The Complete Al vs. BG Chick of the Decade Email

Good morning Mr. Genius,

It's been awhile since we've tried one of these stupid things, time to bring it back.

For today's post I'd like to settle on a theme. We've been discussing the virtues of different women throughout recent history (Jessica Simpson's Daisy Duke vs. Catherine Bach, etc) and I thought we'd combine that idea with a little fantasy draft. I say we pick a female in her prime from each of the last 5 decades, say the 50's on, with justification and let the good people decide who made the best pics.

Deal?

Ok, I flipped a coin and I won.

My number one draft pick is from the 80's and I could have left her as a sleeper pick. Phoebe Cates (btw, clicking on the picture to the left will give you the NSFW version of the pic). I used a quote from Fast Times yesterday and that got me thinking. She may not be the hottest or cutest girl from the 80's, but for any quy in his 30's, I'll bet she has a special place in their mammory memory. (See how quick I fell back into silly high school humor?) Fast Times came out on cable around the same time cable came out as cable. The old push button cable boxes on top of the TV. Apparently Fast Times was one of 5 movies on cable at the time because it ran constantly. It's impossible to look at that picture and not think of this song and get a little smile on your face.

There you have, my first pick.

Come back at me with two.

~

837AM

Sir Aloysius,

Yes, it has been a long time. Speaking of, noticed the timestamp on your email read 630AM, which leads me to presume that bars in the greater Malvern area have somehow agreed to stay open for yourself and Big Mike well past the 2AM usual closing time. Either that, or they found a way to caffeinate Southern Comfort, leading to a bender-slash-all-nighter on your end.

So it's fantasy draft time. We've been kicking this idea around for awhile, and I think it is a noble one. Letting the masses decide between our picks to determine a winner, however, might lead to some pandering to the peanut gallery. I will never be guilty of such things, as you will note by my pick for the decade of the 90s. As a matter of fact, my pick is such that I might take an "ofer" from the greater voting public, but I don't care. I'm picking the women I love from the past, and public opinion be damned.

Analyzing your first pick, I must just offer a simple, "Damn you Al." For my money, Phoebe Cates' semi-strip tease on the way out of the pool is movie nudity perfection. I mean, I love seeing tits on the big screen, but were I able to pluck one character out of one instance in one movie for about four-and-one-half minutes of bliss, that's exactly where I go. You wrote, "She may not be the hottest or cutest girl from the 80s..." Says who? It doesn't get any better than that girl in that bikini (and out of it) in that moment. Fuck Kevin Kline.

Anyway, plenty of directions to go here. 1980 brings Brooke Shields and her famous Calvin Klein ad. '81 puts a chick on the bench when Sandra Day gets popped for a Supreme spot - tell me that's not sexy. Jodie Foster gets a President shot in 1981, which has got to count for something. 1984 brought Geraldine Ferraro (power-chick) and Mary Lou Retton, not to mention nekkid pics of Vanessa Williams (pretty hot and NSFW too, in that pseudo-lesbo sort of way). Lady Liberty turned 100 in 1986, and still looks as good as the day she came over. 1987 gave us the double-dip of Jessica Hahn and Donna Rice, and that's got to count for something. And 1980s TV gave us some absolutely terrific choices I still hold close to my heart. Think of Khrystyne Haje, Liz & Jean Sagal (Double Trouble), Nicole Eggert (not to mention Jennifer Runyon as Gwendolyn Pierce on that show), Lisa Bonet, and one of my all-time favorites, Robin Givens.

But I'm here to make a pick... The 1980s is the age of MTV, and that's where I'm going with my pick. As a matter of fact Alvin, I can't believe I'm about to step into your wheelhouse to make this selection. When you think of music videos in the 80s, only a few different women really pop out. Christie Brinkley in "Uptown Girl" is a worthy pick, and I certainly can make that case - but I won't. I always dug the painted girl from the "Rio" video, and there was a small part of me that liked that semi-mousy blonde from "Take On Me" too, but let's not dick around. There's one video vixen with whom this conversation starts and ends - Tawny Kitaen.

We're obviously looking at women at a specific point in time, and not a career body of work, so give me Kitaen crawling around on a hood in the video for "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake. I couldn't find the pic I wanted online from this video, but MTV has the whole thing archived, and I linked it above. I was about fourteen when this thing went into heavy rotation, and even though I hated the song, I couldn't take my eyes off the video. God bless Tawny Kitaen. She's sexy as fuck, and a perfect example of a late 80s uber-babe.

So this means I can lead off for round two, right? Whatever, I'm taking the initiative and making a pick. We're going with the 1950s.

Sophia Loren. Easy, easy pick. I absolutely adore women who are built like women, not to mention that she's Italian - specifically, Sicilian. Not that I know much more about her than that pic shows, but damn. As a matter of fact, even in her high 70s she still looks pretty good. Better than whatever ragged tart you'll be trotting out, that's for sure.

Lobbed back to you, I've got shit to do,

BG


~

10:30am

Very nice pick with Tawny. I first remember seeing her in Witchboard and thinking "god damn, look at all the hair. Yummy." Damned child of the 80's is what I am. She also spent some time getting nekkid in a couple of movies which might explain the tough time trying to find a picture of her straddling the Jags (the cars, not the football team). I have a hard time watching her on the VH1 'list' shows. Such a fine creature in the 80's turning into some hideous man beast. That goes to show all you girls out there, lay off the crack and don't beat up your husband or you'll turn into Tawny.

As the 90's alternate to Tawny as video vixen, I offer up Bobbie Brown. Veteran of Warrant's Cherry Pie video and others.

In the comments, Buffalo66 has three great pics for 80's girls. Especially Kelly Preston in Mischief. I also just saw her "top off" appearance in Secret Admirer. Now that she's a crazy Tom Cruise-like Scientology disciple, good luck seeing those fun bags ever again.

Sophia Loren is also a fine pick. And she (unlike your 80's pick) aged very well.

I was tossing back and forth about my 50's pick, pun definitely not intended. Then I remembered that the original version of "...And God Created Woman" was filmed in 1956.

Brigitte Bardot is my pick for that decade. I'll forgive her heritage and the fact that she later became some whacko hermet only coming out to beat people up for wearing fur. As far as I'm concerned, she was the original movie sex kitten. All who came after her should be thanking her. An amazingly beautiful woman who managed to make you forget that you were watching a movie in French.

Just to make the pick even that much better, I just saw that we have the same birthday

I'm taking the easy way out with my 70's pick. Flipping through different pictures I couldn't help but remember that poster. As a young impressionable kid, I walked into my friends room after he had just put the poster up. I was stunned. Why would a beautiful woman like that be smuggling pencil erasures in her bathing suit. It made no sense.

Everyone remembers her from Charlie's Angels but I have fond memories of her short appearance in Logan's Run. Getting chased around an imaginary future city wearing barely more than a bedsheet. And who can forget her role as the tennis instructor in an episode of Charlie's Angels (I swear to god I'm trying to find a picture of that episode). Bra? She don't need no stinking bra.

Batter up!

~

1115AM

Alexander the Great,

I'm still in shorts this morning, as I called in to work just to parry with you on this topic.

Okay, that's not entirely true. I did have a headache, and I did need to take care of it, so far as anyone else is concerned. But don't think for a second I didn't want to devote my full attention to the topic at hand. This is serious business, and when I play, I play to win. And I think my 80s pick puts me ahead in the Joe and Blood segment of the population, but puts me significantly behind when the ladies check in to vote. Chicks are going to be with you on the Phoebe pick, but it's as much because I went for the "bad girl" as there is any loyalty to the Phoebe side of the coin with them. But my Sophia Loren selection was crafty. I don't think Bardot is a bad pick necessarily, but you're easily a silver medalist there, regardless of your pick. It just ain't happening for you versus Sophia.

The trick now is knowing you get first pick of whatever decades I choose to ignore from the 60s/90s/00s, so I must make this next pick count. I think you could conceivably usurp my pick in one of those decades, won't be remotely close in another, and I have no idea where you'll go in the third.

But I have to check in with a 70s babe now, right? Hmm... Farrah was a hell of a good pick. It's really the equivalent of standing under the opponent's basket while the rest of your team plays defense and just making the easy uncontested layup all alone when they huck the ball down your end. Cherry-picking. Then again, if you hadn't done it, I would have. So there we go.

I'm having a hard time. From TV I could go with Lindsey Waggoner from The Bionic Woman, Cheryl Ladd from Charlie's Angels, Loretta Swit (underrated) from MASH, or even going outside the US box by looking at Carol Cleveland from Monty Python. Cleveland, actually, is really tempting. I love a funny girl with big tits. From movies I actually really dig Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, the girl who played Appollonia in The Godfather, just about any Bond girl, and Goldie Hawn in movies like Foul Play. If you want a stereotypical woman of the 70s, it'd have to be Twiggy, but I can't go there. And maybe I'd look to Bo Derek, but her and Farrah are basically interchangeable, so I need a curveball.

I have to go with Lynda Carter. Piercing blue eyes, Wonder Woman get-up? I'm figuring I am conceding this round to you Mr. Hang, but let me make my case anyway. First, Carter is more classically beautiful than Fawcett. Farrah's probably hotter, but I bet there are enough people in the Carter camp to make this a tough race. Plus, they both have something iconic going for them. In Farrah's case, it's the poster. Carter, naturally, has the costume. And while Fawcett is the precursor to Pam Anderson and Gena Lee Nolin, Carter brings to mind Monica Bellucci, Jennifer Connolly, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Here's a pic out of costume, just for context's sake too:

So there.

Okay, so now a decade switch, and a roll of the dice as to which direction I should go... Alright, I'm going present-day. Despite any sort of assumptions of crazy insanity under which she may or may not be operating, there's only one female celebrity that just drops my jaw every time I see her. Curvy as hell, talented, big lips, perfect eyes...

Girl's perfect, so far as I'm concerned. She looks terrific naked, and is probably the one woman out there that I don't mind that she's gotten tattooed - not that she's looking for my validation or anything.

Honestly? I consider this to be cherry-picking as well. I don't know of another celebrity who's remotely close.

Ping? PONG.


~

1230pm

How about another quick picture of Briggite Bardot to change your mind? Showcasing why everyone called Claudia Schiffer the "Brigitte Bardot" of her time. Ribbit.

Man, you tell me that Farrah was cherry-picking? There's only one way to combat that. I could go with any of the current crop. Lindsay Lohan, the Hilton tramps, blah blah blah. All crap and come up short to your pick.

So I offer up the only girl in the world that has a chance to beat Angelina. The one. The only.....

Mrs. CantHang! How can you deny me? You've met her, you've knocked back drinks with her, you've DEFINTELY got a better chance of scoring... wait a second. Stop right there. I know you're gonna cry foul and I hate to give up.

I thought about going with a sleeper pick. Allison Sweeney has always given my motor a little giddy up and go. Cute and curvy in all the right places. I can honestly say I've never seen any of her work other than occasional VH1 formula crap but still a cutie. I was even thinking about using Jenny Finch since you have such an obvious blind spot for her.

Instead, I'm going to fight fire with fire. I'm going for the people who don't care for Ms. Jolie. Jessica Alba also has the curves and the pout. And I think we're all surprised that Honey never received a single Oscar nomination. She hit the ground running with Dark Angel in 2000 and has been stunning men across the globe every since.

There you have my challenger to the mighty Jolie. Vote your conscience! This should lock up the Pauly vote for sure.

While we're talking current girls, check on Nikki Griffin on the front page of imdb.com today. Enjoy.

My next pick is for the 1960's and Raquel Welch. This too might be a cherry picker, err, pick. She came firing out early with One Million Years B.C. then set everyone's heart aflutter with the original (and much funnier) Bedazzled. And for christ sake, if BG gets credit for Sophia Loren aging well, Raquel Welch has to be in the same category.

I think my 60's pick is another slam dunk and should be tough to beat. Feel free to give it your best shot.






~

152PM

Alistair Old Bean,

Raquel Welch is a hell of a good pick. Her daughter was a hottie too, as evidenced by this very much NSFW picture. Another one out of the Sophia Loren school of curvy Mediterranean looking women, not that I need to influence my Sophia pick in the polling. I think I'm well out front in that one.

By the way, for 70s girl, I forgot to mention one of my darkhorse candidates I almost threw into the mix. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Marilu Henner, but couldn't in good conscience put her above Lynda Carter. I'm really pleased the 70s vote has been closer than I thought it would be. I'd take Carter over Fawcett any day, but I thought it was just me.

So into the 60s, and I'll just cut the bullshit and make a pick. My favorite things about the 60s were torpedo tits and tight sweaters, and if you mix those skin-tight pants in with those wardrobe choices, then you're speaking my language. And you're probably talking about Ann-Margret.



I can't claim to have seen many of her movies, but when I think of 60s chicks, it's Ann-Margret and Jane Fonda as Barbarella. I don't think you can go wrong either way.



So that just leaves the 1990s... And this is where I lose the game, if I weren't behind already. Before I get too deep into this, I want to remind the voters that this pick has absolutely nothing to do with how she looks today, and has not been decided upon based on any evaluations of personality. If that were the case, I'd have to go a completely different direction. See, I'm not going to pander to the people on this one and pick Cindy Crawford, Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, or even Stephanie Seymour in the "November Rain" video.

And see, the more I think about this one, the more I'm teetering towards changing my mind. Goddammit. Part of me wants to take Kournikova, because she was really rocking back around 1999, but I'm not going to. I could also go with Helena Christensen from the Chris Isaak "Wicked Game" video and try to nail this down by appealing to your memories of that song.

It's a crisis right now. There are two roads I can travel right now - and I just have to pick which one...

Let's go this way. Between 1994 and 1996 I lived in a house in college that was co-ed with one hot chick that had apparently ordered from Victoria's Secret (and looked like Yasmeen Ghauri, but that's neither here nor there) in the past. Anyway, before Internet porn really took off, all us guys had was the Victoria's Secret catalog.




And my favorite was Laetitia Casta. She's beautiful, curvy, and posed in a vast variety of skimpy lingerie for my viewing pleasure. I enjoy the hell out of her work. By the way, if you're bored and not at work, feel free to troll for her naked pictures. Damned if she doesn't look terrific without clothes.

And I know it's killing you to know who I left off the list. I just couldn't put her up as my woman of the 90s, even though were I to be offered one female form in a Star Trek holodeck for my pleasure, she'd be it. No making fun, she was awesome before she opened her mouth on camera:



As much as I hate to lose, them's my picks and I'm sticking to them.

Sincerely yours,

BG

~

I'm not going to necessarily disagree with your pick of Ann-Margret. It was a close call between me choosing her and Raquel Welch. My reason for taking Raquel was hottness factor. Ann-Marget is a beauty, but more on the cute side. I think Raquel stands out more than Ann.

As for my final pick, the 90's. I curse you for mentioning early Anna. She's was fine as long as she was popping speed and keeping her mouth shut during her Guess girl days. But now it will look like I'm pigging backing on your pick.

So I'm going with one of my favorites. Nikki Cox (love the stripper name right off the bat). You've got to give credit to any girl that can carry a crappy show where she has to interact with a stuffed animal with BobCat's voice, THEN turn around and marry the dolt. People don't automatically cringe when she speaks. I think she has all the proper, ahem, attributes to take the vote for 90's hottie. Bonus points now that she works on a show about Vegas?

Come on. At least she finally dumped BobCat!

This was a tough decade. I was looking at Tiffany Amber Thiessen, Anna Nicole, Eliza Dushku, Katie Holmes (Dawson's Creek, pre-nut job lover), etc.

~

The final teams....

BoyGenius -

Sophia Loren
Ann-Margret
Lynda Carter
Tawny Kitaen
Laetitia Casta
Angelina Jolie

AlCantHang -

Brigitte Bardot
Raquel Welch
Farrah Fawcett
Phoebe Cates
Nikki Cox
Jessical Alba

I hope everyone enjoyed this. All the decades are listed above and feel free to vote.

BG and I thank you for stopping by.

Cheers.

Return of the Gangsta

No, I didn't get hit by a truck.

No, I didn't go broke playing low limit Razz on FTP and go into a coma from donating blood for just one more buy-in.

And no, the other site to which I'm contributing isn't what has pulled me away from here.

See, I did want a hiatus. I'm really feeling like I've hit the bottom of the well as far as stories from my past, and just wanted a break to recharge. Then I managed to get all stuck inside my head and just couldn't seem to make fingers-hit-keystrokes happen the way I wanted to.

I started giving a shit. Bad idea.

I'm still not out and feeling good about blogging. Hell, part of me thought a little bit about giving this up for a long while, but I don't think I can live with that. I'm just not hammering out what I feel I want to be hammering out in this space lately, and it bugs me a little too much.

It shouldn't, but it does.

So basically, it's back to the drawing board - and by drawing board, I mean "blog." I just need to type away for a little while to feel good about doing this again. Whatever.

So, in the interest of getting unstuck, just some generic ramblings...

· I was downtown in this little town of mine with 200,000 of my closest friends for what ended up being the BEST. FIREWORKS. EVER. to close out our city's Coast Guard Festival. Every year some of the ground effects start small fires on the dune preserve from which they shoot off the mortars, but not like this year. This year's fire's were enormous.

The first one caught right in my line of sight across the channel (city -- channel -- dune) and blew higher on the hill quite quickly. When the firefighters came down the dune to try to attack the fire from its source, one of them was silhoutted against the fire twice his height, which gave a pretty fun looking optical illusion that the firefighter was actually engulfed in flames. There was a family next to me with a (roughly) six year-old daughter, and the mom pointed out the men descending the hill. The daughter watched closely, and when the silhoutte effect happened, she started shrieking, "Mommy! Mommy! That man is on fire! I hate fireworks! I wanna go home now!"

Minutes earlier, by the way, as the firemen were approaching the fire, I said to the guy from that family, "Sheesh, that's a lot of trouble just to roast some marshmallows." The mom quickly said, "Is that what they're doing?"

Uh huh.

It also bears mentioning that I spent the entire night wandering around wishing I was 18 again. Jesuschrist girls are ridiculous - I don't remember them being that attractive when I was that age. I'm all for this latest fashion trend too, which is the white mini-skirt/brown shirt combo on blondes. I saw that all over last Saturday, and I must say I approve. Wholeheartedly.

By the way, the "wishing I was 18 again" thing doesn't necessarily mean I'd get any off these girls. Me at 18 is less desirable than the Me at 31 with an average 18-19 year old girl, simply due to the "buy me Boone's" factor.

· SloeJack "tagged" me with a bidding that I should write up my list of what I do and don't look for in a woman. I will, sometime soon, respond to that. I promise. That being said ladies, work on your homophones and leave the patchouli on the rack at your local new-agey bullshit store. And the more you can act like Mary Louise Parker as Amy Gardner on The West Wing, the better.

· If you think I'm responding to anything tangentially said about me lately in this post or anywhere else, you're nuts. I haven't spent my life obsessing over what other people might think of me to let one more insecurity creep in. Sorry guys, no room at the inn. Move along.

· My dad managed to catch (figuratively, as in "identify") a detaching retina before it fell off completely, and is now under doctor's orders to lie on his back and spend something like a week not looking down below his nose. How do you manage that? By the way, he managed to be bored enough to tell me the story of the doc freezing his eyeball and putting the retina back in place in full gory detail. I am going to pretend I forgot the contents of that conversation.

· Rumors are indeed true, another email joust with Sir Al is likely due tomorrow.

· I've been gambling harder than I have in the past lately, but that's what happens when you go on a hot streak, I suppose. I pushed somewhere in the $450 neighborhood through the windows at YouBet on the horses across two weekends, actually showing a profit through the first 2/3 of the bets. Of course, my $150 deposit sits now at $40, and my $24 bet live at the track is represented by a $12 ticket in my pocket. Not a good return.

Poker kicked my ass last week Friday too, with an impromptu home game funnelling $40 of my $60 worth of buy-ins to the THG law school payoff fund. One buy-in to THG was lost in the first orbit when my AJ found a JJQ flop when he had QQ down, another buy-in (to someone else) when my AJ landed top pair, and I was convinced he didn't have 33 or 55 for a set (oops), and then I ran AQ into a very much made hand for THG when I was in the "fuck it, I don't care" portion of my night.

Then Saturday I run +$120 at FTP playing 2/4, then back it up with a +$135 session on Sunday. I cashed out $175 of that, and bought Madden 2006. Not that the video game ran $175, but I gotta think of something nice I can buy for myself otherwise.

It is a life-affirming feeling to hit hands and have them stand up to idiots on the draw. That being said, I made a couple of decisions that had Maigrey wondering how someone like me can actually do okay at the tables. I'll admit, I need to go back to the lab and figure out why I'm such a retard. No one said I'm a real live poker player.

· The highlight of each day lately has been coming up with a good punchline for "The Rake" or "Remainders" at OJ. Makes me feel like a hundred bucks when I can make myself laugh.

· I got accused on a horse racing message board of being a paid shill for that piece of handicapping software I had reviewed on OJ. Actually, some dude from Pixar (I only mentioned, because he offered a tour should I ever be out that way) tossed us a question about the DRF article that talked about it, and since the reviewer was a well-respected handicapper, I bought it with my own cash and gave it a shot.

Someone on the message board happened to see the OJ post, and asked the rest of the group there who we were. AJ showed me the thread (which we found via the stat counter), and I actually replied to the thread telling them I had a good experience with the software.

Come to find out, the guy who started the thread was the author of the software, and I was the second poster in it. The "fraud!" accusations came quick after that. And yes, it did look suspicious.

Then again, suspicious or not, April isn't about to give back her Butter Head money.

· More later...