Hotness quantified

It was only a matter of time before a website like HotEnough - a site that through "selective screening" only allows the "hottest looking" singles to get their cyber-flirt on - came along.

Similarly, it was only a matter of time before someone as obsessed with the quantification of hotness - her own hotness, in particular - discovered this site and submitted her required two neck-up and one full-body photos for an assessment opaquely described by HotEnough's CEO as "a voting process."

Since that short and deeply dissatisfying two-year stint with SeekingArrangement (I'm kinda still waiting for that trip to Morocco and a Cartier Tank watch from bigpoppa11 and cumletmebuyuthingz69, respectively), I've not been too inclined to re-enter the world of Internet dating. Why HotEnough, then? It's simple. The reason I've applied to join this exclusive community is solely to find out my somewhere-between-8-and-10 "hotness score." Not sure what I'll do with said score...probably print out the congratulatory e-mail and stick it on my wall at work in between the picture of Monte in a tux and Monte with peanut butter on the roof of his mouth. Or maybe I'd neatly fold it and put it in my wallet so that every time someone catches one of my judgmental looks and confronts me with a "What makes you think you're so hot?" verbal throwdown, I could just pull out my tabulated hotness figure and say, "This -- this is how I know!" And I'd win, because science is science.

What happens to those whose pictures earn them a score of 7 or below? Well those individuals - the chaff, we'll call them - are sent curt rejection e-mails and a demoralizing list of other more "open-minded" online dating sites to consider.

Okay, I made that last part up.

Ooooh, I just received my HotEnough confirmation e-mail:

Thank you for registering.

We've received your registration and we're judging your photos. We will let you know shortly if you are hot enough to be a prospective member.

HotEnough Administration

"Judging my photos?" "Hot enough?" Thank the lord for filler stories on the local news - this is just the kind of superficiality I needed to indulge in at the end of a rainy Tuesday.

Please go away. Please.

Just when I thought I'd honed in on the most annoying woman in all of show business, Avril Lavigne decided to crawl out from under the dumpster by TRL studios where she's been "taking a break" and prove me wrong by giving Blender Magazine the most self-indulgent interview of the decade and posing 8th-grade-boy-in-the-midst-of-a-transgender-revelation style on its June cover. In the much-too-lengthy article devoted to her new album - the name of which I'm not even going to bother to look up - Avril not only declares herself "hot" on four separate occasions but also assigns herself a whole host of other misguided compliments such as "talented," "hard-core" and most laugh-out-loud given her inane, "motherfu**ker"-riddled answers to the most basic questions, "articulate."

I'm not sure why I find some women with this level of self-confidence to be smokin' hot (Dita, Angelina, Rachel McAdams' character in Mean Girls, etc.) while others like Avril, Cameron and Beyoncé drive me to seriously reconsider my curiosity with the um, female form. My biggest question upon seeing this make-my-eyes-bleed pictorial was, "Who wants to see this? Exactly which audience is Blender targeting here?" Universally accepted sex symbols like Jennifer Aniston and Orlando Bloom certainly don't toot my horn, but at least I can look at them and understand why and from where their fanbases might be drawn. With this chick, however, especially in the last picture where for the first time in recent memory I am so NOT digging the topless-and-fishnets look, I'm drawing a complete blank.

For more pictures of Avril Lavigne looking like a younger, less attractive Alexis Arquette, see below:

Second favorite OKC moment.

Not since I took a nasty spill at mile 23 of my first marathon while stealing a glance - okay fine, a series of glances - of myself in reflective glass have I come across a situation thicker with laugh-out-loud irony as I did on Saturday night when I came across this Magnum XL condom wrapper atop a Holy Bible in my bedside drawer at the OKC Sheraton.

I think you'll agree with me there's no commentary needed.

That's not what I think it is, is it?

Oh snap, it is.

There, on the left side of my neck, equidistant between my jawline and my shoulder, quite visible to the world, a small reddish, purplish, no-bigger-than-a-nickel "love bite."

How could this be? It's been days. Like, at least four days. And it's not just curious, it's impossible, for I inspect on a bi-hourly basis every square centimeter of my face, neck, front-side, back-side, legs, feet, hands and anywhere else I can reach with either a fingertip of Oil of Olay Regenerist or a handful of Mistral melon-pear-olive-oil body salve. In short, I am the most vain individual you'll probably ever come across; I look at myself not just frequently but meticulously -- there is just no way this seemingly fresh neck bruise was there yesterday, the day before, or the day before that. No way.

My first reaction, then, was to look down at the sweet dollop of manhood sitting between my feet - we do sleep together every night, after all - but the "don't look at me, sister" expression he shot me told me immediately he wasn't the culprit.

Could it be then, as I've always suspected, that the concept laid out in the Nightmare on Elm Street series is more rooted in reality than we think? Do the events that transpire in our dreams actually take place? Was I really Monica Bellucci's date to the Cartier Spring Party in Rome? Did we really polish off that 1984 bottle of Dom and sneak into a dark corner of the Galleria Nazionale to discuss what a mistake it would be for the EU to lift its arms embargo against China and how sad it was to see Cartier recklessly abandon elegance for a more vulgar modern opulence? Did I really make her laugh at my irreverent jokes about the Middle East and did she really wipe that bit of strawberry puree off my...well, you get the picture.

Hoping this was the case, I looked once again to the sage now lying on his back with all four paws bent marionette-style on the bathmat. The "you're my Mommy, you're supposed to be smarter than this" look in his eyes, unfortunately, put that delicious theory to rest.

My last resort, as always, was to turn to Wikipedia.

According to our friend at Wiki, at some point between yesterday and this morning, I must have either engaged in an aggressive makeout session, been the victim of an attempted strangulation (though since my mark doesn't resemble a thumbprint, it's unlikely) or played a mean concerto on a stringed instrument.

I'll have to wait until I return home for official confirmation, but considering how peculiarly my social life is playing out lately, I'm betting I got hot-and-heavy with a violin somewhere on M Street between 14th and ConnAve and just don't remember it.

The look says it all.

Evidence of my first angry run-in with an unfashionable dress was discovered this morning.

For all the times I've been questioned about how or why my relentless judgment of others came to be, I now have an answer.

And a picture.