Jon Hamm, in character as Don Draper from Mad Men, was sitting in the passenger seat of my car as we drove through some sort of mountainous region -- maybe Tennessee? He was puffing away on cigarettes, one after the other. He made weird asides about the car, sometimes rolling his window down to heckle other cars and throw beer bottles at them at random.

Then, as the alarm on my phone replaced any ambient noise in this scene, I stirred. Finally my eyes opened and it was morning, in my house, and the sun was peeking through the shades.

"Holy Christ, did I just have a dream about Jon Hamm?" I thought as I made my way through my waking routines.

I'm not alone. Tons of my straight male friends have mancrushes. A lot of them are pretty normal. I mean, who doesn't think that Ryan Gosling has a dreamy musk about him that you wanna bathe in, or that Justin Timberlake would be fun to gaze at from across the table at a five-star restaurant where you just had a wonderful conversation about politics.

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I recently purchased a gift for a seven-year-old and was aghast at the selection of toys currently on the market. When you don't have children and you are no longer 12, keeping up with the latest Hasbros is not No. 1 on your list. So my search was quite revealing and, more than that, annoying. What is going on with toys these days?

Sure, I recognized a few. Barbie is still strutting her leggy self, with a bit less to cover her girl parts. Lego kits haven't changed all that much. My generation had the Star Wars collection and this generation has the... Star Wars collection. Of course, where toys are concerned, there will always be classics like Hot Wheels, board games and Nerf guns.

That's where the similarities between toys of 2012 and the toys of the past end. Scrolling through the Toys R Us Web site I found bizarre, pointless novelties with names that I couldn't pronounce, which made me feel stupid. Moshi Monsters Moshling? DaGeDar Balls? Xia-Xia Crabs? Bakugans?

What the hell are you talking about?

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Toughen up man, you're a lion.

You have probably heard the old saying "March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb." Obviously, whoever came up with this concept never lived in Houston, Texas. There is no doubt that the weather this past winter, if we can even call it winter, has been odd. Freezing days turned into long streaks of thunder and rainstorms, which led into unheard-of blazingly hot temperatures; a few weeks ago it even sleeted for a hot minute. As of late, the end of February has been pretty blasé. Warm weather and then warmer weather.

Comparing March to a lion should mean blustery days, bone-chilling temperatures and roaring winds. Given our recent track record, it is very doubtful that H-town will see much of that in the coming month.

Are all lions this boring? No, not really. Most lions will tear you limb from limb if given the chance. There are, however, those "other" lions. There are those lions that are posers of what a lion should be, those lions that might as well just be big, dumb cats. They so cannot be taken seriously for lack of any lion-like qualities that they make you want to emphatically shout "pussy" at them and not mean it in the cat way. Those lions are how March in Houston will be. Lame.

There have been some seriously lame lions to grace our culture over the years. Here are our top five.

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The Republicans are whittling down now to the bare bones. Not to discredit anyone, but the race is basically Rom vs. Newt for the win. While we don't really miss the circus show that was the Republican Party just a few short months ago, at least we had more options. Now that we are getting down to the wire, sides will have to be chosen and we're excited to see who will come out of the woodwork to support which candidate.

Speaking of taking sides and coming out of the woodwork, Alec Baldwin came out and backed Mitt Romney. Wait no, Alec Baldwin came out and said that his television persona Jack Donaghy, from the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, would support Romney.

Not too much of a shocker there, in a 2007 episode of the show Jack hosted a fundraiser for the frontrunner and is very active in the Grand Old Party (he dated Condi Rice). There is nothing better than finding out what team an actor bats for, but a fictional character? Woah! Now we want to sit around and daydream about whom the characters from our favorite shows would vote for.

OK, we will (but we're throwing all the candidates back in the ring). Art Attack explores whom your favorite television characters would vote for.

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Since the news of Heidi Klum and Seal breaking up after seven years of marriage hit the Internet, you've probably been listening to this song a lot. Seal built Heidi an igloo when he proposed on a ski vacation, for God's sake, and the couple renewed their vows more times than most of us have been married. It's basically the worst in celebrity marriage news since Courteney Cox and David Arquette broke up, maybe even sadder than that.

Lest your sails have begun to perk back up in the days since the announcement, these videos of the couple at the peak of their love should have you depressed again in no time. Life isn't hard enough; you've got to start crying over other people's heartbreaks too.

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Hi guys, Jef here. Let's drop the royal we for the duration of this and talk like regular folks with severe mental problems.

This was a big year for me at the Houston Press, and also the first year that I got to attend the blogger holiday party. Since I do most of my work at home, or occasionally from inside the walls of a state institution with crayons, I don't actually get to meet the people that I work with. A shindig in Montrose with free booze seemed like Heaven on Earth, and it's where I discovered a very comforting fact; All writers are crazed perverts, meaning it wasn't just me. it's was like being wrapped in a very warm, and somewhat crusty, blanket.

Case in point: Someone mentioned wanting to become a dominatrix and I had one's e-mail address queued up in my phone as well as a wealth of advice. It's that kind of group, and I loved every minute of it.

That being said, as the night wore on I realized that I had more than a few stories about brushes with the sex industry that went below and beyond that of my colleagues, and Lauren Marmaduke suggested they might make for an interesting article. So even though I've yet to work in the sex industry myself at this point, here's some tales from the fringes.

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Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustovsk a.k.a. Krusty the Clown.

This past weekend, while flipping through the tube, we were overwhelmed with the sheer volume of Christmas movies, TV specials and claymated cartoons. You can't channel surf without being inundated with splashes of red and green. ABC Family has literally dedicated its entire December programming schedule to the holiday, and if we have to see that CGI Santa pop up one more time, we are going to lose it.

Don't call us Scrooges just yet; we love Christmas specials! We cry every time we watch It's A Wonderful Life, and nothing makes us happier than Charlie Brown's pathetically magnificent Christmas tree. We just want to make sure that everyone remembers that Christmas is not the only holiday in December. Why doesn't Hanukkah get any TV/movie love?

You have to dig really deep to find a Hanukkah movie or television special that exists and even then you probably won't find it on air. But before you get your panties in a bunch over the blatant Christmas favoritism of the media, Art Attack has found eight videos to get you into the Hanukkah spirit and remind you how awesome it is to be "the chosen ones."

L'chaim!

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www.shutterstock.com

Calling all journalism students! The Houston Press is recruiting undergraduate journalism and communications students for its Spring 2012 internship program.

By "student," we do not mean "a student of life"; we mean "currently enrolled in college student." There's no cash offered with this gig, only college credits. Don't bother applying if this doesn't apply to you.

Still interested? Read on!

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Photo Courtesy fuckyeahryangosling.tumblr.com

First there was James Franco, now we have Ryan Gosling. Hollywood hottie obsession has been around for a long time, but sexy male intellectuals really took hold of our collective consciousness in 2011 -- the year modern-day lust really found its voice on the Internet (or at least the part of the Internet that holds animated gifs and cat blogs). What can we say, Tumblr comes alive with the touch of a former Mouseketeer.

And yet, no matter how working-class the feigned accent nor hard the body, no man can be blog fodder forever. We'll soon need someone fresh to inspire us to learn Photoshop. So when Gosling becomes played out, who will assume his throne? We evaluated three strong contenders. Please leave your best guesses in the comments.

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They're still dancing in Croatia.

To say that the death of newspapers started with social media would be a false reading of not-so-ancient history. (Art Attack herself has seen this up close and personal, having previously worked for the daily in Houston that died, the daily in Dallas that died and the two paper daily setup in Beaumont long since reduced to one -- all of these things occurring long before the first newspaper phone app came out.)

But the era we're in now of online news, social media and citizen journalism has seen burn-down-the-house changes in the newspaper industry that both take our breath away and have rerouted many career paths. And added blogs like Art Attack to the Houston Press.

In fact, according to Andrew Sheehy, head of Research for Generator Research, Ltd. in the United Kingdom, online and social media have chewed up the scenery like nothing ever seen before.
"While it will have taken the newspaper industry over 100 years to create the infrastructure needed to reach 1.8 billion readers, it will have taken the technology industry less than 10 years to achieve a comparable reach," Sheehy says in promoting his company's latest report -- which if you want to read it, by the way, will cost you just $800 U.S. (We went for the highlights.)

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