Gathering Time

Golden Throat Is No Golden Glove

Sometimes, a headline is beautiful.

"American Idol Scotty McCreery Hit In Throat While Pitching For High School Baseball Team" tells you everything you need to know, and yet still makes you want more.

It's easy to forget the television karaoke star was only a student when he headed to Hollywood with nothing but a smirk and a 50 year-old's voice, because, well, who cares.  But thankfully, he's been thrown back into the media cycle for doing what all young men strive to do: become a star athlete so he could get laid - because letter-men get ass and choirboys don't.

McCreery took the mound for his second varsity baseball star when a one-hopper (that's a term from baseball, and baseball is said to be a sport)  bounced up and hit him directly in the throat during the third inning. Reporters said he "showcased his toughness" by staying in the game and pitching for three more innings, and who can argue?  Everybody knows your throat and pitching arm are connected!

I just wish that some of the American Idol contestants played more aggressive contact sports...

You Can't Keep A Douchebag Down

Donald Trump announced that he will no longer moderate the Newsmax-sponsored GOP debate planned for later this month, and of course, there's spin.

Since the announcement of the debate, all Trump could manage to secure were  Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum - and that just reinforces how little credibility this political stunt would have garnered.  While the "debate" is in limbo, Trump steered clear of the point that Gingrich and Santorum are only showing up to kiss ass and try to pick up whatever few votes a Trump endorsement get, and resurected the threat of an eventually failed Trump campaign:

The Republican Party candidates are very concerned that sometime after the final episode of The Apprentice, on May 20th, when the equal time provisions are no longer applicable to me, I will announce my candidacy for President of the United States as an Independent and that, unless I conclusively agree not to run as an Independent, they will not agree to attend or be a part of the Newsmax debate scheduled for December 27, 2011. It is very important to me that the right Republican candidate be chosen to defeat the failed and very destructive Obama Administration, but if that Republican, in my opinion, is not the right candidate, I am not willing to give up my right to run as an Independent candidate. 

Therefore, so that there is no conflict of interest within the Republican Party, I have decided not to be the moderator of the Newsmax debate.

In typical Trump hyperbole, he closed saying, " I believe this would not only have been the most watched debate, but also the most substantive and interesting debate!"  Once again, it's all about The Donald.  The Republicans like the attention that Trump can bring them, but would never choose or back him over the infinite number of party-line drones they have in the pipeline.   Now I'm hoping that Trump does throw his hat into the ring, just so he can burn through million of his own money and lose just like Meg Whitman in her gubernatorial campaign last year.

Trump Stump

Given his previous flirtation with the Oval Office, it comes as no surprise that The Donald would try to inject himself into the current race even as it's getting close to nomination time. And that's why he's the moderator for a debate hosted at the end of the month. I mean, ringleader for the debacle.

The "debate" is being hosted by Newsmax, who I've never heard of until now, but in their own words is, "the #1 conservative news agency online". I put that kind of credibility on par with model searches sponsored by Maybelline. Using Trump as the compass for leading the questioning doesn't add anything legitimate either. Of course, I'm not the only one who thinks that a pageant-mogul lacks class.

"The selection of a reality television personality to host a presidential debate that voters nationwide will be watching is beneath the office of the Presidency and flies in the face of that office’s history and dignity."

That was Ron Paul, who will not be "attending" the fracas. Trump responded publicly stating, "Ron Paul has zero chance of getting the nomination," as if the self-promoting huckster is also somehow a tastemaking pundit. Jon Huntsman is also not participating, and while they both may not be front-runners, they've certainly out-distanced the rest with integrity.

Trump said he would endorse a candidate for president sometime after the December 27th debate, and would not run for president unless "the wrong person gets in"...though he does not expect the wrong person will be chosen. Newt Gingrich told reporters, "Of course I want his endorsement," of the follicle-challenged moderator, who was conveniently beside him.

I think that Trump should get on the ticket if Newty gets the bid, because the only thing better than trainwreck is a spectacular trainwreck.

American Juggalo

Totally unrelated, but happy birthday to Famous Sister!

Entourage Should Have Ended Like This

(But if you must know what happened, this is a pretty accurate take on how colossally shitty the whole series has been, with the finale being no exception.)

Popping Koons

No artist represents talentless hack more then Jeff Koons, so to see him get bitchslapped is a treat.

Koons own style (which also made him a lot of money), which is basically appropriating pop-culture imagery and mass-produced objects, has stretched into a thirty year career. And in that time, he's been sued for copyright violation and appropriating other's images four times, losing three of the cases. Trying to give other a taste of his own medicine, Koons recently went after a gallery and bookend manufacturer who he claimed violated his intellectual property rights. His 10-foot-tall “Balloon Dog” sculpture has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Versailles, and made him think he is the only person ever to come up with the concept.

Last December, a lawyer for Koons sent cease-and-desist letters to Park Life, a San Francisco gallery and store that sells the bookends, and Imm-Living, a Toronto company that manufactures them. Since the dispute was reported, there's been no shortage of folks mocking Koons attempting to claim the rights to all balloon dogs. And the legal opinion in filed briefs didn't shape up much better for the artist: “As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain”.

Koons has of late dropped his legal action against the sale of its balloon dog-shaped bookends. "Jeff Koons and I signed the papers today," said Park Life co-owner Jamie Alexander. "We can sell the balloon dog bookends. The only thing that they wanted to concede is that we couldn't advertise them as being related to Jeff Koons, which we never did." Alexander noted that the store did not agree to a confidentiality agreement about their resolution. "This is a victory for the little guy standing up to a bully. Also, it's about the absurdity of the art world."

Summary judgement? Koons is an asshole!

Sounds Like Somebody Better Not Watch That Jim Carrey Movie Again

Jason Mraz is not only a pretentious pop musician, but utterly nauseating with his super-cutesy, over-sweetened shtick. On his blog, Freshness Factor Five Thousand (vomit), which is filled with ball-less, wannabe charm and horribly cliché tweets ("Friendship. It's a life boat" and "Change is gonna come - but probably not from the vending machine.") that should earn him endless hours of beating, he explained his hard on for the number 23 and how it has played a significant role in his life...and I'm sharing that with you because every faux-entertainment website and blog has been spreading the details as if it was important or heartwarming.

Here are all the parallels to 23 in Jason’s life:

• He was born on June 23rd

• His best friend born on July 23rd

• They both got a tattoo “23″ on his brithday at The Chelsea, a hotel on 23rd street

• He always plays 23 in Vegas (which means he plays roulette, which is a game for pussies)

• Fiancee Tristan Prettyman born on May 23rd

• Mraz met Tristan on September 23rd

• He lives 23 miles away from Tristan (I don't believe that)

• Tristan has a “23″ tattoo

• Bought Tristan’s engagement ring on November 23rd

• He proposed to Tristan on the 23rd hour of December 23rd

• The engagement ring has 46 stones (23 for each of them) and weighs 2.3 carats

• Tristan Ann Prettyman-Mraz has 23 letters!

• Mr. And Mrs. Jason Thomas Mraz has 23 letters!

• Go Fuck Yourself You Douche has 23 letters!

I hear shit like this and I get angry at how fluffy and pointless celebrity stories are...and how useless the info - if you can call it that, is.

Juggalos Have Gathered

You had the preview, now here's the review:

And They're Off...Again

It's shocking (or not) how quick the last post has been rendered irrelevant. Bristol "My Mother Was Almost Vice-President Of The United States And All I Got Was This Lousy Teen Pregnancy" Palin and Levi "Dumb Even By Alaskan Hillbilly Standards" Johnston are calling off their second engagement. Yeah...sure - I buy that, right on the heels of Brett Favre telling Vikings he will retire.

This potential turning point for mankind* occurred when Johnston told Palin her may have fathered a baby with another girl. Nice! Just like the two of those geniuses, the story gets complicated as the other girl was not identified, but a pregnant ex-girlfriend of Johnston has publicly denied he is the father. Okay, but exactly how many ex-girlfriends of his are currently pregnant?

Bristol Palin said the "final straw" was when Johnston told her he was going to Hollywood to see a hunting show, but actually went there to star in a music video mocking her family. I can't imagine what crap musician (who the hell is Brittani Senser?) decided such on a topical video concept, but that's got shitty publicity stunt written all over it.

Palin did not have her mother's full support over reconnecting with Johnston, and both her mother and father - in a surprise feat of parental involvement, worried that she would get hurt again. They say that even plants can feel pain, so I guess she might be effected. Thus continues the ongoing animosity between the Palins and Johnston. Unless some of these morons die, there will surely be more news to come...

*Yes, no more retarded^ Palin babies to slowly overrun the population like a one family version of Idiocracy

^I know, mommy had the 'tard baby, but that family barely shares enough intelligence to pop the lid off a jar of mayonnaise. They're all goddamn retards.

Doom Comes To Town...For The 11th (!?!) Time

Clownmageddon is August 12-15...maybe DARPA can test some of those fancy new laser weapons on site. It's never going to be any easier than this fix this Juggalo problem...

Meant For Each Other

What's the best way to tell your parents you've decided to get back together with and marry your teenage baby daddy after a very ugly public tiff between him and your family? On the cover of Us Weekly, of course!

Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston told the rag that they were getting married — with or without the approval of Sarah Palin. Yep, she's a viable candidate for some public office just on virtue alone of her magnificent handling of her daughter's pregnancy and relationships. The Alaskan hillbillies say they reconnected about three months ago while working out a custody agreement for their 18-month-old son, Tripp.

I've got an agreement for you both to mull over - sterilization. You're both too fucking stupid to be declared legally competent to manage your lives, let alone create any others. Even if you don't end up together, that's what would be best for society.

According to the magazine, Johnston and Palin secretly got engaged two weeks ago, which makes their denial in People magazine from the same period as the Us Weekly scoop even more awesome. Perhaps they didn't offer the same $100,000 and cover for the exclusive. In a statement to NBC News this morning, Sarah and Todd Palin said that they want what's best for their kids and that "Bristol believes in redemption and forgiveness to a degree most of us struggle to put in practice in our daily lives". Too bad they don't want what's best for the country, which would be locking the whole family in a mobile home and setting it on fire.

Hang Down Slang, Or The Dirty Half-Dozen

The always excellent Susannah Breslin (aka The Reverse Cowgirl) brought this turd gem to my attention:

A brand new dance craze is sweeping the nation — or at least YouTube. It’s got a dirty name, all the young folks are doing it, and if you’re a girl, you can’t do it. Now, the kinky move is kicking up a controversy. So, what is it, and what’s all the fuss about?

It’s called the Dick Slang, and it made its sensation-generating internet debut last week, it seems, when a group of young African-American men uploaded a two-minute, eight-second clip of themselves demonstrating how the Dick Slang is done.

For those who remain unclear on the Dick Slang concept, the move isn’t complicated. The young man plants his feet, swivels his hips, looks down, and, well, watches his dick slang — or “swing.” The effect is impressive. Several of the video’s half-dozen Dick Slangers are either frighteningly well-endowed or have stuffed their pants for an enhanced on-camera performance. When it comes to competitive Dick Slanging, the bigger the package, the mightier the move.

Since, the video has been watched by over 280,000 viewers and climbing, generated scores of shocked, outraged, and impressed comments, and prompted impassioned response videos mostly criticizing the Dick Slang phenomenon and its Slangers. “Fire your damn choreographer,” counsels BiggaBX, who deems Dick Slanging “Gayyyy!!” Meanwhile, TheOneofakind17 posted a reaction video of himself watching the Dick Slang video for the first time, and he is not amused.

“You straight dudes never cease to amaze me,” he concludes, shaking his head. Perhaps most savvily, one YouTuber, Wa2tv, created a montage homage: “Moments in Modern Day Minstrel (#Dick Slang).” The titles read: “Makes me wanna bleach my skin … what about you?” Soon enough, the Dick Slang will hit MTV, young white kids will start doing it on dance floors across the nation, and parents will have something new to wail about — the dance that dare not speak its name.

It was either make this video or take a practice college prep, and I think they made the decision that suited them best.

Why Not Just Write Some Shitty, Manic Poetry Instead

Depressed over a breakup? British advice columnist Danny Dyer says the solution is to "cut your ex's face, and then no one will want her." That'll let her know you're not the bitter one that can't get over it.

A lovelorn 23-year-old wrote to Dyer saying he "broke up with my missus a few months ago and can't seem to get over her." Dyer's response:

You've got nothing to worry about, son. I'd suggest going out on a rampage with the boys, getting on the booze and smashing anything that moves. Then, when some bird falls for you, you can turn the tables and break her heart. Of course, the other option is to cut your ex's face, and then no one will want her...

Not surprisingly, the "Ask Danny" column runs in ZOO magazine, one of the last remaining lad mags still in circulation. And like all other PG boy wank publications, they are not known for having a progressive attitude toward women. But outcry over Dyer's apparent advocacy of domestic violence has embarrassed even ZOO, who don't bat an eye when publishing things like "Topless World Cup Countdown!" and "Babe Election!".

A spokesperson for ZOO publisher Bauer Media told the Guardian that the column was the result of a "regrettable production error." Error? Like letting things go to press without an editor? The same explanation was posted on ZOO's website. And Dyer himself says:

This is totally out of order, I am totally devastated. I have been completely misquoted. This is not the advice I would give any member of the public I do not condone violence against women.

"Misquoted" in your own column? Or do you not write your own copy? Maybe somebody typoed, when it should have said "slit that bitch's throat".

This Weekend, The Winner Is...

The Oscars are this weekend, and you ought to have a few goods drinking games to get you through the telecast. You have your pick of games from Flavorpill, Film.com, Lazydork, and Vagabond Scholar, for starters. But Film Drunk's is my favorite so far:

• Every time someone mentions Haiti, Chile, or earthquakes; take a drink.

• Every time someone references the Na’avi, Pandora, blue people, Avatar, James Cameron, or 3D; take a drink.

• Every time you see someone wearing a colored ribbon on their lapel; drink.

• Every time you stifle a fat joke about Gabourey Sidibe; drink.

• Reading glasses? Someone pretends to go off teleprompter? Drink.

• Music starts to play before someone finishes their speech? Drink.

• Fat guy with a beard on stage? Drink.

• “I’m honored just to be mentioned with the other nominees.” Drink.

• Someone makes a Meryl Streep joke; drink.

• Random cut to George Clooney in the audience? Finish your beer.

• Winner cries during acceptance speech? Finish your beer.

• Meryl Streep takes a dump on the stage? Take three speedballs and queef on a turtle.

Plus they have a great guide to the awards. I just hope Avatar doesn't win best picture. It wasn't.

And as a note, Velvet Glove - Iron Fist is 100% back to normal and up to date, so enjoy getting a humor concussion.

Best of the week: It's no good for a family values Republican to get picked up on a DUI. But substantially worse to get picked up for a DUI after leaving a gay nightclub with an unidentified man in a state vehicle. That's the story of state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield).

Ashburn, a fierce opponent of gay rights, has been fighting marriage equality and organizing anti-gay marriage rallies as part of his "Traditional Family Values" campaign. But that message needs some clarification, since CHP officers observed him weaving and driving erratically in downtown Sacramento at 2AM. After a field sobriety test, officers determined that Ashburn, who reeked of alcohol and had bloodshot, watery eyes, was under the influence of alcohol and placed him under arrest. He was released from jail just before 4 AM.

Initial reports only noted the DUI arrest and Ashburn issued a contrite apology. But later that evening, a CBS affiliate in Sacramento reported that "sources" confirmed that Ashburn had left Faces, a gay nightclub in downtown Sacramento, just prior to his arrest. The state issued black Chevrolet Tahoe Ashburn was driving has been impounded at the state Capitol.

You can follow all the developments on the story here, and take some time catching up on the greatest GOP sex scandals of the past.

Plus: An Orange County jury (rightly) declined to hold Botox maker Allergan Inc. liable in the death of a 7-year-old Texas girl being treated for cerebral palsy because it found the company's warning labels adequate. I'll say - they clearly state that children under 11 should not have Botox without adult supervision.

The case involving the girl was believed to be the first of its kind to go to trial, as the girl's family alleged that the product was responsible for her death. What did they expect but giving a paralysing neuro-toxin to their kid anyway? At issue was the safety of the blockbuster cosmetic drug in the higher dosages that are used in pediatric cerebral palsy cases and the adequacy of the Irvine manufacturer's warning labels.

Kristen Spears, who was born with severe cerebral palsy, began receiving large doses of Botox at age 6 in an effort to reduce debilitating limb spasticity. The girl died in late November 2007. Best known as a face-lift-in-a-syringe, Botox can relax contorted muscles and sometimes help young patients walk without surgery. U.S. regulators have not specifically approved the use of Botox in children, but doctors may legally prescribe it as an "off-label" use. Dosages used in such patients are many times those recommended for facial wrinkle injections.

Dee Spears alleged that her daughter died as a result of an overdose of Botox, which led to respiratory failure and pneumonia, and that Allergan failed to adequately warn the girl's pediatrician of the drug's risks. The jury, which deliberated for several hours over two days, did not agree. The panel found that Botox posed risks of "a substantial danger" that "ordinary consumers" would not have recognized, according to the verdict form. But jurors concluded that Allergan did not breach its duty to warn of those potential risks and therefore could not be held responsible for any potential adverse effect.

While Allergan faces another civil trial set for next month in Oklahoma City, I am predicting a victory there too. Because even though Americans are stupid and sentimental, I think that even the folks in Oklahoma City can understand that the product, when used as instructed - for it's intended purposes - is adequately covered in their warnings.

Also: Starbucks Corp. is sticking to its policy of letting customers carry guns where it's legal and said it does not want to be put in the middle of a larger gun-control debate. As they should...but if you're charging me a premium for a coffee, do you really want me to be armed and still pay that much?

The company's statement stems from recent campaign by some gun owners, who have walked into Starbucks and other businesses to test state laws that allow gun owners to carry weapons openly in public places. Gun control advocates have protested. Oh, you're just upset you can have guns but you don't.

The fight began heating up in January in Northern California and has since spread to other states and other companies, bolstered by the pro-gun group OpenCarry.org. What? A pro-gun group getting into the mix? Why, that's unheard of!

Some of the events were spontaneous, with just one or two gun owners walking into a store. Others were organized parades of dozens of gun owners walking into restaurants with their firearms proudly at their sides. Predictably, they were sat preferentially. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence retaliated and launched a petition drive, demanding that the company "offer espresso shots, not gunshots" and declare its coffeehouses "gun-free zones." The group planned to deliver 28,000 signatures to the coffee giant's headquarters in Seattle. The group also held a press conference near Seattle's Pike Place Market, just a few yards away from where the first Starbucks cafe opened. Gun rights advocates showed up as well, some carrying handguns in holsters around their waists.

Businesses can choose to ban guns from their premises, and Starbucks said that it complies with local laws in the 43 states that have open-carry weapon laws. Wait, who are the seven that are behind the times? "Were we to adopt a policy different from local laws allowing open carry, we would be forced to require our partners to ask law abiding customers to leave our stores, putting our partners in an unfair and potentially unsafe position," the company said in its statement.

Starbucks asked both gun enthusiasts and gun-control advocates "to refrain from putting Starbucks or our partners into the middle of this divisive issue." It said security measures are in place for any "threatening situation" that might occur in stores. But they're not. If somebody brings a gun in and starts blasting, there's no coffee bean ninja waiting to save you. Though you can bet they will call the police.

And: Teens are getting high on an emerging drug called "fake weed," a concoction also known as K2 and "spice" that is also causing hallucinations, vomiting, agitation and other dangerous effects. HE WHO CONTROLS THE SPICE, CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE! (where else can I make a Dune joke?)

In the last month, a professor of toxicology at Saint Louis University, has seen nearly 30 cases of teenagers experiencing these adverse effects after smoking the fake weed, a legal substance that reportedly offers a marijuana-like high. "K2 use is not limited to the Midwest; reports of its use are cropping up all over the country," he said. "I think K2 is likely a bigger problem than we're aware of at this time." For instance, Atlanta has seen about 12 cases recently. Are you kidding?

K2 has been sold since 2006 as incense or potpourri for about $30 to $40 per three gram bag - comparable in cost to marijuana. "K2 may be a mixture of herbal and spice plant products, but it is sprayed with a potent psychotropic drug and likely contaminated with an unknown toxic substance that is causing many adverse effects," the professor added.

This K2 compound was first created in the mid-1990s in the lab of organic chemist John W. Huffman of Clemson University, who studies cannabinoid receptors. He's not sure how the recipe for what is named JWH-018 (his initials) got picked up, but he did publish details on a series of compounds including JWH-018 in a book chapter. Even before that book came out, he recalls learning that in China and Korea people were selling the compound as a plant growth stimulant. As for where it was first smoked or used as a recreational drug, Huffman thinks perhaps somewhere in Europe.

"Apparently somebody picked it up, I think in Europe, on the idea of doping this incense mixture with the compound and smoking it. You can get very high on it. It's about 10 times more active than THC," the active ingredient in marijuana, he said.

Leave it to the dummies to try and get even higher with odd shit. Look, you can get plenty stoned on regular dope, and don't need that tenfold. And if you really need to be that much higher, switch from weed to LSD.


Best picture of the week:

80,000 tablets of ecstasy (I'm giving that up for Lent)

Best bonus links:

• Baby Born In Traffic Jam As Leader Drives By - Like a nation's true leader, obstructing their citizens from having access to basic welfare services.

• Body Of Newborn Found By Trash Collector In Redondo Beach - Finders keepers! And no, it was not the same baby from the aforementioned link.

• Marines Land On Iwo Jima To Mark 65th Anniversary - And this time, they totally annihilated them! They had zero casualties as they retook the island, and let me tell you, the inhabitants were surprised!

• Huge Wave Kills 2 On Cruise Ship In Mediterranean - Far more exciting than getting swept overboard, having a food-borne illness, or being mugged at a port-of-call!

• Worst Fries In America - For your health. But perhaps the most delicious. So what if you get your whole day's calories in one sitting? You're done for the day and can move on to more important things.

• Can Peanut Allergy Be Cured By... Eating Peanuts? - Let's test that theory and try that with someone with allergies. It's just like how I learned to swim...by getting thrown in the deep end of the pool. But it didn't fix my drowning allergy.

• Mullahs Help Promote Birth Control In Afghanistan - "Stop having babies, or we will cut off your hands!"

• Interval Training Can Cut Exercise Hours Sharply - High bursts of intense physical activity makes sense. Never realized all that masturbation was really high impact interval cross training.

• Snooki Met Boyfriend On Facebook - I have to figure that anyone who meets her in person first would be totally put off to dating her. Or anyone.

• Hamas Leader Disowns Son Who Spied For Israel - You read about that here last week...don't act surprised.

• Scott Brown On Managing Your Digital Remains - Well, pre-managing. Once you're dead, it's not really your problem.

• Jessica Simpson: I Don't Want People to Know How I Am in Bed - That's the only thing that made her interesting anyway. You take that out of the equation, and she's just another stupid, chunky girl with big boobs who can't sing

• No Is No: More Men File Sexual Harassment Claims - I'm claiming that I am not being harassed enough. Unless you're talking about same sex harassment. Damn, I get a lot of that. Must be something about me that Latino men love.

• Hamas Bans Men From Women's Hair Salons In Gaza - Because a terrorist organization keeping men from working in salons is hysterical to me.

• Dave Grohl Wants Shelley Duvall To Play Him In Nirvana Movie - Awesome casting, but who would fill out the rest of the band?

• It's Official: An Asteroid Wiped Out The Dinosaurs - Well, official in the sense that a bunch of people made a concensus opinion on that. None of the evidence or information has changed, they just figured things would be easier of they made a conclusion and called it a day.

• Nerd Merit Badges - You can buy them, which is the same as earning them from the interweb.

Worst of the week: The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to "save the country from trending toward socialism." And with totally inappropriate imagery too.

The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.” The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said.

Manipulating donors with crude caricatures and playing on their fears is hardly unique to Republicans or to the RNC – Democrats raised millions off George W. Bush in similar terms – but rarely is it practiced in such cartoonish terms. One page, headed “The Evil Empire,” pictures Obama as the Joker from Batman, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid are depicted as Cruella DeVille and Scooby Doo, respectively.

The document, which two Republican sources said was prepared by the party’s finance staff, comes as Chairman Michael Steele struggles to retain the trust and allegiance of major donors, who can give as much as $30,400 a year to the party. Under Steele, the RNC has shifted toward a reliance on small donors, but the document reveals extensive, confidential details of the strategy for luring wealthy checkwriters, which range from luxury retreats in California wine country to tickets to a professional fight in Las Vegas. Basically, they're also going after small fish in addition to the big whales, and they're using chum tactics to get their dollars. No surprise they're putting blood in the water.

Plus: Brendon (WWTDD) has this so nailed, all I need to do is post it. And seethe.

Sean Penn is throwing another hissy fit today because he pouts like a little girl if everyone doesn’t kiss his ass 24 hours a day. The new temper tantrum is about his heroic efforts in Haiti. He says he went down there and was a daring angel of mercy, and if you dare question the amazing Sean Penn about how amazing Sean Penn is, then he hopes you “die screaming of rectal cancer.”

…some have argued that celebs like Penn should stay out of aid efforts, insisting that stars use tragedy merely to rebuild their public image.But in an interview this weekend on CBS News’ Sunday Morning, Penn says he ignores the negative chatter.

“I guess I’ve been so away from it all– and our tent camp in Haiti that I haven’t had an awful lot of time to pay attention to them,” he says. “You know, do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah. You know, but I’m not going to spend a lot of energy on it.”

The problem here is that Sean Penn lies his ass off constantly. He lied about the stuff he did in New Orleans during Katrina, so why the hell would anyone believe similar stories about Haiti.

Penn told Larry King he arrived in New Orleans on day 4 (says it right here). He stresses the point several times. In reality he got there on day 7. Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29th. Here’s a Rolling Stone article written on September 2nd that says Penn leaves for New Orleans “tomorrow.” He got into New Orleans around midnight on the 3rd. The picture above was taken on the 4th, his only day there.

Day 4 was when the first 6,500 national guard troops arrived in New Orleans. On day 5 the first emergency supplies arrived. By the time Penn got there on day 7, the National Guard troops had grown to 27,000 and the Coast Guard had rescued 15,665 people. Even the Superdome had been evacuated by then. Big difference between day 4 and day 7.

He told King, “we were able to just get a boat out in the water and help people out of the water, and go back out and do it again. So it was kind of a no-brainer, and kind of shamefully so, because there should have been more support there.”

27,000 troops. 15,000 rescues. But he wouldn’t look as cool if he said, “By the time I left the Four Seasons hotel in Houston (seriously) there wasn’t much to do,” so he changes things around to make himself more heroic.

He also told King, “We had a lot of people that were not willing to get on a boat and get out.”

Oh there’s a fuckin surprise. Let’s say a guy with greasy hair and a bad mustache pulls up to you and he’s not a cop and yet he’s holding a shotgun and has a bulletproof vest and the boat didn’t as much “pull up” as it did “scrape along the street because it was in 5 inches of water” and he’s telling you he wants to take you somewhere. Does that look like someone here to help? Or does it look like someone who says “nigger” a lot in a town already littered with dead bodies.

Also: Israel's military said that a planned raid on a West Bank village was called off after a soldier disclosed its details online. Ummm...unfriend?

The military said the soldier posted the time and location of the raid on his Facebook page, saying that troops were planning on "cleaning up" the village. Fellow soldiers reported the leak to military authorities, who canceled the raid, fearing that the information may have reached hostile groups and put troops at risk. The soldier was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 days in prison. He was also removed from his battalion and combat postings. What a fuckhead.

A military statement added that it is cracking down on soldiers' use of social networking Web sites and has launched a campaign warning of the dangers of sharing military information online. "Uploading classified information to social networks or any Web site exposes the information to anyone who wishes to view it, including foreign and hostile intelligence services," the military statement read. "Hostile intelligence agents scan the Internet with an eye toward collecting information on the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), which may undermine operational success and imperil IDF forces."

The military said that soldiers were prohibited from publishing classified information, including photographs containing military data. In posters placed on military bases, a mock Facebook page shows the images of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Below their pictures — and Facebook "friend requests" — reads the slogan: "You think that everyone is your friend?"

And: One in four parents buys unproven vaccine-autism link. That means 25% of parents are unfit to raise their children.

Yes, they believe some vaccines cause autism in healthy children - without proof, but even many of those worried about vaccine risks think their children should be vaccinated. Most parents continue to follow the advice of their children's doctors, according to a study based on a survey of 1,552 parents. Let's repeat - extensive research has found no connection between autism and vaccines.

"Nine out of 10 parents believe that vaccination is a good way to prevent diseases for their children," said lead author of the study from University of Michigan. "Luckily their concerns don't outweigh their decision to get vaccines so their children can be protected from life-threatening illnesses." In 2008, unvaccinated school-age children contributed to measles outbreaks in California, Illinois, Washington, Arizona and New York. Thirteen percent of the 140 who got sick that year were hospitalized. Thanks, assholes.

Fear of a vaccine-autism connection stems from a flawed and speculative 1998 study that recently was retracted by a British medical journal. The retraction came after a council that regulates Britain's doctors ruled the study's author acted dishonestly and unethically. Some doctors are taking a tough stand, asking vaccine-refusing parents to find other doctors and calling such parents "selfish."

Twenty-five percent of the parents said they agreed "some vaccines cause autism in healthy children." Among mothers, 29% agreed with that statement; among fathers, it was 17 percent. Nearly 12% of the parents said they'd refused a vaccine for their children that a doctor recommended. Of those, 56% said they'd refused the relatively new vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer. Others refused vaccines against meningococcal disease (32%), chickenpox (32%) and measles-mumps-rubella (18%).

Perhaps one day, these morons will come to their senses. Or at least we can persecute them for child endangerment.

Worst picture of the week:

terrific life choice (though it looks far better than the awful Tim Burton movie)

Worst bonus links:

• 3 LA Teachers Suspended For Honoring O.J. Simpson - A little Juice goes a long way...just not all the way to Black History Month. Double murderers don't quite rate that high.

• Hulu Losing "Daily Show", "Colbert Report" - Not a problem for folks who know a little something about P2P file networking, but sucks for everybody who watches television at work.

• Precious Wins Big At 41st NAACP Image Awards - And considering the five or six movies that were in the running, why wouldn't it? A Tyler Perry movie? That documentary about black hair? It's like wondering how Jennifer Lopez keeps winning at the Latin Grammys.

• Internet-Obsessed South Koreans Starved Baby - The awesome part is, they were playing and web game simulating child-rearing.

• This Hurt Locker Non-Story Refuses to Die / Hurt Locker Producer Barred From Oscars / Hurt Locker Producers Sued Days Before Oscars - Everybody has knives out against the new frontrunner. Cue the fake indignation about the mild campaigning, and the shitstorm begins, complete with leeches.

• Elliott Yamin, 'American Idol' Finalist, Tweets From Chilean Quake - Sadly, he lived. Usually, their 15 minutes comes back as a guest shot on a CBS sitcom, but making some Twiter comments is really more fitting. But I want to know, who the hell is actually following the Elliott Yamin feed?

• Kids' Snacks Encourage 'Constant Eating,' Study Finds - That's why you have to put the food in mazes or traps. Make those kids work for it. If they just pull a lever to get a reward, they'll never learn self control.

• Attorney Says Stun Gun Never Used On Jackson Kids -What other shithouse crazy family other than the Jacksons would need to make a statement - via a lawyer - to explain that thier wards were not going to get tasered. They really ought to think about using on the rest of the family.

• Jake Pavelka Denies Cheating On Vienna With Ex - Hey, the show is over. So is there any reason to follow this douche and his skanky chic.

• Gilligan's Island Headed To The Big Screen - What happened, they couldn't get the shitty reboot going for television? This is going to be a horrible, nightmare project that will no doubt scar any viewer. The news alone causes me anger and concern.

• Sarah Palin's New Gig: Late-Night Comedian / Sarah Palin Loads Up On Free Stuff At Gift Suite - How funny can she be if she's not telling jokes about herself? Palin will fail at her television escapades, just like everything else she does. And that's why she and her crew totally sacked the pre

• The Official Petition To Establish Hella As The SI Prefix For 10^27 - It's a big number, so let's give something of that magnitude some respect by not using that dialectic stutter as a prefix.

• Real Housewives' Kim Zolciak Steps Out With Girlfriend / 'Housewife' Kim Zolciak Didn't Trade In Big Papa For Big Mama - Is she or isn't she gay? Who cares! Besides, her claim to fame is that she's a housewife. And go punch yourself in the face if you actually were preparing an answer.

• Audio Indicates Kid Directed Planes At NY Airport - And he would have goten away with it if he didn't throw a tantrum afterwards about not having a juicebox.

• Michael J. Fox Named Honorary Doctor In Sweden - Alex J. Keaton, Professor of spastic jerking...or something like that. It used to be that to get an honorary doctorate from an institute, you had to be a doctor and contribute to the field. Shit, now they're jsut giving them away if you ahve a disease they're studing.

• Canada May Adopt Gender-Neutral National Anthem - Good thing they waited until after the Olympics to address this controversy. And why did they change the 1908 version anyway?

• Postal Service's Emerging Model: Never On Saturday - Finally, the Sabbath shall be observed! Oh, that's not why they're scaling back?

Douchebags Studies

John Mayer works too hard at being unlikeable.

Just barely off the presses, he apologized for the latest poorly-thought comments he made in the ongoing attempt to find something that everyone can think he's an idiot for saying. He may say he plans to stop "trying to be so raw in interviews", but everything you need to know is in his last quote from the interview:

"People are lining up around the block right now to watch me play music tonight. If some kid called me a douche bag on his terrible blog, I don’t really care. I’m letting myself out of my own prison. I’m not going to be a prisoner to a warden I can’t see. From now on I’m just going to pretend that people really dig the shit out of me. I’ve been so afraid of rocking the boat that I’m not sailing anywhere. I’ve been trying to prove to people I’m not a douche bag by not dating, by keeping my name out of Us Weekly. That’s fucked up, man. I’m not dating. I’m not even fucking. So now I’m going to experiment with 'fuck you.' In 2010 my goal is to get more mentions in Us Weekly than ever."

C'mon Dr. Contradiction, you can't pretend you don't care and do what you want, care about getting attention for being so true to yourself, and then care that you upset people because you see the backlash from such blunt comments and actions. Don't ruin your average music by talking, and just like people dislike you for that, not for who you are...or trying to be. Or trying to make us think you are. Or not.

Here's the full Playboy interview, because with all the non-nudity, no one reads it anymore, and I don't expect you to shell out six bucks to satisfy your mildly morbid curiosity. You can enjoy him talking about Jessica Simpson as "sexual crack", how his dick is racist, gay kisses with Perez Hilton, and how he doesn't quite have a nigger-pass.

Given the type of news coverage he gets, it may surprise you to learn that John Mayer is also a musician. His major-label debut, Room for Squares, came out in 2001, and within two years he was rewarded with his first Grammy win, followed by praise from every corner of the music industry, from blues masters (B.B. King and Eric Clapton) to rap stars (Kanye West and Jay-Z) to Nashville standouts (the Dixie Chicks and Brad Paisley). His gentle voice and introspective lyrics looked back to 1970s songwriters like James Taylor, and his guitar playing was versatile and masterful.

There hadn’t been a new solo male rock star in the music business since Lenny Kravitz, and Mayer fit the bill. He wrote hit songs—the ballads “Daughters,” which went to number one, “Your Body Is a Wonderland” and “Say,” the peppy and clever “No Such Thing,” the bluesy “Gravity” and the soulful “Waiting on the World to Change”—that were solidly constructed from warm sentiments and sophisticated music detail. He wrote “some of the most women—friendly anthems this side of Eve Ensler,” one journalist swooned. Not since Sting had a male singer been both so popular and so respected.

And so handsome, too. Mayer, a taut six-foot-three, was soon dating the kind of beauties who populate magazine covers: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Cameron Diaz and Minka Kelly, most recently seen on the arm of Derek Jeter. In 2006 he surprised some fans by dating Jessica Simpson, who seemed (musically at least) the antithesis of what he stood for. Alongside his music career he’s lately had a parallel life as a tabloid topic, due to his romance with actress Jennifer Aniston. They were together from April 2008 to March 2009, including a two-month breakup during their summer together. After he and Aniston split, Mayer released Battle Studies, the best record of his career, a set of related songs in which he mourns lost love, rejoices in his independence and castigates himself for romantic failure.

Mayer grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut, the second of three boys raised by Margaret, an English teacher, and Richard, a high school principal 19 years older than his wife. John’s guitar prowess led him to the Berklee College of Music, which he left after two semesters to begin a career in Atlanta. He suffered from panic attacks as well as acne “so bad that I would cancel dates and plans and stay in the house,” he has said.He is beloved (though not universally) as one of the few uncensored stars, speaking with wit and impetuousness. He fills his Twitter feed with quips and advice, returning often to a few favorite topics: his dreams, his love of pie, Miley Cyrus songs and farting. Mayer has been “creating a new paradigm of fame,” veteran music blogger Bob Lefsetz wrote. As another journalist puts it, “Mayer takes self-awareness to new postmodern heights,” like a football player who provides “color commentary on his own career.”

Playboy contributing editor Rob Tannenbaum met with Mayer twice: first at the singer’s nearly unfurnished $7.5 million seven-bedroom villa in a gated community outside L.A., where Mayer poured glasses of 16-year-old Lagavulin neat; and then over lunch in Brooklyn a few hours before he played a secret MySpace show.

Tannenbaum reports, “John Mayer talks the way he plays guitar solos—the words tumble out fast, like notes, and he may go on for as long as five minutes. He’ll jump out into different themes and suddenly slip in a new idea, but he always returns to his initial theme. He’s a prodigious talker, and he always brought up touchy subjects—his relationships with Simpson and Aniston, or his reputation as a douche bag—before I mentioned them, to show he wasn’t afraid to address them. From his soft-spoken songs you can’t tell how stubborn and defiant he is. Or how much he loves talking about sex. Or how mischievous he is. When I met him in the kitchen of his L.A. home he was talking about not talking anymore: ‘I think the world would be better off if I stopped doing interviews,’ he said. So we started there.”

PLAYBOY: Is this the last John Mayer interview?

MAYER: No, though I have fantasies of it. And that doesn’t come out of pretension or laziness. It’s difficult for me to explain my life to someone without sounding like I’m complaining, which I’m not. I have no problem saying I’m in a bit of a strange time in my life.

PLAYBOY: What’s strange about this time in your life?

MAYER: In one way or another, people probably know my name now. I’m squarely nestled in the crosshairs of their criticism and media reproach. I originally played music because I was an underdog, because I didn’t want to be in school, and it always had this quality of an uprising. When you first start out, you want people to know you. There is a quality of the unknown that is very sexy—like thinking, There might be a girl in this crowd who will have a conversation with me because she knows my music. For me, it has never been about fucking lots of girls. I could have fucked a lot more girls in my life if I hadn’t been trying so hard to get them to like me. If I have a conversation with a really hot girl that lasts all night and she says, “Wow, I had no idea I was going to like you this much,” that is the equivalent, for me, of getting laid.

PLAYBOY: So how has that changed?

MAYER: I’m no longer playing music so I can walk into a party and talk to chicks, because people know who I am now. In fact, now I have a sort of negative connotation with that. [laughs] It’s a headache, you know?

PLAYBOY: Meeting girls is a headache? You have to explain that.

MAYER: I hate being the heartbreaker. Hate it. If I date somebody and it doesn’t work out, it’s another nightmare for me. I don’t like the way the odds are stacked. If I date nine more girls before I get married—which I think would be completely appropriate—that would be nine more spats of character assassination. I don’t equate sex with release, I equate it with tension. It’s given me a lot of pause. Somewhere in my brain it has probably really fucked me up.

PLAYBOY: But who cares if people assassinate your character?

MAYER: I do. I just do. I consider myself a good guy, with the best of intentions. Anybody who has been in a relationship with me would stand by the fact that I’ve never been callous. I’ve never been a bad boy. I may have taken someone through the wringer psychologically, but I’ve never been sinister.

PLAYBOY: So you’ve lost the motivation of playing music to meet girls.

MAYER: If I was playing it so I could meet hot chicks, I’ve met hot chicks, quote unquote. If I was playing it to make a ton of money, I’ve made a ton of money. If I was playing it to be well-known, I am well-known. Once you put aside girls and money, it forces you to realign your motivation for being a musician. Now I’m not a have-not but a have. Which is interesting, because music has to come from a have-not sort of place. And there are many places where I have-not.

PLAYBOY: What motivates you now?

MAYER: My motivation is to prove people wrong, to confuse them. I enjoy the challenge—I must be addicted to the challenge. I’ve gone from being a musician to being a celebrity. And when people do that, their work usually suffers. There are tunes on Battle Studies that are more applicable to other people’s lives than anything I’ve ever written before. This whole time I’ve stayed vulnerable, stayed frustrated, stayed confused. This record is the trade-off to having sort of brutalized myself for a few years. So if people see that over the past couple of years I actually got a firmer grip on writing songs about the ups and downs of life, they might go, “How did he have the time to make a record? Was he writing ‘War of My Life’ in the middle of me thinking he was a douche bag? Did I ever actually know him? Maybe he’s a pretty solid guy.”

PLAYBOY: What if you were to google the phrase John Mayer is a douche bag?

MAYER: You’d get a lot of hits. It’s this whole perception thing about tabloids, where 85 percent of the stories are not true. If you align yourself to be exactly who you know you are and to have dignity, maybe through that distorted lens you look askew to everyone else. I’ve done away with feeling aloof and trying to seem suave and bulletproof. I’ve resigned myself to being slightly awkward and goofballish.

PLAYBOY: It seems as though you realize that celebrities who complain don’t generate much sympathy.

MAYER: I have never once said “I wish the press would leave me alone.” With Twitter, I can show my real voice. Here’s me thinking about stuff: “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could download food?” It has been important for me to keep communicating, even when magazines were calling me a rat and saying I was writing a book.

PLAYBOY: Who did that?

MAYER: Star magazine at one point said I was writing a tell-all book for $10 million. On Star’s cover it said what a rat! My entire life I’ve tried to be a nice guy. The best I ever felt was when friends’ parents would say, “John can come over any time. We love that kid.” When I date a girl and find out her friends approve of me, I love it. I love being liked! I’ve given microscopic dedication to doing the right thing, taking the high road, and all of a sudden Star magazine says, “He’s a rat.” I can’t tell you it didn’t give me that much more bloodlust to do what people thought I couldn’t do.

PLAYBOY: It sounds simple, but it’s not: Battle Studies is an album about love.

MAYER: Sure. It’s an album about love in this day and age, and at my age, 32.

PLAYBOY: What do you mean by “in this day and age”? There aren’t any references in the songs that would have been unclear 20 years ago.

MAYER: I’m a self-soother. The Internet, DVR, Netflix, Twitter—all these things are moments in time throughout your day when you’re able to soothe yourself. We have an autonomy of comfort and pleasure. By the way, pornography? It’s a new synaptic pathway. You wake up in the morning, open a thumbnail page, and it leads to a Pandora’s box of visuals. There have probably been days when I saw 300 vaginas before I got out of bed.

PLAYBOY: What’s your point about porn and relationships?

MAYER: Internet pornography has absolutely changed my generation’s expectations. How could you be constantly synthesizing an orgasm based on dozens of shots? You’re looking for the one photo out of 100 you swear is going to be the one you finish to, and you still don’t finish. Twenty seconds ago you thought that photo was the hottest thing you ever saw, but you throw it back and continue your shot hunt and continue to make yourself late for work. How does that not affect the psychology of having a relationship with somebody? It’s got to.

PLAYBOY: You seem very fond of pornography.

MAYER: When I watch porn, if it’s not hot enough, I’ll make up backstories in my mind. My biggest dream is to write pornography.

PLAYBOY: How did you become a self-soother?

MAYER: I grew up in my own head. As soon as I lose that control, once I have to deal with someone else’s desires, I cut and run. I’m pretty culpable about being hard to live with. I have had a good run of imagining things into reality. I’ve got a huge streak of successes based on my own inventions. If you tell me I’m wrong or that I’m overthinking something, well, overthinking has given me everything in my career. I have a hard time not looking at anxiety disorder as being like an ATM. I can invent things really well. I mean, I have unbelievable orgasms alone. They’re always the best. They always end the way I want them to end. And I have such an ability to make believe, I can almost project something onto my wall, watch it and get off to it: sexually, musically, it doesn’t matter. When I meet somebody, I’m in a situation in which I can’t run it because another person is involved. That means letting someone else talk, not waiting for them to remind you of something interesting you had in mind.

PLAYBOY: Masturbation for you is as good as sex?

MAYER: Absolutely, because during sex, I’m just going to run a filmstrip. I’m still masturbating. That’s what you do when you’re 30, 31, 32. This is my problem now: Rather than meet somebody new, I would rather go home and replay the amazing experiences I’ve already had.

PLAYBOY: You’d rather jerk off to an ex-girlfriend than meet someone new?

MAYER: Yeah. What that explains is that I’m more comfortable in my imagination than I am in actual human discovery. The best days of my life are when I’ve dreamed about a sexual encounter with someone I’ve already been with. When that happens, I cannot lay off myself.

PLAYBOY: There are some angry, accusatory songs on the record, but there are also self-critical songs. It goes through all the changing moods you have on the worst night of your life.

MAYER: Yeah, Battle Studies is that feeling between 10 p.m. and two a.m. when you have this wild level of arousal and optimism. It’s about the things people do to each other during those hours. I have wasted four hours of my life refusing to masturbate and believing that somehow the phone would ring and I’d get a call from somebody I hadn’t talked to in years.

PLAYBOY: The phone will ring and your life will change?

MAYER: Yeah. It’s like looking for a fix. I’ll spend four hours not even putting anything into motion, just believing somehow it’s going to come my way.

PLAYBOY: You talked before about being an underdog. What were you like at 16?

MAYER: I wasn’t paying attention in school. I would come home and play guitar, playing for all the moments I had that day when I couldn’t feel alive. I visualized I was a superhero with an alter ego: “By day, a gawky, zit­faced 16-year-old boy.…” I would sleep with my guitar because I thought it would make me play better. I had a 100-disc CD player in the basement, and I would load it up with Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Kenny Burrell and Bill Evans and play CDs while I slept on the floor. Like somehow, by osmosis, the music was getting into me. It was the only way I could build enough armor to go back to school the next day.

PLAYBOY: How many hours a day were you playing?

MAYER: Three to four hours a day when I was in school, and in the summertime five to six hours a day. I wasn’t smoking cigarettes or drinking, and I wasn’t trying to hook up. I wasn’t going to parties. I remember being in my room when there was a party across town, sitting in my room and pretending I was at the party and playing for them. I remember saying to myself, If I have to sleep on a pool table every night on tour, I’ll do it. I always had that desire to be a rock star.

PLAYBOY: Were you one of those smart kids who hated school?

MAYER: I would act up and get sent to the dean’s office and talk to him as though I was an adult. “I’m not trying to upset anybody, sir. With all due respect to you and your staff, I’m just not supposed to be here. It’s quite difficult for me to sit in class, because I’m supposed to be a guitar player, sir.” I was very cocky. But from the outset, there was opposition. My parents were not the biggest fans, to put it diplomatically. I grew up saying, “You’ll see. I can’t explain it yet, but you’ll see.” Early in my career, when I was 19 or 20, I’d meet presidents of record companies and refused to give them my demos. I’d say, “We’ll see each other again sometime.”

PLAYBOY: That is really cocky.

MAYER: It was incredibly cocky. I was so tempered in opposition that when the opposition went away, I started to look like a total asshole. When my first record came out, I was still saying, “You’ll see. Check out what I did. Eat it.” It gave me this reputation for being really arrogant. I probably should have stood on top of a roof and yelled, “Fuck you!” That “I’ll show you” instinct is still alive and well. Now, instead of “We don’t think you can do it,” it’s “We think you’re a douche bag.”

PLAYBOY: Do you still have a chip on your shoulder?

MAYER: Yep. I have an extremely tall antenna that reaches high into the sky and brings in a lot of cool stuff but also a lot of unnecessary stuff. If I hadn’t had my upbringing, I would have probably been like, “Yeah, this is fun. Cool.” But right now I still have “See? See, motherfucker?”

PLAYBOY: You put in a lot of hours playing the guitar, but it also seems you were quick to pick up music theory, harmony, composition.

MAYER: I’m wired for it. I’m lucky I found a thing I was wired for, and I found it at 13. I’ve already won one of the biggest gambles of all time, which was to forgo an education so I could pursue a real all-or-none scenario. I look pretty fucking smart for having done that, though it doesn’t change the fact that it was crazy.

PLAYBOY: You have a level of self-consciousness that seems like it could be exhausting.

MAYER: Maybe that’s the douche bag part of it. Maybe I’m so meta-aware that it’s off-putting to people. But I’m old enough to know I need to change. I’m getting tired of the illusion of control. I think I’ve made my best record now, at my lowest point of confidence.

PLAYBOY: You wanted to become a rock star, and now that you are one, it’s ruined your confidence? That’s odd.

MAYER: Lately I’ve realized it’s okay to enjoy being a rock star. Like, it might actually be fun to wear sunglasses in the airport and sit in the first-class lounge as a fucking rock star who’s about to go on a world tour. I had related it to something so painful, so frustrating, so confusing, that it would give me a tension headache. Being a famous musician seemed to have brought misunderstanding and strife and a fist in the back of the head when I read something about myself. I wrote this line yesterday: “Someday soon these will just be things we used to do.” I’m sort of making a list of all the things I know I’m going to laugh at myself for taking so seriously.

PLAYBOY: So you can already imagine your future?

MAYER: This is going to sound odd, but sometimes I meet the 40-year-old me and say, “What do I do?” And 40-year-old me says, “Don’t do every scheduled interview. Go to the zoo instead. You’re going to be fine, you knucklehead. Stop overthinking what people say.” I’m trying to fold over time, to see it as a random-access hard disk where I can move to any point in time and change the way I see today.

PLAYBOY: What you describe sounds like a conversation between a father and a son. Can you talk like that with your dad?

MAYER: My dad is 82. I love him so much, but the way I communicate with him is by fixing his printer or the closed-captioning on his TV. These are the bonding moments we have.

PLAYBOY: Did kids make fun of the fact that your dad is almost 20 years older than your mom?

MAYER: No, they’d just say, “Your grandfather’s here.”

PLAYBOY: Is your heritage Jewish?

MAYER: I’m half Jewish. People say, “Well, which side of your family is Jewish?” I say, “My dad’s.” And they always say it doesn’t count. But I will say I keep my pool at 92 degrees, so you do the math. I find myself relating to Judaism. One of my best friends is Jewish beyond all Jews—I went to my first Passover seder at his house—and I train in Krav Maga with a lot of Israelis.

PLAYBOY: You said there are still things you don’t have. What are those things?

MAYER: I could make anybody understand that my life is not all rainbows and unicorns, but why would I want to? I’m sort of selling them the idea that it’s rainbows and unicorns. I could explain that, in fact, I’m not a douche bag, but that would be at the expense of believing in magic. I don’t want to tear down the facade. People want to imagine that if they get a record deal, they can buy a Ferrari. People need that. I don’t want to take that away from people. Anything I don’t have is a direct descendant of the things I do have. I mean, let’s say there’s a 12 percent chance I’ll never marry and have kids because the music career fucked me in some way. If that’s the case, I still know it’s my calling. I hold out hope that there’s a way to be a supernatural being onstage and an extremely natural being at home.

PLAYBOY: Why are you so anxious about never getting married?

MAYER: What if I meet a woman and it’s love at first sight, and this woman has the greatest night of her life by telling me to fuck off because she knows my reputation? I always say, “Turning me down is the new sleeping with me.” What is a guy supposed to say to a girl who says “You do this all the time”? Girls always say that. Sometimes they say “I’ve been warned about you.” But I can undo that in a couple of days. I have a line for that: “Keep your warning for a while; let’s take it slow.”

PLAYBOY: Were you one of those people who thought fame would be rainbows and unicorns?

MAYER: I had a conversation about fame with Jen [Aniston] before we ever really stepped out in public. She said, “Do you understand what this entails?” Two weeks later I had people outside my house. I was smart enough to know it would probably make me a salable item for the paparazzi. I knew I’d have to move to a home that had a gate. But that pearl of possibility that lives in your heart when you meet somebody you want to know more about has such a different molecular density than everything else that you have to pursue it. And I wouldn’t undo it, man. Because if it had worked out, I would have reaped the benefits. I would be sitting here saying, “What I have when I go home is the thing I’ve always wanted.”

PLAYBOY: Has Jen heard Battle Studies?

MAYER: Yes. I played it for her as the record was being made.

PLAYBOY: What did she say?

MAYER: Look, there’s a level of honesty in that record that probably made her uncomfortable, but I couldn’t let that change the way I wrote songs. There were moments when she said, “What’s that line?” Like, “That’s not about me, is it?” While I was going out with her she was on the cover of GQ wearing nothing but a tie. These are occupational hazards. When she heard Battle Studies she just wanted to be able to say “I want to know that you hold me correctly in your heart.”

PLAYBOY: What percentage of the album is about Aniston?

MAYER: I don’t want to say. I feel bad because people think “Heartbreak Warfare” is about her. I want to go on record saying it’s not. That woman would never use heartbreak warfare. That woman was the most communicative, sweetest, kindest person. When people hear the record, I hope the songs make them think about their lives, not my life. Like, when you listen to Coldplay, do you think about Gwyneth Paltrow? I don’t write songs in order to stick it to my exes. I don’t release underground dis tracks. [laughs]

PLAYBOY: You’ve rarely talked about Aniston. She has rarely talked about you.

MAYER: We just have a regard for each other’s feelings that is pretty intense. It’s been a deep relationship, and it’s no longer taking place at all. Have you ever loved somebody, loved her completely, but had to end the relationship for life reasons?

PLAYBOY: Did you send Aniston a copy of the CD after it was done?

MAYER: No.

PLAYBOY: Maybe she’ll download it from BitTorrent.

MAYER: If Jennifer Aniston knows how to use BitTorrent I’ll eat my fucking shoe. One of the most significant differences between us was that I was tweeting. There was a rumor that I had been dumped because I was tweeting too much. That wasn’t it, but that was a big difference. The brunt of her success came before TMZ and Twitter. I think she’s still hoping it goes back to 1998. She saw my involvement in technology as courting distraction. And I always said, “These are the new rules.”

PLAYBOY: You mean the rules of celebrity have changed since Friends made her a star?

MAYER: I said, “Tom Cruise put on a fat suit.” That pretty much sums up the past decade: Tom Cruise with a comb-over, dancing to Flo Rida in Tropic Thunder. And the world went, “Welcome back, Tom Cruise.”

PLAYBOY: What’s the moral there?

MAYER: You have to show that you don’t take yourself seriously. Once you do that, people will say you’re cool: “You know what? I gotta say I never liked him until he made fun of himself, and now I like him.”

PLAYBOY: If you didn’t know you, would you think you’re a douche bag?

MAYER: It depends on what I picked up. My two biggest hits are “Your Body Is a Wonderland” and “Daughters.” If you think those songs are pandering, then you’ll think I’m a douche bag. It’s like I come on very strong. I am a very…I’m just very. V-E-R-Y. And if you can’t handle very, then I’m a douche bag. But I think the world needs a little very. That’s why black people love me.

PLAYBOY: Because you’re very?

MAYER: Someone asked me the other day, “What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?” And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a hood pass if you really have a hood pass? But I said, “I can’t really have a hood pass. I’ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ‘We’re full.’"

PLAYBOY: It is true; a lot of rappers love you. You recorded with Common and Kanye West, played live with Jay-Z.

MAYER: What is being black? It’s making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that’s seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you’ll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude’s.

PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?

MAYER: I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.

PLAYBOY: Let’s put some names out there. Let’s get specific.

MAYER: I always thought Holly Robinson Peete was gorgeous. Every white dude loved Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Kerry Washington. She’s superhot, and she’s also white-girl crazy. Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl. Just all of a sudden she’d be like, “Yeah, I sucked his dick. Whatever.” And you’d be like, “What? We weren’t talking about that.” That’s what “Heartbreak Warfare” is all about, when a girl uses jealousy as a tactic.

PLAYBOY: You said that song isn’t about Aniston. Why is it important for people to know that?

MAYER: I’m very protective of Jen.

PLAYBOY: Do you still love her?

MAYER: Yes, always. I’ll always be sorry that it didn’t last. In some ways I wish I could be with her. But I can’t change the fact that I need to be 32.

PLAYBOY: Last June she was given an award from Women in Film. In her acceptance speech she pointed out that the titles of her films closely parallel her private life. Then she asked if anyone in the audience had “a project titled Everlasting Love With an Adult, Stable Male.” It seems as if she was referring to you.

MAYER: I imagine I’ve got something to do with that. Parts of me aren’t 32. My ability to go deep with somebody is old soul. My ability to commit and be faithful is old soul. But 32 just comes roaring out of me at points when I don’t see it coming. I want to dance. I want to get on an airplane and be like a ninja. I want to be an explorer. I want to be like The Bourne Identity. I don’t want to pet dogs in the kitchen.

PLAYBOY: That’s not so weird for a 32-year-old.

MAYER: Right. For a long time I was asking, “What’s wrong with me?” I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on therapy for people to say, “Nothing is wrong.” I had seen splitting up with her as akin to burning an American flag. Do you know what I mean? I considered myself a villain.

PLAYBOY: How did you feel like a villain?

MAYER: I felt as though I’d done something wrong and was going to be punished for it. When the media picked up on it, it was the worst fucking week of my life. I found notes at my front desk: “I work for Us Weekly; I’d like to talk to you.” I’m working out at the gym, and next to me on the elliptical trainer I see a woman I think already approached me and said she was with In Touch. But wouldn’t that be paranoid to think? I’m going insane. I haven’t slept. I’m about to go blind—you know the phrase blind rage? All I can remember is that I was about to lose my vision. My emotional tissue was about to tear. So after I left the gym I said “Come here” to all the reporters and paparazzi. I was on the verge of crying and also on the verge of punching someone.

PLAYBOY: This was August 2008, when you said you had ended the relationship “because I don’t want to waste somebody’s time if something’s not right.”

MAYER: It really, really upset her. I wanted to take responsibility for having ended it because I saw it as such an offense. But a lot of people felt I was saving face. This would serve to begin the period of my life I’m just exiting, when love made me feel guilty and people called me a rat, a womanizer and a cad.

PLAYBOY: You’ve also been called a man-whore.

MAYER: I feel like women are getting their comeuppance against men now. I hear about man-whores more than I hear about whores. When women are whorish, they’re owning their sexuality. When men are whorish, they’re disgusting beasts. I think they’re paying us back for a double standard that’s lasted for a hundred years.

PLAYBOY: What does the word womanizer mean to you?

MAYER: Well, wouldn’t a womanizer have dated more than two girls in two years?

PLAYBOY: You and Aniston got back together and broke up again in 2009. How many women did you sleep with in the eight months after the breakup?

MAYER: I’m going to say four or five. No more.

PLAYBOY: That’s a reasonable number.

MAYER: But even if I said 12, that’s a reasonable number. So is 15. Here’s the thing: I get less ass now than I did when I was in a local band. Because now I don’t like jumping through hoops. It’s been so long since I’ve taken a random girl home. I don’t want to have to submit myself for approval. I don’t want to audition. I’d rather come home and edge my shit out for 90 minutes. At this point, before I can have sex I need to know somebody. Unless she’s a 14 out of 10.

PLAYBOY: You have been very up front about your fondness for masturbation.

MAYER: It’s like a vacation—my brain gets to go free. It’s a walk in the park for my brain. Pull the shades and let your mind go without having to answer for it.

PLAYBOY: The way you talk about being 32 sounds as though you were too immature for Aniston.

MAYER: No, the actual day-to-day was fantastic. I have to explain this so people don’t say, “Sure, you’re 32, and you want to fuck other chicks.” If you say I’m not adult and stable, it sounds as though I’m someone who’s watching football and playing Xbox. I have this bond with infinite possibility—when I go out to dinner, I bring another shirt, a flashlight, a knife, a hard drive, a camera. It’s not like I wanted to be with somebody else. I want to be with myself, still, and lie in bed only with the infinite unknown. That’s 32, man.

PLAYBOY: In 2006 you began dating Jessica Simpson, and the paparazzi started stalking you, turning you into a tabloid fixture. Certainly you knew that was going to happen.

MAYER: It wasn’t as direct as me saying “I now make the choice to bring the paparazzi into my life.” I really said, “I now make the choice to sleep with Jessica Simpson.” That was stronger than my desire to stay out of the paparazzi’s eye. That girl, for me, is a drug. And drugs aren’t good for you if you do lots of them. Yeah, that girl is like crack cocaine to me.

PLAYBOY: You were addicted to Jessica Simpson?

MAYER: Sexually it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm.

PLAYBOY: But before you dated her you thought of yourself as the kind of guy who would never date Jessica Simpson.

MAYER: That’s correct. There are people in the world who have the power to change our values. Have you ever been with a girl who made you want to quit the rest of your life? Did youever say, “I want to quit my life and just fuckin’ snort you? If you charged me $10,000 to fuck you, I would start selling all my shit just to keep fucking you.”

PLAYBOY: So at this point—

MAYER: Pardon me for interrupting. I love Jen so much that I’m now thinking about how bad I would feel if she read this and was like, “Why are you putting me in an article where you’re talking about someone else? I don’t want to be in your lineage of kiss-and-tells.”

PLAYBOY: At this point, what’s your ideal relationship?

MAYER: Here’s what I really want to do at 32: fuck a girl and then, as she’s sleeping in bed, make breakfast for her. So she’s like, “What? You gave me five vaginal orgasms last night, and you’re making me a spinach omelet? You are the shit!” So she says, “I love this guy.” I say, “I love this girl loving me.” And then we have a problem. Because that entails instant relationship. I’m already playing house. And when I lose interest she’s going to say, “Why would you do that if you didn’t want to stick with me?”

PLAYBOY: Why do you do it?

MAYER: Because I want to show her I’m not like every other guy. Because I hate other men. When I’m fucking you, I’m trying to fuck every man who’s ever fucked you, but in his ass, so you’ll say “No one’s ever done that to me in bed.”

PLAYBOY: Do you do something different in bed than other guys?

MAYER: It’s all about geometry. I’m sort of a scientist; it’s about being obtuse with an angle. It’s sort of this weird up-and-over thing. You gotta think “up and over.”

PLAYBOY: Maybe that’s easier at your height. You talked about listening to Miles Davis and Bill Evans in high school, but that’s not the kind of music you make.

MAYER: I make mainstream music. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures; I believe in pleasures. I know where I stand when I hear Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” or “The Climb”—which may be the best pop song of the past year.

PLAYBOY: It’s a little surprising that you like Miley Cyrus so much.

MAYER: I took a friend and his kids to see Miley Cyrus in Vegas. After the show I said to her, “That was fantastic. Fantastic.” I said, “Take $100,000, put it in a shoe box and bury it in your backyard.” I walked away thinking, That may be the strangest thing I’ve ever said. It just means put a little away. Have something nobody can ever take away from you.

PLAYBOY: Keep a secret fund in case you wake up at three a.m. thinking, Screw this, and you need to disappear?

MAYER: Exactly. That’s what I do with my blackjack winnings—I keep them safe and sound.

PLAYBOY: Among the things we’ve read about you online is this: You’re gay. Have you ever kissed a man?

MAYER: The only man I’ve kissed is Perez Hilton. It was New Year’s Eve and I decided to go out and destroy myself. I was dating Jessica at the time, and I remember seeing Perez Hilton flitting about this club and acting as though he had just invented homosexuality. All of a sudden I thought, I can outgay this guy right now. I grabbed him and gave him the dirtiest, tongue-iest kiss I have ever put on anybody—almost as if I hated fags. I don’t think my mouth was even touching when I was tongue kissing him, that’s how disgusting this kiss was. I’m a little ashamed. I think it lasted about half a minute. I really think it went on too long.

PLAYBOY: Perez describes you on his site as a womanizer, a word you don’t like. Is it fair to say you have a love-hate relationship with him?

MAYER: I used to. Now I believe we’re fully into fighting with breakaway chairs. I think he’s pretty much inert at this point. Perez is to hating as Richard Simmons is to health and well-being. [laughs] You can print that. Perez is so authentically off his rocker he will not let you finish a sentence. I think he has some dark things in his past. I think he comes from a little bit of hurt, and I say that with an understated tone. At the end of the day I go to his site, but I don’t see him as a threat. The impact of his tone is beginning to wane. I give a lot more credit to Harvey Levin at TMZ.

PLAYBOY: Would you kiss Harvey Levin?

MAYER: I would rim him, probably. I can’t just repeat the kissing trick.

PLAYBOY: From following your Twitter feed we’ve learned about many of your interests. For instance, you love the Toto Washlet bidet.

MAYER: God, I want one.

PLAYBOY: But you already have platinum records and stardom.

MAYER: A platinum record is not going to wash your ass for you.

PLAYBOY: Good point. A Washlet isn’t that expensive. Why don’t you have one?

MAYER: It speaks to my level of transience. I’ll get a Washlet when I finally find a shitter I’m going to be at for a good block of time in my life. [laughs] I’m really going to enjoy that. That’s what is waiting for me on the other end of this crazy rocket ride—a warm seat and an adjustable bidet.

PLAYBOY: You said you were just exiting the phase of your life when relationships make you feel guilty. What’s the next phase?

MAYER: People are lining up around the block right now to watch me play music tonight. If some kid called me a douche bag on his terrible blog, I don’t really care. I’m letting myself out of my own prison. I’m not going to be a prisoner to a warden I can’t see. From now on I’m just going to pretend that people really dig the shit out of me. I’ve been so afraid of rocking the boat that I’m not sailing anywhere. I’ve been trying to prove to people I’m not a douche bag by not dating, by keeping my name out of Us Weekly. That’s fucked up, man. I’m not dating. I’m not even fucking. So now I’m going to experiment with “fuck you.” In 2010 my goal is to get more mentions in Us Weekly than ever.