Topical Cream, 10.08.10

Anthony Bourdain: Resorts can be nice, but they tend to be pretty much the same wherever you go. If you really want to experience travel that means something and changes the way you look at the world, follow Tony?s rules: eat street food, drink heavily with the locals and have a plan B (in this interview, Tony reveals that ?Fuck it, let?s go there and see what happens? is the most common Plan B). Whatever doesn?t kill us makes us stronger, right?

Twittering is easy, comedy is hard: Splitsider, a website for those of us who refuse to take anything seriously, has assembled a list of the 100 essential comedians you must follow on Twitter. It?s a nice mixture of familiar and unfamiliar names, so there?s the comfortable notion of following, say, Jim Gaffigan vs. the adventure of getting to know Saturday Night Live writers who ordinarily don?t get to be funny under their own names much. Sadly, neither or myself made the list. Hey, there?s always next year!

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta: In America, we publicly crucify and attempt to impeach our head of state for improper contact with young women. In Russia, they give Vladimir Putin a specially-made pin up calendar featuring Moscow university students in provocative poses for a 58^th birthday present. I?m going to go ahead and quote crappy pre-perestroika comedian Yakov Smirnov here: ?What a country!?

: In an age when hardcore internet porn is just a mouse-click away, there?s something quaint about the skin being shown in Sports Illustrated?s annual swimsuit edition. Nonetheless, for truly world-class beauty, there?s nothing like it. For every big name supermodel who graces the pages of the magazine, there?s always someone new to enjoy. is the ?it? girl today.

Perfectly Timed Photos: In my family, there?s a much-loved photo of my aunt, taken when she was a child. She had kicked her leg up behind her just as the photo was taken, so the pipe coming out of the water meter behind her looks like a crude peg-leg of sorts. I guess you had to be there. Then again, with Perfectly Timed Photos, anyone can submit their accidentally bizarre images for the world to see. Good times.