Real Joe

Re: yesterday’s blog, my son Tyson wonders what’s going in a woman’s head who chooses to get involved with a man 20-40 years her senior. “Like almost everything else, I believe this is a two way street.”

Good point. Must be some kind of father-figure issue but one advice columnist says another possibility is that “… she hasn’t reached her sexual peak and may not be comfortable with guys her own age who can’t think of anything but sex.”

But there’s a range of weirdness/wrongness, too — Example A) forty-something Presidents Kennedy and Clinton boinking 20 yr-old interns; Example B) 62-year-old Woody Allen marrying the 27-year-old adopted daughter of his former lover. Those guys are more responsible/irresponsible than the women.

I can’t find it on the web but I once read that the French have a rule-of-thumb for May-Sept romances… something like “a man should not get involved with a woman who’s younger than half his age plus nine.” So for 24 year-old guy, the woman should at least be 21. For a 70 year-old geezer like Robert Duvall, 44 would be the low end. Makes some sense.

In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small things they show themselves as they are. — Nicholas Chamfort

Great coaches, not-so-great men, but do we really care?

The Coach Fouls Out: Frat-house behavior is a problem not just of the boys on the court but also of the men with the clipboards

Incidents cause coaches to reflect upon their influence

Evidently in the May issue of W is this gem of a quote from Billy Bob Thornton: “I’m a guy who’s always gotten women. Always. Since I was a child. Then a guy writes in a newspaper, ‘How did he ever get her?’ Well, buddy, follow me back to the first grade and I’ll show you how!”

I’m curious why a women’s magazine would glorify this kind of thinking from a 46 year-old guy who’s been married five times, most recently to 26 year-old Angelina Jolie — which ended in divorce last summer. He can get ‘em, but he can’t seem to keep ‘em.

More examples: Take a look at geezer Harrison Ford with his new honey child, Calista Flockhart. Or seventy-something Robert Duvall with his real-life twenty-something girlfriend Luciana Pedraza in the movie Assassination Tango.

This shit can get in your head if you’re not careful.

Joel Stein in this week’s Time essay: For Lad Mags, the Jig Is Up: Yet men read Maxim on planes, buy it without an accompanying pack of Trident and use their real name on their subscription. The brilliant marketing of the magazine — closing the gap between the MTV-ized sexuality to which we’ve become inured and soft-core porn — makes men feel this is acceptable behavior. But the objective of Maxim is the same as that of any porn magazine or J. Lo video — to make me dance, where dance is loosely defined as moving the way I feel like moving.

Maureen Dowd in the NY Times weighed in on the issue this week: Look Good, Act Cool and mixed in the flap over the lingerie Barbies as well as women fawning over Dubya in a flight suit. Lisa Schiffren, a Quayle speechwriter who wrote the “Murphy Brown” rant, gushed in a Wall Street Journal piece entitled “Hey, Flyboy” that President Bush in a flight suit was “really hot . . . as in virile, sexy and powerful.” Huh?

And the Boston Globe reports: Playboy still your father’s mag but stay tuned. They’ve hired a couple of Maxim editors to give Playboy a makeover.

Want a soft porn women’s magazine this month? A feature piece in this month’s W is Oh, Pamela! Bruce Weber shoots Pamela Anderson for W. The photo gallery is a Maxim clone. (I checked it out for you — journalistic integrity.) Wal-Mart carries W.

Kudos to Dads and Daughters for pressuring Macy’s to drop the Bongo jeans ads that appeared recently in Seventeen and Teen People magazines.

William Bennett on his gambling: “I play fairly high stakes. I adhere to the law. I don’t play the ‘milk money.’ I don’t put my family at risk, and I don’t owe anyone anything.” Bennett said he did not have a problem himself and likened gambling to drinking alcohol… “I view it as drinking,” he said. “If you can’t handle it, don’t do it.”

But when you visit casinos for two or three days at a time, how can it not be a problem that’s affecting your life? This guy’s likely addicted but he can’t see it. Hopefully, his family will use some of that tough love to make him see it.

“The National Father’s Day Committee, a not-for-profit, non-commercial organization that strives to heighten the meaning and observance of Father’s Day, is teaming up with Esquire to name the first ever “Everyday Father of the Year” at this coming spring’s awards luncheon. Here, the winning father will be honored alongside ex-NFL star Steve Young, NY Knick legend Patrick Ewing, fashion designer Joseph Abboud, and New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. A panel of experts will select one deserving father based on the following attributes: dedication, family values, citizenship, charity, civility, responsibility, and reverence.”

Hey, what about abs? And taste in cufflinks?

NY Times: 3 Racy Men’s Magazines Banned by Wal-Mart

They certainly have the right to yank off (heh) Maxim, Stuff and FHM from their shelves and I can understand how displaying these magazines is offensive to many shoppers. But why not Cosmopolitan and its ilk? Or the trashy romance novels that women buy with the racy covers that objectify men?

Salon Premium: Endless love; “The men are deeper, and the sex can be sweet as well as hot. But dating at 41 is no less exquisitely confusing than it is at 21… I still wish I had a boyfriend, and it wasn’t great getting dumped twice in a long, cold, war-poisoned winter. But it’s finally spring, and the energy of those affairs — and even of the dates with my fellow lonelyhearts seeking love on the computer — has been transformed. They’re all there in this newest burst of dumb hope, lust, curiosity, vague spiritual hoo-ha, and random affection for humanity. Wherever that sap flows from and whether or not you call it a form of love, I’m grateful for it in my constantly humbling life.”

Salon Premium: The sins of the father; “Why, almost 50 years later, is my mother still protecting the man who abused us both?… She was an old woman and I was not going to change her. But I had not let her go to her grave with my secret or her own. I was quiet for a bit and let myself feel sorry for the little girl that had been my mother, the child who was abused by her father but had needed to protect him in order to feel loved.”

A couple of week’s ago I wrote about Jacquelyn Mitchard’s April 13 column re: sex talks with teens in which she promised some answers in a follow-up column. Mitchard’s Part II column, Live in teens’ moment in sex talks, provides it:

“Or you can do what we’ve done in our family: Anybody who abstains through high school gets $500.”

Well, it’s a novel plan, I’ll give her that, but she doesn’t specifically say what activities need to be abstained from to win the prize. I assume oral and vaginal sex but what about second base fondling? Third base digital exploration? And more to the point, what about the relationship… the degree of emotional closeness that the couple may or may have reached? Would she be happy if her sons consistently scheme to get into a girl’s pants on the first date but who refrain from outercourse and intercourse in order to stay in the running for the money? Would she be at all concerned about a son or daughter who dated the same person for two years but who never went further than holding hands and a peck on the face?

You blew this one, Jacquelyn.