naked

And when we say "NSFW," we really mean "NSFW." Family Guy fans undoubtedly remember the episode "Road to Rhode Island" in which Brian and Stewie travel across the country after Stewie misplaces their plane tickets. The B story for that episode involved Lois purchasing a marriage counseling video with a special "men only" section in which the instructor does a strip tease. In this clip found on Google Video, the instructor takes the strip tease a tad further than she did in the original episode. Rumors are abound as to where the clip came from: some claim it was done as a joke played on either Seth Green or Seth MacFarlane, others say it's included as a deleted scene on one of the DVDs. For some reason the only thing I could think about while watching the clip is that I haven't seen Fritz the Cat in a really long time. Weird.

[via Digg]

(S04E04) After a pre-credit opening where the male deputies try to conduct a "panty raid" and end up face to face with a completely naked and pregnant Wiegel, we cut to the first real scene of the episode where a motivational speaker Dangle found on the internet gives the deputies some rather confounding advice, including this diatribe:

"I ask you, does the belt not go through all the loops? You all see yourselves as brilliant little pebbles just waiting for your code word. Well, what if your code word doesn't come, huh? Are you gonna sit around in your cruiser and wind up ejected from somebody's crazy physics package?"

More profound advice I've never heard. Let's move on.

Well, maybe. Rick Ross over at Cult News is reporting that Jim Belushi's new book, Real Men Don't Apologize, may borrow from the teachings of a controversial guru named Justin Sterling (real name, Arthur ''Artie'' Kasarjian). Sterling runs an expensive seminar where the main focus is that gender roles have become confused, with women becoming more masculine and men becoming more feminine. Personally, I thought this theory was a load of horse hockey until last night when I inexplicably gave birth to a baby girl. Apparently Sterling was really onto something.

Anyway, naysayers dismiss Sterling as being misogynistic, and teaching that a woman's only goal in a relationship is to garner power and resources. Men, on the other hand, marry for love. Again, I say that's a load of bull, and only describes four out of my last six relationships (but I kid). Anyway, the most interesting (or terrifying) thing to come from this is that apparently these seminars end with the men stripping naked as part of a ritual and being videotaped. I'm guessing there may be some correlation between Sterling's hatred of women and his desire to videotape naked men, but I'll let you suss that one out yourselves.

I don't have much interest in game shows, but I do try to catch Jeopardy! every day. First of all, it's a somewhat more intellectually stimulating than Wheel of Fortune, and it allows me to sit alone in my apartment and yell things out like, "What is 'Paul's letter to the Corinthians!'" and then sit back with an expression of smug self-satisfaction. Of course, that's usually after listening to twenty other answers whose questions I didn't know.

Most of all, however, I tune in for Alex Trebek and those always awkward exchanges between himself and the guests when he tries to learn a little more about them. Trebek has a tendency to say exactly the wrong thing, or to say things that don't quite make sense.  Yesterday during the Tournament of Champions, he had this exchange with a contestant, Mike, after Mike told him about a shower curtain he and his wife received which had a map of the world on it:

Alex: Do [you and your wife] shower together?

Mike [Smiling nervously]: I'm not gonna answer that.

Alex: You're husband and wife, it's okay.

Mike [Still smiling nervously]: I'm still not gonna answer that.

Ah, it's gems like that which keep me tuned in to this show every day.

(S01E20) In this age where depictions of sexual fantasies which cover the entire spectrum from mildly titillating to mind-bogglingly depraved are available to anyone with an internet connection, a television episode about a kid swiping his dad's Playboy almost seems like something Norman Rockwell would have painted.

Those of us who grew up before the advent of the internet each have our own story about the time we first discovered our dad's hidden treasure of skin mags. I grew up on a farm and discovered my father's collection of Playboys from the '70s and '80s in an old wooden shed, resting inside a stack of dresser drawers. Like any boy who was too young to really be interested in sex yet, I found the magazines to be equal parts fascinating and repulsive. As much as our parents would try to protect us from such things, discovering those magazines was a kind of rite of passage for many young boys. You didn't know what you had found exactly, but it opened a window into the grown-up world you never knew existed. These days, that window no longer exists. In fact, the whole damn wall has been removed and replaced by an endless digital conduit of smut pouring out of the computer monitor of anyone with the ability to type the word "boobs" into Google's search field. An old copy of Playboy with nothing more than a nude female lounging next to a fireplace seems downright quaint.

(S10E12) Being a heterosexual male with the ability to use my eyes, I can certainly understand the desire to kick back at the occasional strip club now and again, but I've never understood men who go to these places all the time. They're fun once in a while, but I would think frequenting them every day would cause the novelty to wear off pretty quickly. That doesn't seem to be the case for Mr. Strickland, who has spent every morning of his life kicking back at his favorite strip joint and enjoying the free buffet. In the beginning of last night's episode, after fuming over the lack of free food, he's banned from the strip club indefinitely.

The episode could have easily been turned into one about a dirty old man upset about not being able to ogle chicks before work every morning, but it was really more about Strickland's endless struggle to remain young and vibrant, at least in his own mind. He has no desire to be the real "boss" of Strickland Propane, he delegates that responsibility to Hank. What he does want is to be the crazy guy who swipes money from the cash register to use at the strip club each morning. Since he can't even do that anymore, he decides to make Strickland Propane more "fun," turning it into "Strickland Propanerie" and having his workers dress in Hawaiian shirts and bunny ears. Unfortunately, this means no work ever gets done and they end up having to work overtime. Hank eventually smooths things over with the owner of the strip club, and Mr. Strickland is allowed back, as long as both parties understand the other one isn't apologizing.

Comedian and musician Brendon Small, creator of Home Movies, one of the greatest shows ever made, animated or otherwise, is appearing, sans clothes, in the April issue of Playgirl, which is on newsstands now. Apparently he appears wearing only a Viking helmet (but not on his head). Anyway, Small is working on his new show, Dethklok, about a popular death metal band consisting of American and Norwegian musicians. Brendon describes the band as being "...a million times bigger than the Beatles. But a million times more dangerous and a million times more stupid."

Special thanks to Doug Stewart for tipping us off.