If I had abs like that, I'd never wear a shirt, either. But I would wear those cutoffs I mention... (Sweetie's Hunk of the Week, 38)

Sweetie's 38th Hunk of The Week is...


Marky Mark!

You Don't Know Him Without You Have... been alive for the past twenty years or so. Marky Mark -- who would probably prefer to be called Mark Wahlberg but tough, 'cause he is a rich and famous and good-looking and cool guy whose life is such that the worst thing that happens to him, on a regular basis, is that he's confused with Matt Damon, and if that's the worst thing in your life, how bad is your life? Not very bad, so I'm going to just go ahead and call him Marky Mark and if he doesn't like it, he can just go cry into his amazingly muscular arms and probably the three or four supermodels he's dating at any one time, or he can come and try and beat me up, which would be totally easy because the whole time he was beating me up I'd be saying "Oh, man, I can't (ow!) believe I'm getting to (ouch!) meet Marky Mark! I totally (oh God it hurts!) loved you in The Bourne Identity!

I'm not very good with celebrities, remember.

Anyway, where was I? Marky Mark, along with Rachel's hairdo on Friends, has been probably the premiere cultural force in America over the past 20 years. There has been no male person with a more seismic impact on American culture over the past two decades: Marky Mark, on the boy side, reigns supreme, and I can say that because no matter who you are, your life has been touched by Marky Mark in the past 20 years. Let me prove it, as I prove everything, scientifically:

Are you a person who formerly was a little kid who loved hockey/Emilio Estevez? Then you probably grooved out to "Good Vibrations," from the The Mighty Ducks soundtrack:



I'm jamming a little myself, right now. Go, Briane, It's your birthday...*
(*It's not.)


Are you Ben Stiller? If so, you know him from appearing on your show -- The Ben Stiller Show, remember? -- as himself in 1993.

Are you a guy who one night couldn't sleep, so you watched the movie Three Kings and totally liked it and came away with a new understanding of the first Gulf War, and Marky Mark's acting ability, and also went and woke up your wife and told her You ought to watch this movie I just saw! If so, then you know him from that movie -- and also you and I have a lot in common.

Are you someone who knows who, or what, a Starbuck Holger Meins (2002) is? Then help me, because I have no idea and I don't want to Google it because it looks like it's a weird German thing, and I'm not going to Google weird German things. Not ever again. Ever.

Ever.

I rest my case, or I will after a moment when I point out that you would even know who Marky Mark is if you are a Central American housewife with access to telenovelas, as he appeared in Corazon de... in 2006, starring as himself.

See what I mean? He's in The Departed, so young guys who like gangsters know him and old guys who like Martin Scorcese but couldn't sit through Gangs of New York know him, too. He's going to be in The Lovely Bones, so people who read that book will know who he is, and the kind of people who read The Lovely Bones are not the kind of people who usually know who people are. The kind of people who read The Lovely Bones are the kind of people who usually sit around in coffee shops with earnest expressions on their faces, and who will buy Hallmark cards for unusual occasions, like pet weddings.

(Not that it was a bad book. I read it. But I'm the second kind of person who read The Lovely Bones, the kind of person whose wife read it and said he would like it, so he read it and did like it, but still doesn't buy cards for any occasion.)

He was in I Heart Huckabees, a totally underrated comedy about something or other (I haven't figured it out yet...) and I could go on and on but it's starting to actually get a little embarrassing, even for me, and I'm not easily embarrassed. Easily freaked out, yes. Easily distracted from babysitting the twins by sending letter after letter offering to ghostwrite Mark Hamill's biography? Yes.

But easily embarrassed? I think my too-short, ripped-in-the-butt, too tight cutoff blue jean shorts that I'd still be wearing if Sweetie hadn't thrown them out speak for themselves in that regard. And yet, I like Marky Mark so much that I'm embarrassed by it. If Sweetie hadn't chosen him for Hunk of the Week, I would have. Or fate would have, as Marky Mark's presence in or intersection with music, movies, television shows, novels and every other aspect of pop culture over 20 years is a cultural force not to be trifled with.

Still doubt me? He even had a workout video...



... with Diana Ross. He owns Motown! Plus, I'm grooving to that song, a little, too. Go Briane... It's your birthday!*
(*see previous footnote)

Thing That Makes You Go Hmmmm About Him: You probably think I'm going to go after the Funky Bunch thing here, and I could. It'd be easy:


Easier, even, than writing the life of Mark Hamill -- another national treasure, and the offer's still open, Mark -- but doing that, making fun of the way guys in the early 90s thought they looked tough when they actually looked the exact opposite of tough...

...Seriously? These guys thought they were all gangster? They were about as gangster-tough as Hefty Smurf. And similarly dressed...

So I'm not going that route, and besides, there's an even bigger Thing That Makes You Go Hmmm About Him: The fact that he has apparently never been photographed wearing a shirt.

Honestly, if you Google Mark Wahlberg (as I do an alarming number of times in a given week), you'll find picture after picture of him sans shirt.

Just two of the billions of examples of Marky Shirtless Mark.
The second one should probably have certain areas blurred out.

And it gets worse. If you Google Funky Bunch, the same thing: Picture after picture of Marky Mark, shirtless...



Some of them hilarious, sure, but still shirtless... shirtlarious:




In fact, if you were to take all the pictures of Marky Mark in which he's shirtless, and lay them end to end, Sweetie would never stop drooling.

(And, let's be honest, I'd probably be pretty affected myself.)

Would the space program have a chance of getting back on track and getting humans to Mars, if Marky Mark were put in charge of it by President Obama? I'm going to go ahead and say yes, with a proviso.

I'm saying yes because look at Marky Mark's track record: Ability to wear backwards hats and still look cool? Check. Ability to have not ended up the Jonas Brothers of the 1990s? Check. Ability to have distinguished himself from the other Marky Mark, the professional wrestler in the Alberta-based "Stampede Wrestling?" Check.

Above: Marky Mark, but not the one you care about.

Above: The Marky Mark you want to see.

So the only question I have is how don't those add up to "the ability to run a space program that actually does things besides crashing into the moon and calling it an experiment, even though it's no more 'experimental' or 'scientific' than the time I wiped out on my skateboard going down that big hill across from Uncle Joe's old house?"

The proviso, though, is that Marky Mark could only run the space program if they somehow invented a way to be shirtless while wearing a space suit. Because, seriously, there are no pictures of the guy wearing a shirt:

I found this one by searching for
"For the Love of God, Are There Any Pictures Of
Marky Mark Wearing Clothes on His Upper Body?"

Reason I Tell Myself Sweetie Likes Him: I was mystified, at first. To begin with, he had a tattoo of what looked like Che Guevara, and Sweetie hates tattoos:

On closer inspction, though, the tattoo turned out to be Rubber Band Man from that office commercial, so that was okay.

Rubber Band Man or not, that tattoo is only the first of a lot of strikes against him: He also had muscles and good looks and fame and money, and Sweetie always told me those things weren't important to her. I'd say "Do you mind that I have a stomach that looks as though I accidentally swallowed a mailbox, and that I make less money than many substitute teachers, and less money even than some substitute teachers who aren't really substitute teachers but are just doing that as a gig until they sell their sitcom pilot?"

And Sweetie would say "None of those things are important to me." So I guess that maybe Sweetie likes Marky Mark for his rapping skills, which is fine since that's something he and I share, if you judge by my ability to rap songs about the Babies!, and also to rap about 1/3 of Parent's Just Don't Understand.

Actual Reason Sweetie Likes Him: I asked her, and she said:

“Oh, come on, really? I even think his wife is hot. I don’t even think that’s a question that needs to be answered.”

Which leads me to:

Point I'd Like To Make About Sweetie's Actual Reason For Liking Him: That gave me free rein to Google Mark Wahlberg wife, just to see how hot she was. I mean, a guy like Mark Wahlberg must have landed a total babe, right? So I did that, typing Mark Wahlberg wife into the box, and got this image:



Shirtless. Again. Seriously, man. What's up with that?