During my teen years, my dad had a friend who'd drop by from time to time. He was funny and confident and handsome, apparently smart and quite good at what he did.
He also had a wife he complained about endlessly. She was difficult and didn't like to do any of the things he liked to do. She made his life miserable in all sorts of inventive ways.
She never accompanied him on any of his visits so I never met her and after a while I just figured he had his own Rodney Dangerfield routine going on, his way of blowing off steam or disguising his true affections or whatever.
A few years later, I came back home for Christmas and he and his wife dropped over for a drink. She was everything he had said she was. Really one of the most dislikeable people I'd ever met. I couldn't understand how they had ever gotten involved in the first place, let alone stayed together for so long.
After a few drinks and not knowing how to assuage my curiosity without committing some social faux pas, I asked what had made him ask her out for the first time. He gave me one of those safe, "needed a date for the Prom" kind of answers.
So I asked what made him ask her out the second time. He paused, swirled the ice cubes in his drink and answered quietly, as if I wasn't even in the room.
"She's got this thing she can do with her tongue."
What defines attractive -- what constitutes Sexy is unfathomably subjective. Even those who are nobody's idea of "Happily Ever After" turn out to be everything to somebody.
But when you work in movies and television, you frequently have to find somebody with traits or attributes that everybody will either find attractive or completely understand why others would. Some might call it being "hot" or "cool". I've always referred to them as having "it".
Back in my thespian days, I was asked to audition opposite some Playmate of the Year candidate. She was stunningly beautiful and the film didn't require much more than that from her. Our scene consisted of a couple of lines followed by my character launching into a complicated monologue.
We trooped in to a standard studio casting session with the director and a half dozen producer types sitting at a long table. There was some sociable chit-chat and then we began the scene. I had a line. She had a line. I had a line. She had a line. I launched into the big speech.
Halfway through, I glanced at the head table. The director was watching me. Everybody else was staring at Miss November, who wasn't doing a damn thing but being Miss November. The director and I locked eyes. He smiled and shrugged, "What're you gonna do?"
I could've been Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson and Tom Hanks all rolled together that afternoon and nobody would have noticed, let alone remembered.
This week, one of the websites I frequent tossed up a video of a young lady I had never heard of named Alizee. She's a French pop singer in her mid-20's, mostly unknown in North America but it seems quite popular elsewhere.
Most of her Youtube videos number views of 8 million or more.
It took me about 30 seconds watching the video below to realize that whatever was going on, she had a lot of "it".
Don't ask me to define what that means, I couldn't even if we were to spend hours studying the film frame by frame -- not an entirely unpleasant thought.
My French isn't great, but I think she's singing about being in a bubble bath. And while there are those who might become aroused at the thought of anybody from France actually taking a bath, I don't think that's the main attraction.
Yeah she's cute and the tune's catchy and the choreography might strike some as suggestive but it isn't any of those things either.
Maybe she was just a refreshing change after a week of writing about football.
But whatever "it" is, Alizee has cornered the market.
If you figure it out, let me know. Hit the replay button as often as you need to. Like I've been.
And -- Enjoy Your Sunday.
