Everybody, Sing! (Sweetie's Hunk of the Week, 56)

It's pleasant to get up early on a Saturday morning, sitting in the early morning sunrise with music quietly playing, the whole house to myself, just drinking coffee, and thinking... and googling images of Sweetie's latest Hunk of the Week:

Mike Vogel

You Don't Know Him Without You Have seen She's Out Of My League, a movie which for some reason I remember as "She's Out Of His League." Lately, my memory has been getting more and more like my dad's memory, which is to say it's not so much a memory as it is "a tool for just making things up and believing them." My dad, for years, has done that, coming up with new names for people and movies and TV shows, and even falling back on generic descriptions. Here's a true story:

Once, my dad called me up and asked if Sweetie was around. I said she was but she was busy, and asked what he needed.

"She knows about movies and stuff. I want to ask her who starred in movie." Dad said. I said I'd ask her and asked what movie it was.

"That one with that one guy, you know?" That's an exact quote. That's exactly what he asked me to ask her. So, to point out the humor of that situation to Sweetie (and as a way of whistling past the graveyard) I asked Sweetie if she knew who that one guy in that one movie was.

And she got it right. (It was Steve McQueen, maybe. I don't know, now. I just know that Sweetie got it right.)

Now I've become that person, that person who can't remember and so he just makes up facts and those facts become his life, something I started years ago when they asked me for my ZIP code at a store.

"53576," I said, without any hesitation.

Sweetie, who was with me, said "That is NOT our zip code." And I had to correct it.

This week alone, I've been trying to think all week what the name of a song was that I used to play on my radio show back in college, and I finally remembered that it was, without a doubt, "Bedlam Boys" by Michael Penn.

Only there's no such song; just this morning I learned that when I tried to look it up. It's actually Brave New World by Michael Penn,



A fact I wouldn't have ever figured out, if not for Google, which is why I was serious when I said that I was going to subcontract my memory out to Google.

And I misremembered, twice, the name of Middle's boyfriend, which probably serves him right.

And now, when I went to post the Hunk of the Week, Mike Vogel,




I couldn't remember his name. All I could remember was that Sweetie had said he was in the movie she saw with The Boy last week, the movie I remembered as "She's Out Of His League," only there wasn't any such movie.

Mike Vogel right now is playing Jack in "That One Movie About Leagues" and he's also been in movies like Cloverfield -- which prompted Sweetie to ask me "Which one was he in Cloverfield?" a misguided question if ever there was one: I'm lucky to remember there was a movie called Cloverfield, let alone that there were actors in it.

And Mike Vogel, as I look over his career, was also in two other movies Sweetie loved, the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Havoc, a movie Sweetie ordered on DVD, unrated.

So Sweetie's this week been implying that she just found out about Mike Vogel in "A League Of That Guy's Own" but it seems to me that she's known about him for a lot longer, since he's been in all these other movies that she liked.

Thing That Makes You Go Hmmm About Him: First off, I should correct myself a little. There's no song Bedlam Boys by Michael Penn. There is a song called Bedlam Boys, and here's a great version of it:



I've been listening to that as I write this, and it's giving me a dreadful sense of foreboding about Mike Vogel. (As you'd expect, if you read this.)

That song raises the question, "Did Mike Vogel actually sing in the movie "20,000 Guys In A League Under The Sea?" It doesn't seem to raise that question, until you follow this logical chain of thought:

1. I went to Youtube to look up Bedlam Boys by Michael Penn.
2. I realized Michael Penn never sang that song.
3. I then googled some of the lyrics I could remember, and found out the song was called Brave New World.
4. I then went back to Youtube and looked up that song.
5. I then wanted to hear the actual song Bedlam Boys to see if I'd ever heard it before.
6. I hadn't.
7. Mike Vogel played a guy who's in a Hall & Oates cover band in the League Of Extraordinary Geeks movie.

Which naturally leads me and you, back to Youtube to find out if there's any videos of Mike Vogel singing Hall & Oates songs.

There's not, but there's Mike Vogel singing Shine from Wuthering Heights:



I just showed that to Sweetie, and she said "How come everyone sings?" a question I understood, because Sweetie has liked a lot of other hunks in the past who also sang,



so it seems like that's a major factor in Sweetie deciding to like someone...

... which makes it lucky for me that way way back when Sweetie and I first began dating, I played the guitar for her and sang True Companion by Marc Cohn, and probably somewhat lucky that later I played my hit (?) song (?!) Eatin' Gummi Bears...

but it seems like everyone really does sing, from Mike Vogel to James Marsden (another prior hunk)



To Robert Downey, Jr. (who sounds a lot like Peter Gabriel):



to John Corbett:



To Jason Schwartzman?



and so on.

So everyone really does sing. Sweetie was right.

Even Mike Vogel.

Reason I Assumed Sweetie Likes Him: Since I didn't remember who he was and only vaguely remembered the movies Sweetie said he'd been in (He's Out Of Cloverfield's League), I had no real reason in mind why Sweetie might like him. The picture she put on our computer desktop to celebrate his week of Hunkiness is this one:



That was the only thing I had to go on, so I went with striped shirt. Sweetie probably liked the striped shirt he had on. I mean, what else is there to like in that picture? The casual beard? The cool hair? The chiseled good looks? The almost-hypnotically-blue eyes? Please. It's got to be the shirt.

Actual Reason Sweetie Likes Him: "He's a doll." And something about him being cute or maybe boyish. I don't know; my memory is shot. But I'm pretty sure it was something about being boyishly good looking,


an ominous thing for a guy like me to hear. I'm the exact opposite of boyishly good looking. I'm not boyish, I'm not good, and I'm not even looking. I'm oldmanishly-ugly-unlooking.

But I could buy a striped shirt, I suppose.

Point I'd Like To Make About Sweetie's Actual Reason For Liking Him: Actually, I think I did just make my point. I've got nothing left to say here. So I'll just finish by pointing out that I figured out who he is in Cloverfield. He's this guy:



Special LAW&ORDERPOCALYPSE update! This week, it was announced that skier Lindsey Vonn (who I remembered as "Someone") is going to be on one of the Law & Orders... so we're that much closer to the end of the world.