for 22 December 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Fun Fun Fun. There's nothing more entertaining than exploring the hypocrisy circle-jerk. From the exposed to the entranced audience, we are bullied into giving up either any illusory ideals, or fessing up to being a hypocrite. I'd rather be a hypocrite. Neal Stephenson, (probably better known in the web community for Cryptonomicron, a novel glorifying privacy in the now of eroding privacy) has an interesting discussion of this in The Diamond Age. Some stuffy neoVictorians decide its more fun to have some impossible ideals than to be exposed and completely cynical. As for me, I think I'll just take a new ideal out of my deal-a-meal ethics plan every day, and merrily explore the hypocrisy de jour.

Always digging a shot of TV crit,

John Steill
<steill@sensors.com>

Dear John,

I think you're taking the easy way, bub! Hypocrisy is a highly overrated vice, and its exposure cheap and self-serving when not done as artistically as on City Confidential. At least the hypocrite has the decency to condemn his own actions by his words. It's not as if we would find him more admirable for boasting of his evil, Marquis de Sade-style. Or maybe we would.

But hypocrites at least keep one foot on the straight and narrow path, and what more can you ask in this vale of tears? I suspect that the hypocrites people really choose to despise are the ones that condemn our own vices; it's not the sharing them part that we hate, but the condemnation. What is so wrong about Lobster Boy speaking of being a good father and husband? If he had only lived up to his own press, we would have him with us today.

The Boob

Sucksters:

I met the Lobster Boy at a carnival in Huber Heights, Ohio in 1990. Several of us paid a buck for the privilege (I know how that sounds, but you had to be there). He was really nice, he told us he'd been in sideshows since he was six years old, that he was married and had four children, two normal and two "like me". He asked if the lines for beer were still long.

You're about to find out, if you don't already know, that Grant Wood's estate is quick to point out that American Gothic is not in the public domain, and they're not shy about asking for a little compensation for the use of the image. I discovered this when I was working for a local newspaper and used the painting in an ad. There was a contractor who used to advertise in those days named Whited and Sons, and it occurred to me that it was a shame that they didn't sell mausoleums. The could have called their business Whited Sepulchre. Nobody thinks that's funny but me.

Let us know how it goes with the Grant Wood people, it would probably make a good Suck.

Logan Rogers
<logerogers@aol.com>

Dear Logan,

A dollar to meet Lobster Boy seems like a pretty good bargain to me. You'd think he would have a six-pack stowed away someplace, though.

Yrs,

The Boob

That piss-guzzling Joshua "Medicine Man" Cravitt you wrote about today gives me the creeps. Mock away!

Malcolm Davidson - Gdansk, Poland
<pracowity@yahoo.com>

Thanks, Malcolm. Good to hear from Gdansk, the cradle of Solidarnosc, the fulcrum on which the Soviet Union was overturned. Given the cholesterol-rich Polish diet, however, we urge you to get in touch with the Medicine Man. We've been in contact with the MM ourselves about the possibility of having the Sucksters provide some hands-on cleansing demonstrations or samples from our intestinal tracts. Negotiations are sensitive, but here's Josh's latest pitch:

Tim, Join us for a cleanse. YOU'LL LOVE IT. I PROMISE.

Satisfaction back guarantee. Your doctor of course won't offer you that when he works with/treats you. Says something about the program, doesn't it?

So take the plunge, spit the winkle, get clean!

Sucksters

Evidently you are drawn to like polarity.

Robert R. Osborne
<OZZDOG@prodigy.net>

Honored to hear from you, Mr. Osborne. Without your facile and informed introductions Turner Classic Movies would just be another oldies channel.

Sucksters

while it's all fine & good to wax humorous about clinton pardoning all the folks on texas' death row, there is this slight federalism question raised. that's one of those powers that the federal government doesn't have; unless they were charged with federal crimes, clinton can't pardon them.

Christopher J. Le Mon
<cjl233@nyu.edu>

It must be your firm grasp of the constitution that makes people come up and say "You Le Mon," isn't it Christopher? Thanks for your accurate defense of states' rights. As our list of pardonable offenders was pretty clearly a joke, however, you might want to use your powers of correction on the folks who seriously propose Mumia as a Clinton-pardon candidate. It's our understanding that the award-winning journalist was convicted under the laws of the state of Pennsylvania and is thus no more eligible for a Presidential pardon than Roberto Benigni. Yet people who, as far as we can tell, ain't funnin' around, keep saying Clinton should pardon him. To quote Yakov Smirnoff, What A Country!

Sucksters

Subject: hit n run

was good today

one idea you missed that's floating round ye olde office here

clinton resigns, gore becomes president, gore pardons clinton

whee

ian
<imelven@xtremesoft.com>

We can make beans into peas!

Dream big, Ian!

Sucksters

The last sentence of your piece (Meanwhile, let there be no doubt that the Sucksters have assholes so clean you could eat out of them) reminded me of the way I used to describe this one girl in my college dorms. All she ate was Shredded Wheat, Wheat Thins, and water. I never thought I would see a joke of mine used by Suck.

My sense of humor has been vindicated!

Keep up the good work, guys.

Christopher Scott
<wabe5@yahoo.com>

That was a woman in your college dorm, Christopher.

As for the Sucksters' claims, we're just going on the fact that we've been feeding the public a load of shit for five years now.

Sucksters

Is anyone aware that your (Suck's) website has been stuck on the same column for the last 5 or 6 days? Suck hasn't gone out of business, has it?

Incidentally, an excellent column. One of your better ones.

Paul Clark - Shandon, California
<paul@ccnlegal.com>

Browsers, browsers, browsers!

Hit Reload. Or Refresh. New Sucks are coming your way every day. How's that for a mixed blessing?

Sucksters

"The usual "political prisoners" like (yawn) Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal."

Man, the jaded hipster (the species which produces so much of the content for your aptly-named mag) has just *got* to go. Loved the Bart quote from that cartoon you Americans are so clever at producing: "We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks."

Fuck your quotation marks, and fuck your blase yawns, motherfuckers. It'd be fun to throw your ass in the slam — and directly in front of your new 300-pound bunkmate — to provide a new perspective for you on incarceration.

Oh yeah, "peace out", cousins, loved your election.

All the best,

LuckyJim in Montreal

Suck is the 300-pound bunkmate.

But thanks for the new perspective — we imagine living in Canada this time of year is a hell of a lot like being incarcerated.

Yawn,

Sucksters

Subject: HPS-Online; who knew?

I had the misfortune of landing on this site two years ago. I was stressed out and looking for some relaxing music on the web, so I did a search for "relaxation." For some inexplicable reason, I next found myself being greeted by a drippy black piece of expelled intestine chunks and reading eerily convincing testimonials about detoxification through super-high colonics (just what the doctor ordered!).

That site is like the heart-ripping scene in Temple Of Doom — disgusting, yet magnetic in a respectable, Republican sort of way. Or not. Anyway, I think that scarring experience caused me to switch permanently from Altavista to Google.

By the way, this piece danced around the burning questions on everyone's mind: Is Terry's last name pronounced the same way as the large intestine, and was he teased mercilessly as a child for it?

Feeling cleansed,

Dave Rosow
<david_rosow@student.hms.harvard.edu>

As an informational service to our readers, we continue to urge all and sundry to visit HPS Online's drippy black piece of expelled intestine chunks gallery.

As for Terry, we know very little about him or his name. Now as always, Terry communicates with us strictly by rumor.

Sucksters

The Shit

Physical Strength and How to Obtain It, by Eugen Sandow

Bamboozled, A Spectacular New Film by Mr. Spike Lee

G. Beato's all-new Soundbitten

William Demarest, Sultan of Snarl, in The Lady Eve (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)

George Wallace: Settin' The Woods On Fire, directed by Daniel McCabe and Paul Stekler

1995

Bobby Darin, Darin at the Copa (Atlantic)

Shinji-San in the floating world of indeterminate duration, by Peter Richardson

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor

Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1996, Merge)

45, by Bill Drummond

Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, Singing in the Rain (ASV)

Do you know of stuff that doesn't actively suck? Things so good they deserve to make the Shitlist? Send your suggestions to us.