The Bend before Thanksgiving

A black burglar style stocking cap, a black ski coat, and a $1,000 pair of sunglasses complimented the goatee nicely. I looked like a cold biker, which means I looked like an out of place Oakland Raiders fan.

"Why do you want to look so mean?" my cousin's 10-year-old daughter Blair asked.

"Because it's fun to be mean," I told her with a big grin. One day she will understand.

Besides, I've decided menacing (even if just to children) is the new sexy. And I need all the help I can get in that department, especially when hanging out with my cousin Kevin. I actually heard a grown woman call him gorgeous - even though he was drinking a freaking girlie peach bellini at the time. Maybe she meant fabulous.

Then again, I accessorized by borrowing Blair's long pink scarf. I should have called myself Good N Plenty - but I just thought of that now. We collectively decided if anyone mocked me I would hurl the ball right back in their court claiming I was showing support for breast cancer research.

That's the kind of fun I have with my cousins when I visit South Bend for a football weekend. The towns around Notre Dame become a playground for our bits.

Kevin is an optometrist, which is a job I would recommend as a side career for journalists in that you meet a lot of interesting people, people who can get him trendy Chrome Heart shades at deep discounts or know how to get good tickets to football games and access to the NBC VIP tent, for instance.

Once in that tent, I was shocked and appalled that the Ohio State - Michigan game was playing on the TVs. The game was on ABC. So, as Kevin gathered grilled meats from the spread, I went up to him and demanded that he tell corporate come Monday to let them know NBC programming was not prominently featured given that the network pretty much pays owns Notre Dame football (a deal I am sure they are glad they made, as everyone enjoys watching a team that should change its name to the Passive Aggressive Irish).

A couple people in line heard, and in that polite Midwestern way said to each other, "Well, it is an important game."

Which is more than we all could say for spending an afternoon watching the Irish play Duke, two 1-9 teams battle it out. But I am not complaining. It shouldn't always be about winning - I tell myself that a good many mornings as I head off to my job.

Nay, championship season or not, a day in South Bend is about the comedy, too - and a bad team supplies plenty of material, even if much of it involves way to easy fat jokes about head coach Charlie Weiss.

For instance, I was disappointed that the student section didn't change that ooooooooh kickoff chant to doooooooo-nut, then toss the doughy treats unto the sidelines at the feet of the portly coach. Or how about chanting One and Nine, One and Nine?

Couldn't someone have arranged geese to fly over in formation? And maybe at half time any player with a Jamaican 'do could have donated his hair to cancer patients in a Dreadlocks of Love promotion, as the band played Bob Marley.

The game itself lasted almost four hours, thanks to TV timeouts, penalty calls, and incomplete passes. It was tied at 0-0 well into the second quarter (which forebode a possible overtime) before ND broke the game open.

In celebration, and as it was my cousin's birthday, we headed out for dinner at a branch of a fancy Chicago steak place. Yes, even Indiana is becoming like Naperville.

Fancy sunglasses perched on my chrome dome (courtesy of Kevin getting discounted pairs from a sales rep), I noticed once again that way too many guys have adopted the shaved head thing, which is fine by me. It makes more sense than a comb-over and, as I have mentioned before, makes it easier for me should I decide to rob a bank. More suspects.

My other cousin Dan, a plastic/reconstructive surgeon, joined us for after dinner drinks. Yeah, I am the underachiever in the family. Also, not too many people are impressed when you try to explain your attempt at a writing career - but if you work on eyes and faces, in a looks-obsessed culture, people pay attention.

This is not necessarily a good thing. In some cases their ears perk up because they want their ears to perk up, and their chins and wrinkles to disappear. Some expect you to work on the barter system, trading vanity surgery or laser eye work, for, say, drinks and slabs of beef.

As Men's Health might put it, Kevin radiates menergy. If he were devious he could be a roving spokesmodel fro Dan. Pulling out a picture of me, he could tell potential clients that is what he looked like before Dan did his magic.

But they were both raised good Catholic boys. Instead they listened politely when two petite young bartenders asked about their looks. What do you say to such questions?

And it wasn't like these two were the sisters of the Elephant Man. Sure, they were hobbit sized. One sounded like she ingested helium. The other was sort of mousey. I don't think they wanted to know that. They wanted to know how to be more beautiful.

It almost made me want to gain weight and wear thick glasses.

To that end, after the steak place closed, we followed some staff to TGIFriday's where my thin cousin Dan ordered some Mexican food, while the bartenders came by again to inquire more about looks issues. In fact, one of them told us she wants to BE a plastic surgeon - Physician, heal thyself, I guess.

I know the ultimate way to end vanity discussions, but it's atomic. You tell a woman she looks like she's gained some weight and needs to go on a diet. With my mean sunglasses in the car, though, I didn't say that.

Instead we went to Linebackers, an archetype for college football party bar, which is to say it was packed with drunks, smelling of cigarettes and the hunt for desperate coed sex, and the floor was sticky with a day's worth of spilled booze. Oh, the kids all knew the words to every rap song played, and to Avril Lavigne tunes, too. How much is tuition to Notre Dame? Money well spent.

There was a $5 cover charge at 2 a.m. It got you the beer of your choice in a Big Gulp sized plastic cub, which turns out to be the best way to enjoy a Smithwick's.

Scoping the room, I noticed some portly middle aged guys who were in the NBC tent earlier in the day, which brought everything full circle.

And it's the full circle time of year, another 11 months gone in a nano, ending with my usual ritual of a couple college football games, then Thanksgiving dinner, a vacation out west, Christmas and figuring out how to spend New Year's Eve.

For several private reasons I won't really miss 2007. It started out with my car catching fire.

But a good Thanksgiving dinner with friends, a weekend in South Bend - those are wistful ways to get through another 365.

Photographer captures Naked Ambition

When it comes to writing about the sex-ertainment industry, it’s hard not to use puns. See, I’ve made three already. Maybe you can count along while you read this.

For today’s topic is photographer Michael Grecco’s new book, Naked Ambition: An R-rated Look at an X-rated Industry (Rock Out Books). Ain’t it nice that it’s out just in time for Xmas?

On Thursday, November 15, Grecco will be at Studio 415, 415 West Huron Street, Chicago, giving an oral presentation at 6:30 p.m. followed by a book signing.

My copy is somewhere on a delivery truck, but the press release says the book takes readers to the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, where Grecco went backstage to shoot not-what-you-might-think style portraits of porn people including Jenna Jameson, Tera Patrick and the Hedgehog himself, Ron Jeremy. He also takes still life shots of porno props of all sorts.

Grecco said he first became intrigued by these goings-on in 2002 and wanted to document this Fellini-esque subculture. He returned in 2006, shooting close to 10,000 pictures, then returned in 2007 to finish up the project by taking portraits of couples involved in the business.

In one of those you couldn’t make this up scenarios, the porn convention happens at the same time, in the same place, as the Consumer Electronics Show. Insert your own geeks and freaks joke here. As Grecco put it, “It’s brilliant in a way.”

Grecco went into his work with preconceptions that he might meet a lot of broken people.

“What I learned was this is a segment of the regular population. The overriding thing for most of the women was that they do it for the adulation. And everyone involved enjoys sex.”

And some like Alexis Sky found her niche thanks to her naughty movie career. Sky is very tall and found it hard to get a date. With a Web site and movies, she found there is a niche market for her attributes.

The challenge for Grecco was to make this work serious fun but not necessarily salacious. A tough task given “most of the women wanted to take off their clothes and stick out their tongue,” which wasn’t what Grecco had in mind.

Grecco claimed that a plan to market his book was to have billboards with intriguing taglines and R-rated risqué images in Waco, Salt Lake and Peoria, but no one would sell his publisher space. He said the same was true in Chicago and Boston where they wanted prime space – as anyone who has driven down the interstate can tell you there are big billboards for adult bookstores and Hooters Girls to be seen.

Which reminds that porn is a big business. As Grecco pointed out, you can order it on your cable or satellite system now without anyone seeing you scurry out of a video store.

At the same time, the mere word “porn” polarizes people, Grecco said.

Of course, all you have to do is be online, like you are now, to know that porn – or whatever you like to call images of people having all sorts of sex – is readily available, and a whole bunch of it is free. In fact, there are gobs of homemade clips to be found on sites like Xtube. Regular people of all shapes, sizes and predilections (and no fear of losing their day jobs or having a neighbor or boss notice) can be seen in their birthday suits sharing bodily fluids, cavorting and contorting by themselves, with others or with unusual gift items. People can set up Web cameras and have virtual sex with complete strangers in far off places.

But Grecco doesn’t think this will do to the porn business what Craig’s List has done to newspapers.

“People still want to see glamorized situations,” he said.

We shall see. Some like it nice, some like it naughty. And some think, why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free.

Pie face: My winning streak continues

I’m not proud of the fact that my only two discernible talents are having a mind filled with vast amounts of trivial information, mostly about pop culture, and the ability to eat really, really fast.

Sure, it depresses me that my chrome dome doesn’t hold fast facts about physics or accounting but can tell you that Bernie Worrell of P-Funk toured with TalkingHeads during David Byrne’s Big White Suit Days, AKA the "Stop Making Sense" tour, a movie of which was directed by Jonathan Demme, who went on to wind a Best Director Academy Award for "Silence of the Lambs."

And be careful if you invite me to a holiday meal. If I don’t watch my manners, I can be on my third plateful shortly after Grace has been said.

Still, I try to use my so-called skills for good – sort of like Superman, had he been granted these abilities instead of the better ones he has.

That’s to say, I don’t like entering competitions. With trivia, I feel like Rain Man. And it only reinforces my feeling that I should have done more with my potentially beautiful mind.

I did take part in a Pub Quiz shortly after 9-11, which my team won. We decided to give the $600 to a firefighters’ fund.

And last weekend, for the first time ever, I took part in an eating contest. The latent Catholic in me disapproves of such events. Gluttony, after all, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins – not to mention all those starving kids around the globe who go hungry while that Japanese guy snarfs down hot dogs.

But I don’t think the undernourished should be eating what I did Friday – a pie crust filled with uncooked canned cherries, topped with a big dollop of whipped cream.

The cause this time was a corporate challenge that raised money to help poor families in Elgin afford recreation programming. And the pie pigging was part of a series of games that also include two swim contests where some fat guys almost lost their suits, which would have been far more embarrassing, given You Tube, than having filling on your face.

Anyway, reluctant though I was, I turned out to be a natural. I even had a strategy.

We had to dump the alleged pie onto a plate and chow it down using our hands only to hold up the plate. So I buried my face into the mix, mushing it up with my forehead and nose to make it easier to swallow.

You don’t really want to chew anything, just lick and suck with all your heart. Yeah, if that reminds you of something naughty, well… Don’t worry. I don’t think I will be entering a contest for that anytime soon. Unless is for a good cause, of course.

Which is to say, I really got into it my mess, pausing only for a few seconds to remind myself: this wasn’t a frolic in the hay, that food is not my one true friend, and that this was all sort of gross.

Then I thought, the hell with it. If they wanted a display of piggishness, well, I am the guy. I slurped and made like a human Dirt Devil. I even licked the crumbs off the plastic table cloth.

I finished with a flourish, getting up from the table, slamming my plate down on it, then looking up madly with pinkish food product all over my face, even in my eyebrows. My Mom will be so proud, I thought.

I left the room to wash off, only to be congratulated by a couple portly gentlemen in awe of my dubious accomplishment.

This was a team thing, and I apparently gave my partner who had to eat a crust with Cookies and Cream filling a very substantial lead.

To my surprise (but not really) I didn’t get sick – despite that at lunch I had a rib eye sandwich, and about half a combo appetizer platter.

I even took part in a three-person, make as many basketball shots as you can contest, which we handily won, too.

And I had two plates of pasta afterward, just because I could.

This was like some sort of practice for Thanksgiving Dinner. Oddly, I don’t seem to have gained any weight over the weekend.

Of course, earlier this fall I was battling blood clots and a couple other things.

Now I am wondering what my lucky streak holds next. First it was bingo in New Orleans, then pie-eating in Elgin – a true champion, a real winner, eh?

When you're smiling...