The supercool dudes at UrbanDaddy, who totally get just as much play now as they did in their Psi Upsilon days — you better believe it, bra! —hipped us to the opening of a new restaurant from noted felon/reality show character Jeffrey Chodorow. Like many things that UrbanDaddy hips us to, it's kind of a perfect storm of bankery douche clich s. Checklist:
Every week, we get a few zillion emails from people who want to nominate someone for the Douchebag Hall of Fame, or just point out that someone is a douche. While many of the people nominated are completely Summer's Evey, sometimes they just lack that special essential something that elevates them to Hall of Fame status. But that's no reason not to share the joy/burden of knowing about their douchey antics with the rest of the class. Also, we wanted an excuse to share this tangetially-related coinage with you:
"Wow, I thought I was being a douchebag, but you have really out-douched me this time. Douch
"If my 20-year-old self could see me now at 35, he'd want to kick my ass," says Dan Peres in the opening of his Letter From The Editor in the current Details. It's the yuppie issue, and Dan wants you to know that while he used to be pretty cool (smoked pot, wore flannel, lived in the Village), he's grown and changed, and now he's the kind of douche that he used to despise. He lets you know this in painful, painstaking detail. Since the piece is not online, and God knows you don't want anyone to see you actually buying Details we've taken the liberty of reproducing it below. It's a long read, but ultimately worth it, because, as Dan comes to terms with his own douchery, so must we all. Enjoy.
Because there's always room for more annual summation stunts, the lexicographers at Merriam-Webster have begun their yearly search for "word of the year" — a single term that aptly sums up all of 2006. Last year's reductionist masterpiece was "integrity." But this year, rather than just choosing from Internet and press mentions, Merriam-Webster is accepting online submissions of WOTY candidates. Do we even need to spell out the obvious course of action? Follow your conscience. Vote douchebag.
Words fail us on this one. It's like Reservoir Douches. Anyway, if you need another reason to avoid Stereo on a Friday night - or any time, really - click the link below.
So that Bank of America "One" song made more of an impression than we realized. Apart from eliciting a flurry of C&D's (it also inspired the above cover version from new Modest Mouse guitarist Johnny Marr and adorable alopecian funnyman David Cross. How long before YouTube brings us the Patton Oswalt parody of the Aleksey Vayner video?
We get letters. Specifically, we get cc'd on letters alleging journalistic shenanigans. Late last month we mentioned a Nick Paumgarten New Yorker article about the db who wrote The 48 Laws of Power. Comes now correspondence from Chris Lee, an L.A. Times reporter who has what the hip hop community calls a "beef" with Paumgarten.
Notice we didn't say "wrapping up the whole fucktard thing." Because guess what? We can't say "fucktard" in a headline. (We can post a picture of a big black dildo, though. We make the rules!aren't quite sure what all of the rules are yet!) Anyway, thanks to all who voted. Fucktard edged out our obvious favorite, twatwaffle, by a mere 196 votes. This is pretty much the only election result that we're disappointed in, and frankly, it's left us with a nagging . . . how to put this? . . . not-so-fresh feeling. There's really only one solution, and it's made of vinegar and water and floral fragrance. Yes, you called it right, skeptical commenters: we're going to stick with douchebag for now, with an occasional fucktard/twatwaffle thrown in for kicks. But rest assured that we'll always be on the lookout for replacements . . . so keep sending them our way when the mood strikes you.
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Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.
Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.
Preliminary results are in, and the quest to replace 'Douchebag' in our insult lexicon is going well — well, sort of. Despite all your helpful emails and comments, we're still looking for something with douchebag's je ne sais quoi. The way it trips off the tongue in two syllables is especially important, we've noticed, so that unfortunately eliminates all the choads, snatches, and pricks from the running to be America's Next Top Word That Means Douchebag. And extra points will be awarded if the epithet has douchebag's remarkable ability to be shortened (douche, d-bag) and lengthened (douchebaggery, douchebaguette, douche-o-matic, doucheology, etc). What we're getting at, dear twatwaffles, is that in spite of your Tourette's-y outbursts yesterday, we're still looking. Write or comment, and do it soon — we left the Balneol in the office lavatory, and let's just say that this is one busy household.
Now that half of us have a vagina (it's like Middlesex!) there's been some discussion of the whole D-word issue. Don't get us wrong. It's not that (50%) of our delicate ladyish sensibilities are offended or anything; far from it. It's just that, as vagina-havers, we want to branch out a little bit in the realm of vagina-related insults. Also, we couldn't help but notice that the trope is now so bitten and tired, it pretty much begs to be called "Already Over" (if Already Over wasn't Already Over, obvs). Plus, Dolce has co-opted it for his own use. What a fucking asswizard!
But after scraping the barrel-bottom pretty hard, we couldn't come up with a replacement term of insultdearment. So we turn to you, dear readers. What is the new word we'll be overusing compulsively? Email, or just leave 'em in the comments. The winning neologist will receive a bottle of luxurious Balneol Perianal Cleansing Lotion, pictured above. It may not seem like much, but according to a commenter at drugstore.com, "it will last at least 6 to 8 months even in the most busy of households." Rules here.
There's a great piece in this week's New Yorker (not online, unfortunately) about Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, an advice manual basically designed to teach you how to get over. The book is full of all sorts of asshatty "laws" ("Crush your enemy totally," "Play a sucker to catch a sucker," etc.), and, not unsurprisingly, has become something of a bible for society's most repellent figures (Dov Charney has Greene "on retainer."), many of them from the hip hop community. Nick Paumgarten does a heck of a job drawing out Greene's douchery, and you should pick up a print copy to get the full flavor, but here's our favorite part, which takes place at a party celebrating the new Ludacris record:
This is fairly obviously a joke of some sort but we know how you love your douchebags, and whoever put this together has a pretty good eye for the line that separates the douche bottle from the douchebag. Also, there are a lot of pictures of shirtless guys, so, you know, bonus.
