BlackBook

John Travolta, who is an actor who you might have heard of, is not having a good couple of weeks. He has been besmirched by various lawsuits alleging he had been sexually forward in an illegal way with male masseurs. This comes after years of rumors that he is of the gay persuasion. He denies it of course. Coincidentally, his wife, Kelly Preston, has released Travolta's Mother's Day gift to her: a video of him professing his undying love. The lady doth protest too much, perhaps?

From bacon-flavored lube to, simply, a torso with which one can mate, here's a run-down of squeamishly terrible sexy ideas that clearly originated within the mind of a man.

Let’s get this out of the way: vibrators, vibrators, vibrators. Vibrators! Now let the giggling subside. Hysteria is a new romantic comedy, directed by Tanya Wexler and starring Hugh Dancy and Maggie Gyllenhaal, about the unlikely invention of vibrators in 1880s London. This presents a problem in discussing the film, since every word about it—touching, cheesy, lush—seems filthy and funny.

Today Mark Ronson, Coca Cola, and the OIympics—an unholy trinity if ever there was one—released the song "Anywhere in the World." This single is made specifically for the Olympics, the sporting event that started as an alternative to war and has morphed into an industrial complex at least as lucrative and doubly as corrrupt. It got us thinking, when else has music been bludgeoned into the service of the Olympics? No, we're not talking about non-Olympic music by bands performing in the Olympics—we're discussing songs explicitly made for the games. 

Introducing the new newsletter from BlackBook.

This morning for some complicated and ultimately unimportant reason I was browsing a site called Ads of the World. It's amazing. They have a monthly contest for the best ads, in television, print, online, outdoor, ambient and DM. If you have 15 minutes to kill, watch these selections, culled from the first half of 2012. They are truly amazing. Capitalism has never felt so culturally right.

The way we feel about the upcoming film What To Expect When You're Expecting can be summed up from two things. The first is by Tyler's post entitled What To Expect From What To Expect When You're Expecting. The second is by the phrase: "We're not that excited about it."  However, this morning they released a new clip called "Dudes Group" in which fathers, with babies strapped onto their chests, commiserate about the indignities of fatherhood and the yank of the old Ball and Chain. As a new father—my son is almost five months old—I watched it with trepidation and awe. Is this really my future?

Soon we'll be launching a travel column entitled The Upgrade. It will have a fancy logo and everything. But in the meantime, we'll periodically be suggesting you go places and do stuff in a more freeform way. Today, we suggest you grow a beard and head to Pennsylvania.

Life-sized penis Howie Mandel, a judge on America's Got Talent, was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Both those guys suck yet it is Howie Mandel who is more worthy of opprobrium. For what has Howie Mandel ever done to justify his existence? Jay Leno, at least, collects cars. Howie Mandel is simply a professional soul-patched fedora-wearing mouth-breathing shrimp-eating germaphobic baby.

Foolish daughter of an idiot woman Bristol Palin has been in the news recently for lambasting President Obama for his courageous—if begrudingly given—endorsement of same sex marriage. Coincidentally, her terrible memoir, Not Afraid of Life, is coming out in paperback. In order so that you don't have to read it—which would be like that machine in The Princess Bride for your brain—here are the best worst lines with which to soothe yourself from her inane arguments against Obama. Use them as mantras to calm yourself, for after all, if a person is capable of writing these lines, no credence should be given to anything she ever says, ever.