Don't bring your weakness to the Preakness

We’re fortunate enough to have a fellow Association member who has a long running tradition of attending the Preakness Stakes every year at Pimlico near Baltimore and Washington DC. It’s a great weekend away: get drunk with your friends, scream at animals, and making money. Like any large event, the Preakness has a widely varied crowd from high style to low brow. We put together a pictures of few of our favorites from the Association, friends of the Association, and the crowd after the jump for you to enjoy.

Warning: this may consume your life

Our sincere apologies to all the Handsome faithful out there. While we were toiling away on building other beautiful (but less Handsome) websites, you were coming to visit, hoping to find something new to make your life just a little more  Handsome – a shining beacon in these dark times. Unfortunately, we were working hours that would have bought laughter to garment workers in Bangladesh and inspired mocking postcards from children working double shifts as diamond miners and child soldiers in central Africa. That saddens us, both that those things exist, and that we didn’t have a life.

Anyway – we’re back, and are aiming to have 100 posts by our one year anniversary in July. More posts to come on dapper items, party jams, and delicious food.

Man Snacks, for Men

We’re back after a sizeable hiatus to see our family in Louisiana in honor of great religious holidays like Christmas and the Great Depression 2009. To hell with our detractors, we’re ready to make your 2009 as handsome as possible.

To kick things off, after recommending a trio of Handsome gifts we wanted to share one of the many excellent gifts received from our family and friends. I’m a handsome man, and I deserve some man snackies goddamnit. To that end, a dear friend gave us some odd Japanese snacks designed not just for anyone – but for men. Pizza, burgers, pot roast? Fuck no. We’re talking about chocolate dipped pretzel wonders called pocky. And not just any pocky – MEN’S POCKY. Throw in some Beer Pretz and some strange Men’s candies/lozenges/ruffies and you’ve got a funny, tasty, and poignant gift. Yeah I said it, it’s poignant.

Happy New Year!

You and 93,000 of your closes friends.

Traveling to Baton Rouge Louisiana for an LSU football game is one of Dirty Handsome’s most important annual rituals. After a review of the 2008 LSU football schedule the choice was clear: return home for the LSU vs Alabama football game to participate in the fierce rivalry bourne our of over one hundred years of football and an intense, searing, infiniate hatred for Alabama football couch Nick Satan. Ugh, just typing that name out makes me want to cut off my fingers as punishment.

Excitement, loyalty, and passion for LSU football is unparalleled in the sports world. I know, I know, you’re sitting at home thinking that your tailgates at ‘the’ Ohio State were awesome, or that the sacriledge of Touchdown Jesus is fantastic, or that USC football is totally awesome and TOTALLY plays hard conference games. You’re wrong. Tiger football isn’t just a way to spend a Saturday or the only outlet to decent football in a 1,000 mile radius (looking at you USC). It is a tradition that goes back to 1894, a unifying cultural force is an occasionally backward state, and a rallying point for a state that has weathered disasters ranging from segregation to Gustav.

LSU football is life in South Louisiana. People plan weddings on bye weeks. Upwards of 300,000 fans will be on campus for any given homegame, most of which will actually have to go home to watch the game or watch at their tailgate outside the stadium gates. Fans will travel great distances for games; Dirty Handsome attended the LSU at Arizona game in 2003, along with 10,000 other LSU fans. The stadium at UA only seats 50,000 – a full 20% of fans in the stadium were Tigers.

In Louisiana, wearing purple and gold isn’t just advisable, it’s well over the other side of tacky. Hell, it’s two of the three Mardi Gras colors (another fashion forward stride for Louisiana). Spirit is shown a variety of ways around campus – click through the gallery below to check out the variety of ways Tiger fans show their pride.

Political costumes were popular - a toast to the passing of Prop 2

We’re catching up on a few things here at Handsome HQ and finally downloaded our pictures from Halloween night at the “parade” in West Hollywood. While some folks think that Halloween is something of a singularity amongst other evenings, we Handsomely believe that it’s a lot like every other night in Los Angeles: everyone is wearing a stupid outfit that they believe is clever, everyone is out to not-so-secretly gawk at everyone else’s stupid outfit, and somehow everyone still manages to look great in that shallowish Southern California way.

A great number of people in town work in creative industries, work in “the industry” and have access to pro costumes, or are desperate to be in “the industry” and use the night to display just how much they are truly attention whores. This perfect storm of talent, resources, and vanity combines to make some very elaborate, thoughtful, and interesting costumes. Throw in alcohol, transvestites, and loud music and you have quite a party. After the jump we breakdown a few fun scenarios and include gallery for your viewing pleasure.

Ready and willing

As per usual, there were throngs of women dressed as sexy [noun] or dirty [profession]. These throngs tend to travel in packs like wild, scantily clad hunters looking for lord knows what. While these costumes are rarely “creative,” they tend to be crowdpleasers, even in West Hollywood. The traveling throngs spend most of the evening soaking up cat calls and taking pictures with random strangers so they can have very necessary slideshow reviews with their other slutty [animal] friends. “Hey, remember that time we all dressed like tramps and met random guys in costume? That was SO awesome.”

Which cop costume is more authentic?

Amidst all the traveling roadshow costumes there a few scenes worthy of note. For example, there was a large pack of large gay men in 60′s gogo-cum-stewardess outfits cruising Santa Monica Blvd with very authentic looking airline beverage carts handing out treats to their followers. Speaking of authentic, check out the gentleman in the photo above taking advantage of the de facto “take pictures with random attractive strangers” motif of the evening. Does his cop costume seem very put together? It’s that way because the man is ACTUALLY on duty with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office. He took a brief break from his duties (he was honestly doing a great job) maintaining the peace to take a picture with his camera of him and what appears to be “dirty cop” and a “sexy devil.” Touchdown.

All in all, we recommend throwing at least something together and walking the boulevard for Halloween 2009 to check out everyone’s hard work put to good, debacherous use. Check out the gallery below for some fun times:

• Colleagues as bees and beekeeper
• WASP-y Handsome (and the future Mrs WASP-y Handsome – get it together!) as very convincing Battlestar Gallactica pilots. At least 5 different nerds requested pictures with them, and after a 2 year quest also found a Cylon. The author hasn’t been trusted with the DVDs to watch the show, but this is apparently very significant.
• Elaborate carnival type costumes on a woman and transvestite taking a picture with a young child, per the parents’ request
• A roving band of troublesome Teletubbies

Update: Peeps lives! After a harrowing night of animal noises and activity in backyard, Peeps returned shaken and devoid of tail feathers. Per my step-mother’s text: “We feel very blessed to have her back. Life is very short. Each day is a special gift Love, mom.”

May our dear, Handsome friend Mrs. Peeps (nee Mr. Peeps) rest in peace high above in chicken heaven. FACE! After returning home from their evening walk, my father and his lovely bride found a mess of feathers and no Peeps. 30 minutes of searching later turned up nothing but a rogue raccoon sighting.

The story of Mrs. Peeps is a ridiculous one that can’t easily be committed to the likes of a blog like this. In short – (s)he was acquired on a whim, bedded down in my father’s home, and was dutifully ‘trained’ by dad’s lovely wife Pam. No matter how outlandish it was IS that there was STILL TOTALLY IS an actual chicken living in the house with them, the chicken bought BRINGS joy to many both in Baton Rouge and afar through tall tales passed over email, mobile phone pictures, and the like.

We’re incredibly sad HAPPY to see Peeps go RETURN!, particularly having not had the opportunity to meet him/her in person/chicken. Our thoughts go out to the Tremblays on Hood Ave, who are probably more sad than they’ll let on. FEELING BLESSED. Tribute SALUTE gallery after the jump:

In Memoriam CELEBRATION! – Mrs. Peeps 2008

On the observation deck in the kitchen of Hood Ave.

Watching television with the trainer extraordinaire

Feeding time with the family

Handsomely pointing out the UES at the Jackie O Reservoir

After overcoming significant obstacles, we were finally loosed on vacation to celebrate friends’ upcoming marriage. Unfortunately, between overcoming the aforementioned obstacles and traveling to the East Coast we didn’t have much time to keep the world abreast of all things Handsome. To satiate your desire, we hunkered down, put on our coding hat, and have provided you with a tasteful image gallery of scenes from New York. We were there during one of the few weeks a year where NYC’s weather rivals that of Los Angeles and really enjoyed the first tastes of fall. It’s Handsome to spend a week walking the city, seeing friends, and drinking heavily – even if Wall Street destroys itself and investment banking as a practice dies while you’re there. Gallery after the jump…

Click on the thumbs to see the full images

Apparently this is NOT the most offensive thing about Tropic Thunder

Tonight heading to my UCLA Extension class in Westwood I noticed the neighborhood was abuzz. Yep, it was another movie premiere – this time the new Ben Stiller directed Tropic Thunder. In addition to the usual hordes of camera waving tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of a celebrity, there was also a group of protesters screaming across the road at the red carpet. What were they protesting? I wasn’t certain, but while I circled the premiere several times following my Irish instinct to never pay for parking ever, I put it together that the crowd was protesting the portrayal of the disabled in the film.

Whiskey tango foxtrot?! While we haven’t seen the film (yet), it seems like the mentally disabled are only in the film briefly and are used more of a device to mock Hollywood’s own portrayal of the mentally handicapped and how ‘award winning’ and ‘courageous’ it is. It seems like a minor plot device that gets about 10 minutes of screentime. Pardon me as I may be confused, but wasn’t anyone upset about the fact that Robert Downey Jr. spends the entire film in blackface, a practice commonly seen as completely, horribly offensive decades ago? There were at least four African American families protesting the film… seems like someone’s being bamboozled here.

Tropic Thunder clearly has an uphill battle with audiences – again, we haven’t seen the film (but are excited to do so) – since we can tell that’s it’s a self absorbed, over the top, inside baseball, painfully Hollywood self-aware film. But most of all, it apparently has an uphill battle convincing us of which offensive aspect of the film we’re supposed to pay the most attention to.

The "coyote" in question

Walking down from 302 stop San V and Sunset to the office the other day I passed through a West Hollywood neighborhood going through an intense crisis: a coyote had been spotted in their neighborhood. While the rest of the rich white people were behind locked doors clutching their designer handbags and designer handbag sized dogs, one person decided to be a good neighbor and warn their fellow citizens about the danger.

There were nearly 100 posters like this (click on the image to see the full poster) on every vertical surface in an otherwise quiet three block area. The best part, beyond the poster’s lack of punctuation, is the caption below the photo: This is a picture of a coyote not the one spotted. This is where the real crisis set in.

Editorial Crisis – It must be hard to try and sound such a serious alarm to your fellow citizens AND come clean that you simply found a picture of a “coyote” (looks fox-like to these Handsome eyes) as a substitute.

Metaphysical Crisis – Please, at all costs, REMAIN CALM. This is not the actual blood thirsty wild canine terrorizing the neighborhood, but is simply a two-dimensional representation rendered in ink on paper OF the actual coyote.

]]> http://bighandsome.com/2008/07/30/west-hollywoods-editorial-and-metaphysical-crisis/feed/ 3 http://bighandsome.com/2008/07/30/observations-a-new-category-for-big-handsome/ http://bighandsome.com/2008/07/30/observations-a-new-category-for-big-handsome/#comments Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:12:00 +0000 Dirty Handsome http://bighandsome.com/?p=44

One of at least six mistakes I've made

I saw something humorous on the walk from the 302 bus (yes, public transit in Los Angeles) to the office the other day and was inspired to write about it. Unfortunately, there was no category that encompassed these day to day happenings that I thought deserved attention for whatever reason. I hemmed and hawed for a day or so, then remembered that I could just invent a new category:

• Observations: Casual observations from our Handsome eyes

The result of the mistake above after the jump…

Result: Dry Cleaning