill Vietnam. The premise was so good that they brought the guy back for a second movie.

The second movie in the series was called Rambo: First Blood Part II. This film cast Sylvester Stallone again in the role of Rambo, only this time he didn’t go back in time in his mind, he flew to Vietnam in a spaceship and killed it again. I understand why it was subtitled First Blood Part II, because it was the second movie in the First Blood series. But really it doesn’t make any sense because it’s the second First Blood, and I don’t think that you can have two First Bloods. Either something IS the First Blood or it isn’t. Maybe it would have been silly to call it Rambo: Two Bloods Tied for First Place, but then they should have dropped the whole First Blood thing entirely and just gone with Rambo.

The third movie in the series was called Rambo III. Where the hell did Rambo II go? They just fucking skipped right over it as though nobody would notice! They could have called it First Blood Part III and we probably would have gotten the message, because it was the third movie in the First Blood series. But they didn’t name it that, they named it after their main guy. I’m guessing that by the third movie they figured out how stupid it was to have three First Bloods. So instead they called it Rambo III when in fact it was Rambo II. The first Rambo was Rambo and there was no Rambo II, they just jumped to Rambo III. Not sure what this movie was about but I think I remember from the trailer that he uses an explosive bow and arrow that he stole from the Duke Boys. So by reverse-engineering my memory of the trailer, I guess he teleports to Hazzard County, Georgia because that’s where Vietnam is hiding, so that he can kill them a third time.

The fourth movie in the series, inexplicably, is called Rambo again. No numbers, no sub-titles, just plain Rambo. Dude, you can’t name a movie in a series the same name as another movie in the series. You can’t have two Wrath Of Khans or two Die Hard With A Vengeances. Okay? Anyway, I’m fucking lost. This second Rambo bears no resemblance to the original Rambo because now the character is like 60, although it’s still raining, which is really important when you’re killing Vietnam. This time though he doesn’t kill Vietnam, he kills Myanmar, or maybe it’s Burma, I always forget. So by now I’m totally confused about the film titles. It should either be Rambo V (based on the number-skipping precedent set when we jumped from Rambo to Rambo III, or on the proven history of only have odd-numbered Rambos.** Or it should have been called First Blood Part IV, or possibly even Fourth Blood Part One if they had any integrity to get the fucking numbering right. But no, not only did they skip two numerals, they SUBTRACTED two numerals. This time around John Fourth Blood is living in southeast Asia as though he’d never been fighting crime in Hazzard County. Weird, inconsistent premise, but whatever, the violence was exquisite.

Since I’ve probably lost you with all of my colorful language and editorializing, here’s the conflict in a nutshell with cold hard facts, and then some more editorializing:

First Blood – Fine, no problems.
Rambo: First Blood Part II – Should have been either Rambo alone or Second Blood.
Rambo III – We skipped a number, and inexplicably dropped all that First Blood shit.
Rambo – Again. Better titles would be Fourth Blood, or First Blood Part IV, or Rambo V on numeral-skipping precedent.

Somebody was in charge of naming these movies and that person totally fucked up. Can you imagine what would have happened if this person had been in charge of naming the Star Wars movies? It would have been a six-car pile-up clusterfuck!

[c] 2009 Russ of America
** I did some research and I know that the Rambo numbering sequence was neither based on primes nor on the Fibonacci sequence. JS has dubbed this system the Rambonacci sequence.

Millions of people world-wide have heard Meatloaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) and countless droves have wondered what the hell it is that he won’t do when he whines, “I would do anything for love / I would do anything for love / But I won’t do that / I won’t do that.”

Wonder no longer, my friends, for the answer is in: Deep anal. That’s what Meatloaf won’t do for love. As a bottom, anyway. Deep anal.

Savor it.

Nice album cover, BTW, Mr. Loaf. And great stage name. Cough cough.

[c] 2009 Russ of America
PS: Thanks kermalou

Secrets Of Dental Perfection

Those of you who know me are aware that I have always taken tremendous, embarrassed pride at my perfect teeth. My teeth are straight, they are white, they shine with moisture and can win over any subversive with a short flash of my dreamy pearls.

But those who REALLY know me, (and if you didn’t know this, this doesn’t mean that you are not my friend, or that you are not a loyal fan — it only means that you didn’t know something about me because you’re not as close to me as you might want to be,) know that I’ve only been to the dentist 4 times in my entire life.

When I was a young boy I would beg my father to take me to the dentist. I’d clip out ads from the PennySaver or those coupon Val-U-Paks that come in the mail. Clippings with large bold print which advertised “FULL DENTAL CHECKUP + X-RAYS + CLEANING = $5″. I’d tape the scraps of paper to his bathroom door, sneak into his car and leave them on his dashboard and hide them in his wallet when he wasn’t looking.

My pops had gotten the hint after a few years of this that I really wanted to go to the dentist. I’d started to wonder if it was just a casualty of Reaganomics, his aversion to paying out the $5, but the truth was that he was so well aware of the litany of handsome perfection he’d created when he’d had me. One morning after I’d asked him for a trip to the dentist, he brought me in front of the mirror and said, “Smile, son.” I obeyed and smiled. “What good would ever come from spending money on these teeth? We might as well save the $5 toward that kitten you wanted.” I did want a kitten, after all, so it made sense. And he was definitely right about the quality of my teeth. Every time we’d visit the supermarket, the checkout ladies would all coo over my gorgeous eyelashes and fawn over my teeth. “Oh, you have such a wonderful smile. Did you know that you have a beautiful smile? Oh what straight teeth — Did you ever wear braces? I’ve never seen teeth that bright!” It was truly embarrassing and this type of oozing over my handsomeness never went away entirely. How could it?

On my 14th birthday my father cheerfully decided that it was time to humor me. He unstuck one of my dental coupons from his bathroom door and he slapped a fiver on the receptionist desk at the dental office. I got a good cleaning and a fluoride rinse. That was nice. I was intrigued by their frightening tooth-mangler apparatus. They poked and prodded and scraped and tapped. They were baffled that I had no signs of cavities or any history of dental procedures. It was a very pleasant experience for me aside from some discomfort at having their weird, pokey, water-leaking tools jabbing into the more sensitive parts of my mouth.

“Visit the dentist every 6 months” is the official recommendation by every dental professional, national health official, elementary school teacher and man-on-the-street, but the next time I would visit the dentist was 11 years later. That was embarrassing. When you go to a new dentist they always ask you, “How long has it been since you’ve seen a dentist.” When you answer “11 years” they act a little incredulous.
“11 years?”
“Yeah, but it’s not as bad as you think, I’ve never had any dental problems. Not even a cavity!”
“Well, we’ll see about that. It HAS been 11 years, hasn’t it?”
“Well yeah, but I don’t have any pain or anything.”
“Cavities don’t always cause pain. Anyway, we have an opening next week…”

I rolled into the office and they put me through the usual battery of disbelieving questions. “So you’ve never had a cavity?”
“No.”
“Not even one?”
“No.”
“Not even in your baby teeth?”
“No. I didn’t go to a dentist for the first time until I was 14.”
“So then how do you know you never had a cavity?”
“Well, I never saw anything wrong with my teeth. Never had any pain or anything.”
“Didn’t we already tell you that cavities don’t always cause pain?”

As you would anticipate, the dentist didn’t find any cavities then either.

I went to another dentist about 5 years after that, and again I received the usual incredulity. “It’s been 5 years? You need to go to the dentist every 6 months.”
I argued, “Why do I have to go every 6 months if I never have any problems with my teeth?”
“Because going to the dentist is how you prevent problems from happening to your teeth.”
“But I don’t have any problems with my teeth.”
“How do you know if you never go to the dentist?”

And so I visited a dentist about a week ago, and all of the dental technicians praised my enamel, the straightness of my teeth, and the virgin quality of my mouth. They took digital photos of all of my teeth, x-rays, cleaned them, yadda. The dentist asked me if I’d ever had any teeth pulled. “No.”
“No? You’ve never had any teeth pulled?”
“No.”
“Not even your wisdom teeth?”
“No.”
“How often do you go to the dentist?”
“I’ve only been to a dentist about 4 times in my life.”
“4 times? You should go every 6 months!”
“I know…”

Another glowing bill of health. No cavities, etc. I didn’t expect anything different. When you’re born with the curse of unbridled handsomeness as I was, going to the dentist isn’t something you ever need worry about. At this stage, the only reason why I go to the dentist is because I like the feeling of extra-smooth teeth, and I get a kick out of shooting water out of the new-found gaps in my beautiful smile. I’m sure you are all wondering what my secret is to perfect dental hygiene. What do I do that’s so special that I’m rewarded with a Christ-like smile? Really I don’t have an official formula — I just go about doing my own thing. But if you follow all of these rules, maybe you’ll get perfect teeth. **

* Be born handsome. Handsomeness yields perfection from head to toe, skin to spirit.
* Have a straight set of teeth. I’ve never had braces. I have an overbite, but it works perfectly.
* Drink 2 liters of diet cola each day.
* Eat lemon wedges whenever included with iced tea. Eat the lemon rind as well.
* Don’t bother flossing. Use dental picks. They’re like soft plastic toothpicks with a brush and a pokey.
* Chew plastic. I’ve chewed plastic since I was a kid. Battleship pegs, straws and other soft plastics.
* Drink alcoholic beverages.
* Stay away from cigarettes.
* Have a pH neutralizing saliva.

** These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA or ADA and are not intended to treat, prevent or cure any disease.

[c] 2009 Russ of America

Dear Dexy’s Midnight Runners,

I came on Eileen.

Mystery solved.  Go back to school and get a fucking haircut.

[c] 2008 Russ of America