Re-Run Sunday: Cigar store ambiance enhanced by breasts

Back to work tomorrow, or back to what for me passes for work. In the meantime, here's a story form April 2009 about my visit to a Pittsburgh cigar camp that was enhanced by the surprise appearance of two topless women.

In my endless quest to find the coolest place in Pittsburgh, I’m often responsible for rounding up a posse.

Sound easy? It never is. Maybe I’m just not dangerous enough. I could probably get a gang of guys together if I said we were going to book a day-long trip to Pittsburgh’s best strip clubs.

But that’s never been my idea of cool because I’m a fairly chatty guy. If a naked woman slides up to me in a bar that’s pulsing with music by the artist who was formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince, she’s likely to pose me the question, “Are you feeling hot?”

Most guys will pant, “Yeah, baby!”

I’ll say, “Well, this print shirt is a comfortable cotton-polyester blend. Today’s forecast calls for mild temperatures with low humidity, so, no, I’m not hot. If you, wearing nothing but that immodest little G-string flossing your tattooed derriere, are feeling warm then you might be coming down with Swine Flu.”

I already have access to a fine naked woman. She’d probably agree with the stripper that I talk too much and do too little, but my wife would be referring to common household chores and not randy action.

At least I hope that’d be her only complaint.

My idea of a really cool time is a long day in downtown Pittsburgh cheering the home teams, hitting lively bars and enjoying a really fine cigar with my buddies.

So I was disappointed when none of my friends agreed to join me Saturday for a day that involved a crucial Pittsburgh Penguin playoff game and the NFL draft. The excuses were universally lame and reminded me of my songwriting buddy Quinn Fallon and his lyrical lament about the sad decline of guys who used to be nothing but fun.

“These are dark days for black sheep.”

I was undaunted. If I lived in any city in the planet, I could find a Pittsburgh bar and make friends the way Detroit used to make sports cars.

I know I can make them in the city that has thousands of great Pittsburgh bars filled with great Pittsburghers.

I thought I’d start with the cigar in a little place that would certainly be on the list when anyone’s debating the coolest places in the city. On Saturdays the regulars fill maybe a dozen donated refugee easy chairs and cloud the room with thick aromatic smoke.

I stepped into the enormous humidor and nosed around until I found a robust Dominican that looked like a policeman’s night stick. It would occupy me for an hour’s worth of idleness. Upon returning to the smoke-filled sitting room, I blinked through the haze. There off in the distance I spied something surprising.

Could it be? Were those what I thought they were?

They were!

Breasts ahoy!

There were four of them (breasts, not women). It caught me by surprise because I’ve been going there on and off for years and have never once seen a single boob in the place -- and by boob I’m extending the definition to the customers. Doctors, judges, executives -- cigar stores attract a classy clientele.

It would be wrong to say the two girls were strippers, at least they weren’t for this sunny afternoon. They weren’t performing. They weren’t dancers either. The Pens were on TV and only the most creative dancers could writhe suggestively to the color commentary of guys like Eddie Olczyk.

It was a harmonious coincidence that during this Earth Day week these girls were hybrids. They made friendly with the customers. They walked around suggestively. They didn’t hold lit cigars, but they were truly smoking.

They wore short tight black dresses from which they would capriciously liberate their breasts as if to give them a good airing out. But I’m sure that was not their purpose. Who in the world would go to a smoke-filled cigar store to air out breasts?

There were a bunch of men’s magazines on the tables and I thought about telling the girls I’ve written for Playboy and Maxim, but knew I couldn’t prove it without looking pathetic. So I thought it best for me to just sit there quietly and, well, be observant.

So I sat and listened while the girls talked about pedicures, farm animals and whether men would prefer three breasts on a woman or one really big one (most of the men were traditionalists, but if forced to choose, we opted for the singleton over the trio).

It was a splendid afternoon. As I smoked my cigar down to its bitter butt, I set it in the ashtray and pulled two $10s from my wallet. I gave one to each of the smiling girls.

I turned to the store owner and made a snap judgement, “Thanks for a great afternoon. You, sir, have the coolest place in Pittsburgh.”

And that’s coming from an expert who understands how fabric and meteorology can affect a man’s feel for when things start getting really hot.

Re-run Friday? Go Bobcats!

One of my favorite songs is the Joe Ely 1992 version of the Robert Earl Keen song, “The Road Goes on Forever (and the Party Never Ends).”

You’re to be forgiven if you think it’s about a golf writer on assignment to write about the golf and grub along the northern rim of the Gulf of Mexico.

But this road’s been going on a long time and the party’s end is no where in sight. Just got into Gulf Shores and will be playing the fabulous Kiva Dunes.

Then I’ll nestle into the club’s grille room to watch my Ohio Bobcats try and unseat the first seeded North Carolina Tar Heels. So I thought in honor of Athens and the Bobcats, I’d re-run this August post from the day it was announced Ohio U. was once again named the No. 1 party school in America.

Go Bobcats! I’m proud to know you.

It’s probably because of my years at Ohio University I drink responsibly whenever I should and irresponsibly whenever I can.

It’s a vast over-simplification to say, but the only thing I can recall learning with any clarity there from 1981-1985 was never mix Ouzo and beer. In the same glass.

We used to do that all the time and, guaranteed, whenever we did someone was bound to lose their pants.

You can’t spell bourbon or ouzo without OU.

It was a fountain of knowledge where I went to drink.

Those were some of the T-shirts they sold on campus when I was there. I still see variations of them when I go back once every year or so to see the old gang.

We fly or drive in from all over the country and get two or three rooms at the diviest hotel down near the Hocking River. In a town where big guys are called “Tiny,” the hotel on the lowest point in southeastern Ohio is called The Highlander.

Tell someone who attended most any other college a group of 40 somethings are going to go back to the university they all attended in the 1980s and many assume lecherous activities will ensue.

They think the guys will slip off their wedding rings and spend their nights chasing around the comely innocents.

This is wrong on multiple levels. First: I never met an innocent at OU, not to be confused, please, with Ohio State University in Columbus.

Second: most of us are too fatigued and too wise to chase anything anymore.

Third -- and this is key: there’s not a soul within a 50-mile radius more important to us than the dozen or so people clustered around those tables tilting from too many pitchers of beer.

It was after leaving Athens I began to understand games were for people who were inept at the art of conversation.

Why would you engage in any distraction that kept you from learning more about the people sitting right next to you?

Those were some of the things that crossed my mind when I learned Ohio University was named by the Princeton Review as the No. 1 Party School in America.

It’s a chicken and egg sort of question, but I didn’t go to Athens because it was a party school. But I did go there because at the time the Ohio drinking age was 18.

I learned later on -- surprise! -- it had a great school for journalism. Hey, I liked to journalize!

If anything exceeds its reputation for being a party school, it is its reputation for grooming dynamic journalists.

Media big shots Roger Ailes and Matt Lauer graduated from there. Legendary actor Paul Newman dropped out of there.

My academic achievements fall somewhere deep in the middle of that spectrum.

I remember when I went for one of my first post-graduate interviews. It was at the Nashville Banner. The managing editor, a fine southern gentleman, saw Ohio University on my resume and asked if that’s where Woody Hayes coached.

No, sir, that was Zero State in Columbus.

“How long were you on the school paper?” he asked.

One year, I told him.

“What’d you do the other three years, drink beer?”

Yes, sir.

“Good. I did it for four.”

In a world where crabby tight asses seem to make all the rules and then more rules regarding the original rules, convivial folk will always have a way of finding one another.

I got that job and it was instrumental in launching a career that has led me to friendships with some of the world’s most fascinating individuals.

Athens was where I became who I am.

So cheers, Ohio University. I’ve been under your influence for 30 years now.

And gloriously under the influence for many of those years.

And it’s all just been one hell of a good time.

My hands are beautiful to behold!

I know some readers worry when my blog frequency decreases. They wonder if I’m too hungover to type, have lost interest or, gadzooks, found a job.

My voice has been absent from many topical issues this week because it’s been occupied saying things like, “Please bring me another Jack Daniels.”

But I owe you an explanation as to why I’ve been tardy in addressing some of the important issues roiling the news and here it is:

I don’t care.

I accepted an invitation to travel to the lovely gulf coast region of Biloxi, Mississippi, and Gulf Shores, Alabama. I’m with about 10 other friendly golf writers on a lavish five-day ramble upon the golf courses, through the casinos and in some of the finest restaurants in the Old South.

I’m having a ball. I really enjoy mingling with other writers, especially sports writers.

These guys are so professional and accomplished -- and by that I mean they have actual jobs.

They’re here to learn about how the gulf shores are coming back -- yes, still -- from the 2005 devastation of Hurricane Katrina (the BP recovery, by comparison was a blip and BP’s getting high marks for their efforts). These journalists will return and write stories informing their readers about the opportunities, the hospitality and why this a great time to visit.

Me, I’m eager to share what for me will be the most memorable revelation from the entire trip. In fact, it’s too momentous to wait for my return and I’m interrupting my frolic to issue this breaking news bulletin:

I have beautiful hands!

They’re strong, supple and when Southern women gaze upon them they think romantic thoughts.

I learned this last night when the whole gang, including three of our female hosts, went out for our nightcaps following our evening feast.

One of the ladies, an auburn-haired young beauty, said, “I wanted to tell you we noticed something about you. You have the nicest hands we’ve ever seen on a man. They’re just beautiful.”

I set down my drink and peeked at the paws.

Proportioned, taut, masculine veins pulsing beneath the manly tanned canvass. She was right. They’re gorgeous!

In fact, at that moment the only flaw I could detect was my damn wedding ring was on Lefty.

Now I’m not saying that by complimenting my beautiful hands in a crowded tavern, she was hinting she was eager for me to take them and start rubbing them up and down on her.

But it’s difficult for any man, especially those of us with juvenile dispositions, to hear a fine-looking young woman compliment us and not think, hey, she’s really digging me. I still got it. I’m the man.

I am old enough to be her father. In fact, the night before I almost pretended to be her father.

A security guard carded her as we walked into the casino. She was outraged, which was just silly, of course.

He’s just doing his job, the inconvenience was minimal and the day will soon come when she’ll be flattered by the request.

Yet, she scolded him.

I told her I had half a mind to go back to the old gentleman and tell him I was her father and wanted to apologize for her poor manners. I’d blame it all on her lousy mother.

I enjoy role playing and thought if I could get security on my side maybe he’d look the other way if I tried to steal a few chips from the blackjack table.

By now everyone at the table was staring at my hands.

One guy asked if I ever used my hands for purposes alluded to in the “Seinfeld” episode where George Constanza became a hand model.

I’m not going to say here what I said there, but I will say here what I said there was a total lie.

I tried to deflect some of the attention by asking her if there was a part of her body about which she was particularly proud.

There is. She’s proud of her shapely legs.

She should be. They’re ravishing -- almost as nice as my hands.

I asked if she preferred one leg over the other. She doesn’t and I complimented her for being even-handed regarding her legs.

So now I have this unexpected new life-complicating vanity to lug around. For instance, this story took me nearly three times as long to write because I’m trying not to type as hard as I did before I learned my hands belong on the cover of romance novels.

I’ll try not to let my hands go to my head -- unless I feel something itchy.

I’m bringing my hands home to Pennsylvania on Sunday and will be happy to share them with anyone who appreciates true beauty.

I’ll even let you take your picture next to them. You can use it for your Facebook profile.

One thing I won’t do is tolerate any teasing. I don’t want people to make fun of them for being so beautiful.

Tease me about their beauty and I won’t show you the hands.

You’ll just get the finger.

On matters Springsteen

In the two weeks since the release of “Wrecking Ball,” the new Bruce Springsteen album, it’s become a pastime of mine to hear what the people who hate it have to say.

And hate it some people do. I don’t think they hate it so much as they hate that so many people like me think it’s really great.

That’s what infuriates them. I understand this emotion. I used to get furious when something I didn’t like became wildly popular. But I learned long ago there was nothing I could do about tastes that differ from mine and I’d be forced to get along in a world that includes things like Madonna, the Dallas Cowboys and fundamentalist Christians.

The hatred of “Wrecking Ball” would be understandable if it was emanating exclusively from gluttonous bankers.

Bankers, Wall Street fat-cats and people who put “Mitt is It!” bumper stickers on their Escalades come in for melodic tongue-lashings in stand-out songs like “Jack of All Trades,” “Easy Money,” and “Shackled and Drawn.”

Springsteen hints they are evil, lacking souls and responsible for national desolation and it’s understandable their feelings are being hurt.

The poor dears.

I’m among the 99 percent who feel better hearing someone bash the crap out of the one percent, particularly when it’s set to a really tuneful beat.

What surprises me is to discover many of the people who hate the album aren’t bankers, mothers of bankers or banker trophy wives.

No, they are hardcore Springsteen fans.

I know this because I listen to E Street Radio on Sirius XM satellite radio. It’s where people debate Springsteen lyrics the way papal scholars ponder things like Dead Sea Scrolls.

Every word, every nuance is deciphered and placed in grand context.

It’s a place where the truest of the true fans congregate. I’m guessing about 20 percent of them, presumably all Republicans, call and say it’s wrong for Springsteen to weigh in so heavily on political matters. They don’t like that one of America’s greatest and most popular artists is taking political sides opposite of theirs.

How can this guy, one of the wealthiest men in America, write songs bashing people for being wealthy, goes one common complaint.

It’s strange to me because I never hear anyone complain when Mick Jagger sings a song about a night when he’s having trouble getting laid.

Well, let me explain how one of our wealthiest artists can write songs that resonate with people who are poor or resent the disparity of wealth so evident in America.

It’s called empathy. It’s an artistic gift with which he was born.

I hear songs on “Wrecking Ball” and believe he understands what it’s like to be poor, forlorn and ticked off that so few have so much.

Springsteen is one of those musicians who would still be singing songs about injustice if he was doing it on street corners. Becoming rich was just a by-product of doing what he was bound to do.

And I’d rather him write songs trying to relate to my life than write songs that would make me hate him for his.

Because he could write a song about his millions and how Obama takes his calls and name it “Thurston Howell III Blues,” but it would feel less authentic than the ones about how it hurts him to see people struggling when he knows we can do better.

Less authentic even than criticizing one of our greatest performers for being political.

One of the features of E Street Radio is it allows any listener the opportunity to be guest DJ. You could say it’s very Democratic!

It’s a tricky endeavor for those selected because the picks have to be idiosyncratic enough for hardcore fans, yet appealing enough to resonate with casual listeners. You look lame if you pick pick “Dancing in the Dark,” “Badlands,” “Born to Run” and other greatest hits.

So here are my l0 essential Springsteen songs I’ll play if I’m ever picked to be guest DJ:

• “Blinded By The Light,” 1972 -- The first song on his first album. This still exudes the jaunty joy that have made him so indelible for 40 years. What a great first impression. "Mama told me not to look into the sights of the sun . . . Whoa! But mama! That's where the fun is!"

• “Spare Parts,” 1987 -- The emotions his songs evoke range from euphoric to rage, but the ones that ring loudest with me, as you'll see, are the ones that celebrate perseverance. I like it when he stacks the deck against people like godforsaken Janey and has her raise her middle finger against fate and just keep on fighting.

• “I Wanna Be With You,” 1998 -- This is one of those joyous rarities from the “Tracks” compilation that casual fans have to hear. What’s remarkable about Springsteen is how many truly great songs of his just fell straight through the cracks. He’d be one of our greatest artists if he’d only released the songs he never released.

• “This Hard Land,” 1995 -- This one earned inclusion on his greatest hits package before most of America had even heard its opening harmonica toots. Even bald guys can feel the wind rushing through their hair when they crank this one up. To me, it’s right up there with “America the Beautiful” as far evoking marrow-stirring feelings about our mutual love for America.

• “Incident on 57th Street,” 1973 -- The E Street Band sounds so lavish and the storytelling so luxurious this one feels like a trip to one of the classier opium dens from days of yore. I don’t know how people who like to get high can listen to this one without getting high.

• “Part Man/Part Monkey,” 1998 -- Another rarity from the often uneven “Tracks.” It has a reggae jungle rhythm and tells the story of the Scopes Monkey Trail, coming down squarely on the side evolution. Fear not, it’s not about politics. It’s about hormones.

• “Point Blank,” 1981 -- It always surprises me when this one’s never included on everyone’s guest DJ list. It’s noir and always makes me think it’s Humphrey Bogart on the dance floor who ends up with blood all over him.

• “American Skin (41 Shots)” 2003 -- Not just Springsteen’s most powerful song. Maybe the most powerful song ever written. It’s about the shooting of an unarmed young black man who was killed because he looked suspicious. Starting to sound familiar? I can’t listen to this one in front of my daughters because I don’t want them to see the old man cry.

• “One Step Up,” 1987 -- Betrayal, lust and infidelity set to a waltz disguised as humble human frailty.

• “Wrecking Ball,” 2012 -- Written to memorialize the demolition of the old Giants Stadium, he’s also singing about his aging self. “Rocky Ground,” “Land of Hope and Dreams,” I’m not even sure the title cut is my favorite song on the new album, but it has so much anthemic euphoria it must be offered on my guest DJ list.

Seeking wisdom from Yoko? Really?

I’ve for better than three months been engaged in a tawdry process that always leaves me feeling small. Yet its pull is irresistible.

Yes, I’m trying to goad Yoko into saying something stupid.

This goes contrary to my every instinct to help and encourage people who are helping and encouraging people.

That’s what Yoko does. In fact, that’s all she does. One of the richest women in the world, she sits in her lavish Manhattan condo and issues ethereal pronouncements that would be New Agey if they hadn’t predated New Age by four decades.

Example: “You are water. I am water. We’re all water in different containers. That’s why it’s so easy to meet. Someday we’ll all evaporate together.”

Or, “You can assemble a painting with a person in the North Pole over the phone, like playing chess.”

It’s the kind of thing that inspired people to say WTF before anyone understood what WTF meant.

I became aware of this about four months ago when I wrote this post about the legacies of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with me coming down firmly on Paul’s side.

I used as part of my argument that Paul was superior simply because he didn’t marry Yoko. In fact, like the rest of the world he disdained her. Disdained her art, her poetry, her unlistenable music and the fact that she’s based her entire life on being a martyred widow.

I’ve never had the visceral hatred for Yoko, 79, that others have. I had a friend when I lived in Nashville who hated her the way Rick Santorum hates things like condoms.

I asked him how he could hate someone so non-violent.

“Non-violent? She murdered The Beatles,” he countered.

He started a list the night Lennon was shot and called it, “People they should have shot instead of John Lennon.”

Through the years the list got sillier and sillier and included people no one would have dreamed of shooting like the guy who invented New Coke and a kicker for the Detroit Lions whose feckless right foot cost him a small fortune in wagers.

At the very top of the list was Yoko.

I abhor violence and the promotion of it, but remain friends with that guy because he’s just an awful lot of fun. And the historical what-if of my friend’s list does tantalize.

My fanciful speculation was John would have run straight into the arms of Adrienne Barbeau, The Beatles would have reunited and the scourge of hip hop would have been postponed for 20 years.

Still, I wouldn’t have engaged in my bitter little battle had I not begun plumbing the social media and discovered Yoko has more than 2 million followers on Facebook and Twitter.

Two million! It’s astounding.

Apparently, she’s becoming the Dr. Phil for balloon-headed whack jobs.

They seek her wisdoms and approval every Friday when she solicits questions that read like they could have come straight from the crayon-scrawled walls of the insane asylum.

Here are two examples:

Q: “What is the answer to this question I have asked myself daily: ‘Am I here?’”

Yoko: All of us are here as long as we can question it.

Q: “What do you do when you feel so sad that you just can’t stop tearing?”

Yoko: Tearing is an excellent way of bringing balance and health to your mind and body. Keep tearing!

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was restricted to that sort of silly hippie fluff. But, no, she gives serious advice on things like job searches, marital disputes and health. She advised a woman wrestling with anorexia to take up jogging.

It seemed so ripe for ridicule I felt compelled to engage. I began submitting questions to #askyokoQandA in the hopes she’ll respond and I can expose the fraud.

I submitted, among others, the following:

• “How can I learn to use air as my security blanket?”

• “Will heaven have vending machines and if, yes, what will they dispense?”

• And, “If our bodies are indeed temples, then how come everything that comes out of them is so disgusting?”

Now far be it for me, a rarely-sober slouch who resides in a make-believe world of blogger irrelevance, to admonish anyone about offering free advice to distressed strangers but it just galls me.

Yet, I can’t help myself. And with each petty tweet I feel myself increasingly diminished.

I’m adding soulless negativity to a woman whose very website, www.imaginepeace.com, conveys so much of what I believe.

Are my own personal and professional failings karmic comeuppance for my mean-spirited goading? Rather than taunt, should I embrace the wisdoms of Yoko for spiritual fulfillment?

And what about those heavenly vending machines? Do they require exact change?

Only Yoko knows.

"Death to evil American savages!" a diplomat's take

The diplomat in me discerned a rhetorical breakthrough in the Afghani protests over the wanton slaying of 16 of their innocents.

Less careful observers probably thought it was more of the same revenge-minded rage from a people so adept at revenge and rage it’s surprising the nation’s not populated by smoldering piles of ash.

Of course, in just the past six weeks we have given them plenty about which to be outraged.

Our soldiers have urinated on their dead, we’ve set fire to their holy books and now one of our soldiers has gone and massacred 16 innocent villagers, mostly women and children.

The diplomat in me instinctively scolds tsk-tsk.

It’s important to point out now that these incidents have been inflicted upon our allies, not our enemies. We’re de facto teammates in the larger cause.

It’s a fine point, sure, but diplomacy sometimes entails hair-splitting.

What’s interesting to me is I’ve seen a subtle breakthrough in the sloganeering howls of the mobs who’ve been burning our flag and effigies of President Barack Obama -- and I understand half of you are perfectly cool with the latter.

Reports said the mobs were chanting, “Death to evil American savages!”

Here’s where the Kissinger in me emerges -- and I mention Kissinger because I love a diplomat whose name begins with “kiss.”

“Death to evil American savages!” is a much more nuanced declaration than the evergreen “Death to America!” And, better still, it’s something behind which most of America can unite, at least those of us who are not evil savages.

Yes, death to evil American savages! And death to evil Afghani savages! Death to evil Norwegian savages! Death to evil savages throughout the universe!

I just hope the protesters behind the sentiment can help us differentiate between the truly evil savages from the ones who are merely savage. Perhaps the tip-off has something to do with using the wrong fork during the salad course.

It seems like we’re watching a slow-motion tragedy, a more gruesome version of Brett Favre’s retirement.

We’re there with the best of intentions. We went there to kill the people who were killing us and to keep them from killing each other so they could maybe have a chance at a kill-free breather.

Now, these random and senseless killings -- as opposed to all the sensible ones -- have the Afghanis saying family honor requires deadly revenge for this soldier’s actions, as if a host of eye-for-an-eye killings will teach the rest of us a really good lesson.

Personally, I don’t see what I have to learn from further killing.

All of America is saddened by this massacre. If we could make it right we would. If we can prevent it from ever happening again we will.

I wish we could detect the savages among us and eliminate them before they eliminate us or so other savages might think twice before crossing over to evil.

But there’s no deterrent to evil. We’ve killed it before, many times, and it always re-emerges like spring daffodils.

So I hope my instincts are correct and that the people who are justifiably furious and grieving over our isolated misdeeds put as equivalent moral weight on the good done by so many have as they do on the bad done by one.

Because all this killing is killing me.

None of us want to blindly kill what is good. But even prancing pacifists like me can get behind the cause of killings with good cause.

So, yes, death to evil American savages!

And long live America.

Let Woody be Woody: Harrelson flicks & others

Didn’t see HBO’s “Game Change” because we don’t have HBO. Would have rushed to order it if any of the show promos had hinted it included Woody Harrelson playing a character based on Woody Harrelson.

He’s becoming that entertaining.

I’ve read enough profiles of him recently to understand shows depicting Woody being Woody would be better than most of the movies starring alleged A-list actors who command far more respect than the B-list actor who got his start on “Cheers” playing a guy named Woody.

Better is any role that has Woody playing an exaggerated version of himself.

That’s what happens in “Zombieland,” and “The Messenger,” two of the finest movies we’ve seen in the past two years.

In both, Woody plays over-the-top, more hick and cartoonish versions of himself with out-of-control rage issues.

And when I say a cartoonish version of himself, I’m talking Yosemite Sam.

That’s exactly who he acts like in the peerless zomcom “Zombieland” from 2009. In it Harrelson plays a dim, but ultimately sweet redneck who slays hordes of blood slobbering zombies for fun and survival.

We recently rented the outstanding Harrelson drama “The Messenger,” also from 2009, about the U.S. Army details obliged to inform parents and spouses of the death of loved ones fighting overseas. In it Harrelson plays a dim, but ultimately sweet redneck who wrestles with the morality of war and getting drunk.

He was acclaimed, too, for his role in 2007’s “No Country for Old Men,” in which he plays a dim, but ultimately sweet redneck bounty hunter who fails to persuade a more lethal bounty hunter with a Moe Howard haircut to, please, not shoot him.

It’s been a marvelous career trajectory for an actor from Hanover, Indiana, who played a dim, but sweet redneck bartender from Hanover, Indiana, who wrestles with how to keep guys like Norm and Cliff from getting too drunk for network standards aiming to keep must-see TV family friendly.

He has what seems to be a non-Woody role in the ballyhooed new movie, “The Hunger Games,” so we’ll probably skip that and look forward to the rumored sequel to “Zombieland,” in which he reprises, well, you can figure it out.

We’ve done our share of enriching Hollywood the last couple of months. Here’s my jiffy little critique of what we’ve seen in theaters and at home. I’m ranking them on a scale of how many Woodys they’d need to make them perfect (zero Woodys, perfect; five Woodys unwatchable).

• “Safe House,” starring Denzel Washington -- Another fine performance by the great Denzel, but the movie suffers from obnoxious camera technique favored by directors too lazy to set up real action shots. Yes, it was the Drunken Camera Man School of Filmmaking. Too many of the too many action films are slapped together this haphazardly. Three Woodys.

• “The Lorax” -- We are in the Golden Age of kiddie movies, but the Seuss movies, to me, don’t work. The art is lavish, the stories slim. The perfect Seuss template remains the 24-minute version of “The Grinch that Stole Christmas.” Four Woodys.

• “Arrietty” -- Another one with the kiddos, this one very sweet and tender. It was unhurried, the artwork sumptuous. I thought it might be too slow for my girls, but they loved it. Not a classic, but we’ll watch it again. It’s nice to see movies made that show kids not all stories are spastic. One Woody.

• “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” -- This was fantastic. Great campy fun. And the computer-generated action-sequences of the monkeys run amok is mesmerizing. One Woody.

• “Bridesmaids” -- This was a critically acclaimed box office smash that both Val and I hated, me more than her. It’s from the Judd Apatow school of gross-out comedy. Its success means we’re going to be inundated with more of it in watered down forms. Five Woodys.

• “Breaking Bad” -- Not a movie, per se, but we’ve spent more than 45 hours the past three months catching up on seasons 1-3 of this AMC drama about a high school chemistry teacher who turns to meth cooking to provide for his family after he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. Better than “The Sopranos,” this is the most entertaining show we’ve ever watched. 1/2 Woody.

“Breaking Bad” is near perfect, but there’s nothing in the whole wide world that couldn’t be improved with a little Woody.