The Final Hunkdown! (Sweetie's LAST EVER Hunk of the Week.)

Just in case the title didn't get you humming the song it rips off, here you go:




That intro, as the title suggests, is appropriate because we have come to The Final Hunk of The Week, ending this long-running, beloved series for two reasons:

1. My ego can no longer take listening to Sweetie describe, around her drool, why she likes each Hunk, and

2. Pretty much, Number 1 is the only reason.

So this week, I talked it over with Sweetie and we had this discussion:

Me: I'm thinking about ending Hunk of the Week.

Sweetie: Whatever you want to do. I'm still going to google images of half-naked men constantly while you're at work.

I'm kind of reading between the lines, there, because what Sweetie actually said is:

Sweetie: Okay.

With that, I asked her to pick one final Hunk of the Week, and she came up with:

Max Ryan!

You Don't Know HIm WIthout You Have... Boy, I thought I could do this without getting teary-eyed, but I don't know. Now I'm thinking back on 65 weeks of Hunky fun, and I'm starting to mist up. Unless that's sweat dripping into my eyes from having to go up into the Babies!' room 27 times to get the balloon off the ceiling because Mr Bunches wants to take a nap holding his balloon from this morning, only he keeps letting go of it and it floats up to their super-high ceiling, and he won't let me tie it to something, and we don't have any string around here. What kind of house doesn't have string? I feel like I'm less than an adult if I don't have a junk drawer that has some kind of old string in it.

Max Ryan was apparently in the latest Sex and The City movie, cleverly titled (I think) 2 Sex, 2 City. Or maybe it was Sex & The City 2: Beyond Thunderdome, judging from the ads where they wander in a postapocalyptic wasteland and Samantha is some sort of zombie propped up by chemicals.

Sweetie saw Sex & The City 2 (or, as I just thought of calling it, Golden Girls: The Movie) last week with Middle and Oldest as a belated, and only a little inappropriate, Mother's Day present from the girls, and immediately came home and picked Max Ryan...

Remember him? He's this guy:



As her next Hunk of the Week, and she also said that he'd be fitting as the last Hunk of the Week, although I'm not sure why that is. In talking about it with her -- because sometimes Sweetie and I talk in between all the balloon-chasing and husband-murder-television-show watching - -in talking about it, I gathered that Max Ryan is some sort of Ultra Hunk, perhaps the greatest Hunk ever...

Although if he is, I don't get it. He just looks like an old guy to me:



And his image is not being helped by the fact that his shirt in that picture has two breast pockets. I'm pretty sure that went out of style in 1974, Max. (You know what doesn't go out of style? Blue crocs with a pair of green cargo shorts and a Green Bay Packers' t-shirt. I'm timeless.)

Beyond Sex & The City 2 (can "Sex & The City 3D: These Girls Are More In-Your-Face than EVER" be far behind?) Max Ryan hasn't been in anything you ever heard of, or at least not anything I ever heard of, except that movie The Box which nobody saw because we all instantly understood that there was no possible way to turn a clever moral question into a 2-hour movie and have it still be entertaining.

You know what is entertaining? This:

The Button - watch more funny videos

I just watched that twice in a row and laughed through it both times.

Thing That Makes You Go Hmmm About Him: Where to begin, where to begin? I'm over my mistiness now. You know the old saying:

For every door that closes, God opens a window and then humanity says "What are you doing, the air conditioner is on" and God says "You shouldn't yell at me, I'm GOD," and we say "Yeah, well, are you paying the electric bill?" And then it gets into a big conversation about whether or not God needs to contribute a little more to the household, and also, could there maybe be some good music at Church? Once in a while?

Yes, that old saying. I've got it cross-stitched on a pillow I'm going to give my mother-in-law for her birthday.

I could start, with Max Ryan's hmmm-iness, by talking about how he played a character named "Conceited" in a movie called "Yoorinal," which is described as this:

Paul Kaye outlines the differences among the variety of yoorinators. He explains the proper etiquette that should be practised by all men whilst in the washroom.

But why just live with that description when you can watch the actual movie? I can't embed it, but I can link to it... so click here if you've ever wanted to see a movie that begins with a guy trying to pronounce "urinal" (and getting it wrong.) Plus, there's British slang! Ponce! What's not funny about that?

On the other hand, I could say that Max Ryan's Hmmm-iness has something to do with the fact that if you read his biography, on his website, you'll realize that the movie The Box that he was in wasn't the movie that you (I) thought it was. But since that video above is totally hilarious and I just chuckled just thinking about it, I'll just go ahead and say I'm right about which version of The Box he starred in.

But really, the thing that makes you go Hmmm about Max Ryan is this: What's going on with his hair in this picture?


Even he seems to be asking that question, doesn't he?

Reason I Assumed Sweetie Liked Him: He looks kind of like he'd play a bad guy in a movie, doesn't he? Look at this:

That smile makes him seem like he'd play the kind of guy who dates a girl just so he can marry her, get into her father's company, work his way up to the top, then kill the dad, take over the company, break it into bits and sell it off to make himself rich, and then be ready to divorce the woman, too, but at the last possible minute, just before he signs the papers, he looks back at his wife and the little girl they adopted from Romania, who only wanted a daddy and a Big Wheel here in America, and changes his mind, so they drop the divorce and move into a new, big house in South Carolina, and live happily and richly ever after.

And also he has to keep hiding that he killed her dad.

Like the way Richard Gere and Diane Lane got to live happily ever after, somehow, when they chopped up that guy in that one movie Richard Gere was in where he was in a relationship with someone almost his own age.

(Note to Max Ryan: If you're interested in that script, I can send you a copy. I haven't decided on a title yet, but we could go with "Sex & The City & A Bad Guy.")

In case you didn't figure it out, I'm saying that Sweetie liked him because he's got kind of a bad-boy vibe about him -- but it's a bad boy wrapped around a good guy, which is the perfect kind of guy for most women. You ladies know you all dream of getting the bad boy who won't fit into society... until he meets you, that is, and you show him how great it is to wear a tie and not beat up people at the gas station and buy you flowers even though you didn't do anything.


Actual Reason Sweetie Likes Him: I asked her this, and Sweetie started gushing like a BP oil well. (Too soon?) I caught bits and pieces: Gray hair... super hunky... the total package, and at that I accused of her having seen his... well, of having seen his Max Ryan, if you get what I mean (and if you don't get what I mean, you are seriously in over your head on the Internet, because calling his penis his "Max Ryan" is the tamest thing you'll see on any site anywhere on the Internet.)

Sweetie swore that Max Ryan didn't go naked in Sex And The City 2: Dazzling Lights And No Close-Ups, EVER.

Then she admitted she'd seen his butt.

Point I'd Like To Make About Sweetie's Actual Reason For Liking Him: First of all, I think she's still going on about why she likes him -- and it's been several days now.

Second of all, the last time I checked, you have to be naked for someone to see your butt. And I'm 100% positive about that, as it was the title of the essay I wrote to get me into law school.



Click here to see a list of, and links to, the previous sixty-four Hunks.

Want the Hunks to keep coming? Email me, or leave a comment, or Twitter me. Is that right? "Twitter Me?" I'm not sure how that even works.

In retrospect, Saturday's activities would have made for a better post. Sorry! (Saturday's Adventure, 3)

Better late than never: As the Babies! and I plan for "Cows On The Concourse" tomorrow, here's a look back at last Saturday's adventure, which was actually Sunday's adventure:

The Monona, WI "Dream Park."

About 30 minutes from us, on the other side of Madison-- everything in Madison is 30 minutes from everything else, because it's a terrible area to drive in -- is one of the first of those phenomenal, community-built, all-wood playgrounds that are all the rage nowadays, replacing the old, rusty-metal deathtrap playgrounds I grew up on. Last Sunday Sweetie and took Mr F and Mr Bunches there -- moving Saturday's Adventure to Sunday because of the Memorial Day weekend.

Hey, if mail can be delayed by holidays, so can adventures.

We had to split up because Mr F and Mr Bunches both went their separate ways. Mr Bunches preferred the more adventurous play. He liked climbing up the chains...



And walking down the staircase made of old tires -- each with a dangerous hole in the middle that he carefully avoided -- but Sweetie was still worried:



He even made a friend -- everywhere he goes, Mr Bunches makes a friend, these days. He and this other kid followed each other around, climbed over fences together, and played "Run Across The Rickety Bridge Really Fast," while laughing:


Mr F, on the other hand, spent a more sedate time at the park. Here's Sweetie sitting outside the little enclosure; Mr F is inside the fort to her right, just sitting quietly.



Not being a fan of heights, or of slides, Mr F only cautiously, and with lots of hesitation, let me carry him up to the lowest level of slide on the castle -- and then would only go down the first time sitting on my lap. But he liked it so much that he later led me back up to it, and was almost going to go down alone before he decided things were a lot safer on Daddy's lap, probably because I barely fit between the rails and that slowed us down a lot:


Mr F enjoyed finding the little musical-bell area that is in the playground for some reason. At least three of the playgrounds that I know of have some sort of musical bell area. A fourth has a giant Tic-Tac-Toe game.



Mr F was not as impressed by the smaller slide over towards the baby area -- but probably because the slide, even with its neutral-green color, was about 150 degrees.




We didn't stay very long, actually: the humidity was 9 billion percent, and the Babies! seemed a little tired from the day before, when we'd gone for a nature walk, taken them jogging, gone to the Splash Park and the regular park, and then taken them for a drive that night.

there wasn't a thing that didn't respond (Friday's Sunday's Poem/Hot Actress 51)

Daddy Fell into the Pond.
by Alfred Noyes


Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.

We had nothing to do and nothing to say.

We were nearing the end of a dismal day,

And there seemed to be nothing beyond,

THEN

Daddy fell into the pond!



And everyone's face grew merry and bright,

And Timothy danced for sheer delight.

"Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!

He's crawling out of the duckweed."

Click!



Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,

And doubled up, shaking silently,

And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft

And is sounded as if the old drake laughed.



O, there wasn't a thing that didn't respond

WHEN

Daddy fell into the pond!

_____________________________________________________________


About the Poem: I liked the lack of pretension in the subject matter, I liked the fact that it followed a regular rhythm, I liked that it rhymed. If you're going to read poetry, you want it to be poetry, to show what language can do when it's challenged. Here, words form an almost bubbly, laughy kind of beat. Plus, it rhymed. All you highbrow poets writing free verse about Romania hoping to get published in The New Yorker... take some time today to write a fun, rhyming poem.

About the Actress: I'm not sure she is an actress, but I use that term loosely anyway. Belinda Carlisle was on the Joy Behar show last night, prompting me to say she looked kind of old, and Sweetie to say she looked good, and me to agree that she looked good but that I was surprised that she looked ... older, and Sweetie to comment that she thought Belinda Carlisle had Botox, although I don't know how she knows or suspects that. Something about the forehead. Anyway, Belinda Carlisle looks good and is maybe around 50 (?) so she's getting her due here.