 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Any male revue sans Jimmy Jan is mediocre
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 10, 2000 One by one they strutted down the runway. In skimpy clothes, answering inane questions with even more inane answers aimed more at displaying their dimples than their intellects, they posed and teased and pouted. And across America, okay, I can only speak for Dade City, but certainly across Dade City, beer drinking spectators made crude anatomical jokes as they speculated on completely fantastical future sexual liaisons about as likely to happen as an interesting presidential debate or the Bucs getting into the Super Bowl. But for a change it was women, in fact three women, whose taste and poise I generally admire, drooling over the male contestants on the Fox television network's Sexiest Bachelors in America competition last week. First, there was a brief wrestling match for the remote control. I was ready to opt for 1950s sitcom reruns, or the Especially Stupid Pastime Network (ESPN), or even a test pattern, but my fiancee, egged on by her heavy-breathing daughter and best friend, insisted on watching this sad parody of every bad beauty pageant in the history of sexism. I refused to lower myself to watching and went into what I call the study. "Sure," she remonstrated the next day, "confronted with something like your own ogling of slightly postpubescent women in their ever-practical high-heels and bathing suits for decades, you take heel and retire to the bathtub with a book." I was ready for her. "Oh," I said, "yeah?" I thought she had already understood that my boycott of the show was based on the fact that it was a sham because I, a widower, and still, therefore, technically a bachelor, had not been invited to compete. True, I would have declined, stating my engaged and therefore unavailable status, I told her, to the accompaniment of loud snorts. But, like every pageant hopeful, I still daydream about my intro: "Jimmy Jan Glidewell," the announcer would have intoned (every contestant has to have three names, with the first, preferably, ending with an "ee" sound) "is 56 years old and hails from Dade City, Florida. He's 5-8 (yes, I would too be, in heels) and weighs 263 pounds and, although he doesn't have a real job, says he someday wants to be a veteran . . . because he loves animals." (Yes, I said veteran instead of veterinarian and, yes, I stole the line from my blues-singing buddy, Mindy Simmons, who uses it in a song about blonds and, yes, I think my very platinum hair still passes for blond. Leave me alone, this is my fantasy.) I will say that our schoolteacher friend, the lustiest of the lusters, picked the winner, from the beginning. Must be some kind of schoolteacher ESP or pheromone thing. My fiancee and my daughter-in-waiting (a term I like) more than stepdaughter-to-be were both enraptured over one contestant (nameless here, he did have pretty big biceps) and, when I pointed out that he sounded like his IQ was somewhere around his shoe size, I was fixated with one of those "Who cares, he's not putting up the space station," looks and re-banished to the bathroom. I am appalled that any institution, even a television network, would lower itself to reducing human beings to a collection of pectoral and gluteal muscles while completely ignoring the finer and more spiritual aspects of the human condition and interpersonal relationships. I would have more to say, but I hear Battle of the Baywatch Bimbos is on tonight and I don't want to miss it. My thanks to those of you who inquired or commiserated about my stolen lemon truck. I am relatively happy to announce that it was recovered by Lake Alfred police early Friday morning and will be returned soon -- meaning I will soon be reacquiring a vehicle the shortcomings of which I have described to well over 100,000 readers. Probably won't be easy to sell now, will it?
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
Citrus Times |
