“Get Out of My Face” (often referred to by the delightful acronym “GOOMF”) is a brilliant parody of the dick-swinging, rapid fire sports pundit barking match shows which have become a staple for ESPN — ones like Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption.¹ The Onion’s first installment of GOOMF appeared in the summer of 2011, and it laid me out laughing:

[rated NSFW]

Per IMDb, I am pleased to inform you that the stars of GOOMF are Robb Pruitt as Kenny Kennedy and Levan Reid as Doc Brooks.

One of the things I love about GOOMF is the deliberate graphic overload, which is barely an exaggeration of the number of shiny bells and whistles that often clutter up the screen on SportsCenter. It’s impossible to catch all of the silly headlines that scroll by on the bottom-margin news ticker and pay full attention to the characters’ dialogue in a single viewing; if you don’t have time for multiple viewings of the clip, I transcribed them all here for your quick reading convenience.

For the slightly more serious-minded, the style being parodied in this video was recently the subject of a trenchant article in The Atlantic by Patrick Hruby, entitled “The SportsCenter-ization of Political Journalism.” The jist:

Turn on ESPN. There are score tickers and headline crawls, slick graphics and constant teases for upcoming stories, everything creating a sense of urgent immediacy. Now switch to Fox News. Visually speaking, it’s the same eyeball-grabbing formula. (Well, replace scores with stock prices, and garrulous sportscaster Chris Berman with a frosted blonde news babe). This is the SportsCenter-ization of the news, in which coverage of Washington — and the world, really — apes a glossy entertainment product dedicated to spectacular touchdowns, gee-whiz statistics, prefabricated drama, insta-debates waged by a nattering, revolving-door athletic punditocracy and the very latest updates on Brett Favre’s various bodily appendages.

If the Broncos beat the Patriots later today, watch tomorrow for Fox News to start ginning up a Tim Tebow write-in campaign for the remaining GOP primary states.

Dan Savage (photo: Flickr/mattoly)

Of course, the full effect is only available by hearing Dan speak his words. Nevertheless, here are some highlights for the benefit of those unable to listen (or who simply prefer to read):

My favorite question [at the press conference] was this: “Why would you do this after you were married?” Because Lord knows, nobody goes online and flirts — or masturbates, looks at [or] downloads porn, or creates through the interactive-ness of the web their own porn moments — no married person does that. The worldwide web is just this big jack-off-a-thon for single people.

You know what? Members of congress, like members of the press, get horny sometimes. And sometimes male members of congress, like male members of the press, think with their dicks. And sometimes married men rub one out with an assist from the worldwide web, my media colleagues! Film at fucking 11!

Weiner was horny and went online and flirted and beat it a few times, like millions of Americans have done and will continue to do, every damn day, forever.

Another reporter asked Weiner if he had a drinking problem. Because you know, only a man who was drunk or on drugs could get caught up in something like this. Do reporters know what men are like? And lots of women too? This desire to pathologize behavior that isn’t sick — that is really common, and human, and completely and instantly understandable — that itself is pathological.

Weiner does not have a “problem.” Weiner has a computer. It is the same problem that all Americans these days have: we have computers, and sometimes we make fools of ourselves on them. Think of your own life: think of the shit you’ve done online. If all of it was dragged out into the public eye, as this has been dragged out into the public eye, would your relationship survive? Would your professional life survive? No.

Everyone’s talking about “what Weiner did.” You know what? Something was done to Weiner.

I realize I’m shouting now… I just get upset when I see everyone pretend to not know what they do know about human sexuality and the way it works. And this sort of willful obtuseness on the part of the media, that plays into American sex-phobia and hypocrisy about sex. And this posturing.

Everyone is talking now about Weiner like, “He’s a congressman, and he had to know that this could happen — that these pictures could surface and be made public — and that was reckless, and displayed a kind of bad judgment that we can’t have in congress.” We wouldn’t want bad judgment in congress, not now, not after 200+ years of a bad-judgment-free congress.

Congress 20 years from now, 30 years from now, is going to be solely comprised of people who have taken pictures of their junk and put them online. Every teenager in America is online, is flirting, dating, putting up internet profiles, looking for love… is sending pictures of their junk! Sexting!

Soon, we will have a congress that is entirely Anthony Weiners. What are we going to do then? Are we really saying that the only people who are fit to serve in the U.S. Congress are the people who have never gone online and done anything inappropriate? Because what we’re really asking for, then, is to be ruled by the Amish.

Another important detail about this video: if my #7 video is NSFW (and it is), this one is very NSFW. I’m just sayin’.

So here it is, featuring Rich Sommer (Mad Men), Alison Brie (Mad Men, Community), and my friend Kathryn Joosten (The West Wing, Wedding Crashers, Desperate Housewives, etc).

I’ll tell you one thing: I’ve heard Kathy say far dirtier stuff.

Part of what I love about this series may be best appreciated by others who run their own websites or YouTube channels. The title 2 Hot Girls in the Shower and its comic realization are a sly swipe at the skeevy side of SEO, a phenomenon often referred to as “keyword whoring.” In addition to its definition on urbandictionary.com, keyword whoring can take the form of lame web content that has been stuffed full of frequently-occurring Google search terms (contextual logic be damned) in an effort to attract web traffic.

Not only does 2HGITS sound like it should be the name of a pø®n site, but each clip begins with stereotypical semi-funk pø®n-ish music and the appearance of two good-looking, ostensibly naked women standing in a shower. It is all, of course, just the launching pad for a deft comic duo who excel at poking sophisticated fun at the “Loveline”/Penthouse Forum conceit. They strike a precise comic note with their droll, underplayed thwarting of horny male websurfers, a target so easy as to usually attract only self-satisfied derision from lesser wits. The elegant simplicity of their schtick is also the perfect rejoinder to the predictably cretinous inanities of their YouTube commenters and emailers.

The 2 Hot Girls in the Shower YouTube channel includes all of the 40+ episodes Julie and Kim have made so far. There are also a lot of funny outtake clips and other extras posted — for example, you might like to start with the three alternate endings to the “Revealed” video. Julie and Kim also both have their very own neato-cool individual sites, respectively located at www.juliewittner.com and www.kimevey.com.

Like just about all of the songs in my Got You Covered series, “Nobody Does It Better” has been covered more times than a 90-year-old exhibitionist. Before I highlight my favorite version, I would be remiss if I didn’t address the rendition by Radiohead. A taste:

Thom Yorke of Radiohead
(photo: Flickr/Tim Cochrane)

Let me preface this by affirming that Radiohead is a very popular, respected, and influential band, and deservedly so. I like them. Their rendition of this song just doesn’t work for me. I like the arrangement fine, particularly the heavy, distorted guitar in the broad sections. The problem I have is frontman Thom Yorke’s vocal: simply put, he’s working too hard. The vocal line sits at the upper reaches of his range, and I can’t help but wonder what might be possible if Radiohead had taken it down about a whole step. As it stands, the foregoing clip shows a few of the instances where Yorke gets a bit, shall we say, approximate with regard to pitch. I’m aware that this quavering, sliding-between-notes quality is sometimes part of his style as a singer, but in this instance it undercuts the intention of the song. On one live recording Yorke intros the song by calling it “the sexiest song that was ever written,” and he’d get little argument from me — but that’s precisely why the song should be sung with ease. Or at least without hints of anguish.

The possible hues of ease range well beyond just the warm, soft-focus palette of Carly Simon’s original single. The rendition I stumbled across is from an album called Shaken & Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project and is performed by indie singer-songwriter Aimee Mann.² Get a load of this (OK, not a load, but a clip):

Aimee Mann
(photo: Flickr/6tee-zeven)

Like the Carly Simon version’s voice-and-piano opening, Mann’s cover starts off small: a monaural accordion overlaid by the soft dust-pops of a phonograph needle. The big, reverberating chords that enter with the top of the first verse set things rolling toward the grand second chorus, by which time I’m well and truly hooked. This recording of the song finds an element of fantasy not explored by other versions: a girl alone in her room, listening to a phonograph record, imagining herself with James Bond. There is a poignancy to Mann’s airy, almost uninflected delivery of the first lines, and when she opens up her tone in the later sections she does so without “cutting the string,” as one of my old vocal coaches used to say.³

Normally I end these posts with links to places where you can buy mp3 downloads of the song in question. Unfortunately, despite my considerable googling skills I have been unable to find a site where you can legally download either the Aimee Mann or the Radiohead version of “Nobody Does It Better.”⁴ The David Arnold album containing the Aimee Mann cover is on Amazon, but only on CD. The Radiohead version is even more elusive; according to Last.fm it is included on recordings called B-Sides, Rarities, Uncut, A Total Waste of Time, and Painkiller, all of which appear to be bootlegs. Allmusic.com lists it on another bootleg recording, Ground Control to Major Thom. Lastly, there are currently several videos on YouTube of Radiohead playing the song.

If you want to get the original Carly Simon version, that’s a much simpler matter: the mp3 is available on Amazon for 99 cents.