I really wanted to like “Fever Pitch,” but…well…the headline of my new column will tell you a lot: “No Joy in Hackville: Fever Pitch Fouls One Off.” Here’s an excerpt:

But if watching the Final Four is heroin, then watching Hoosiers is methadone. I get my fix by watching sports movies. And I love sports movies, whether they’re about sports—All the Rights Moves—“sports”—The Cutting Edge—or something else entirely that is treated as a sport—8 Mile, Flashdance or The Big Tease. I identify with the hero, because he or she is almost always the underdog or becomes the underdog at some point in the movie. I love that bizarre empathy I feel for those brats in The Mighty Ducks or for Torrance in Bring It On. It’s a form of cheer sex, I think.

Now, would you please read the whole thing? Thanks.

This week I wrote about Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. As you can imagine, I had more fun writing my column than seeing the movie. The headline? “Miss Congeniality 2: It’s no Miss Congeniality 1.” Hee. A selection:

I didn’t laugh until Dolly Parton showed up. Dolly isn’t funny, but in mistaking Dolly for a Dolly Parton imitator, Gracie pokes Dolly’s breasts rather forcefully. It’s more or less the same joke that Austin Powers used when he slurred, “She’s a man, baby!” and tried to pull off an old woman’s wig. But it wasn’t a wig—it was her hair! And they’re not fake breasts—they’re Dolly’s titties! Good times, good times.

Anyway: Enjoy!

Is that’s time of the month again. Or, it’s that time of the two-week cycle. My new column is up. I wrote about “Millions” and guilt. I hope y’all like it. Here’s the link (in case you haven’t noticed that when there are three little dots before the blog title, the title links to whatever I’m talking about–and there’s an identical link at the end of the entry attached to “and here’s the link, my child.”) And here’s the illo.

Dude, Maisy is so fucking impressive.

My new column is up. As you probably have surmised, it’s about “Inside Deep Throat.” This is how it begins:

I saw Deep Throat just after I turned seventeen. I was spending the night at my friend John’s house. His parents were out of town, and the old man who was keeping an eye on John and his little brother went to sleep at ten that night. If John’s mother knew why I was spending the night, her head would have popped off. This was a woman who thought her seventeen-year-old son needed a babysitter when she and her husband went away for the weekend. In her over-protective tunnel vision, it hadn’t occurred to her that, even with the babysitter, John would teach me how to get drunk and show me his father’s copy of the most famous dirty movie of all time. I had asked for drinking lessons; John had suggested the porn as a chaser. Come to think of it, I guess he needed a better babysitter.

Please read the column and tell others to read it, too. Thanks!