I can’t be the only one who’s confused by this, right?

Colby Brin, 31, and his mother are best friends.

They chat on their cell phones several times a week, debating politics and sports. They catch up over pasta and salad at their favorite Italian joint tucked in New York’s Upper East Side. They consider themselves travel enthusiasts and once explored Paris, France, together.

Just like any thoughtful best friend, who can be nosy at times, his mother relentlessly seeks the perfect woman for him. She sets him up on dates. She brags about him to friends who have daughters his age. This month, the 63-year-old launched “Date My Single Kid,” an online dating site to expand the scope of potential suitors for her son.

“We aren’t trying to start a scientific matchmaker service like eHarmony,” says Geri Brin. “We are doing it like a mother would do it. You know what your child wants. I know what Colby wants 100 percent.”

Embarrassing? Overbearing? Annoying?

Some critics of matchmaking parents may think so, but Colby Brin lauds his mother’s active participation in his dating life. He estimates she set him up on at least 30 dates before her site went live. Some dates went well. Others lacked a spark, like a girl from an art gallery he dated recently….

[it goes on; full story at CNN.com; all emphasis totes mine]

Sebastian Horsley, an eccentric British dandy who once was crucified in the name of art and whose life of unabashed debauchery and drug addiction caused him to be barred from the United States, died June 17 of a heroin overdose at his home in London. He was 47.

His death came days after a play about his life, “Dandy in the Underworld,” based on his autobiography, opened on the London stage.

Mr. Horsley led a life of scandal, notoriety and high style, strolling the streets of London’s Soho in elaborate velvet suits, fingernail polish and a stovepipe hat. He was born into wealth and invested shrewdly in the stock market, but he spent much of his fortune on prostitutes and drugs and, as he put it, squandered the rest.

“I’m an artist — depravity is part of the job description,” he told The Washington Post in 2008.

Mr. Horsley was a painter who had occasional exhibitions, but with his epigrammatic wit and writing style — modeled after Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh and Quentin Crisp — he found a niche as a sex columnist and chronicler of the London underworld. He expressed some concern that his newfound writing career might ruin his reputation.

“Don’t tell my mother I work as a journalist,” he told one reporter. “She thinks I’m a prostitute.”

In fact, Mr. Horsley did briefly work in the sex trade, but he was better known as an enthusiastic customer. He claimed to have enjoyed the company of more than 1,000 prostitutes, saying, “I can count all the lovers I’ve had on one hand — if I’m holding a calculator.”

[full obituary at Post-Gazette.com, via Hector]

I know. It’s either the worst copy ever written or a stroke of genius.

Uh, smear of genius.

Advertising Agency: The Campaign Palace/Red Cell, Darlinghurst, Sydney, Australia
Art Director: Cameron Hoelter
Copywriter: Kelly Putter
Photographer: Ian Butterworth

Advertising Agency: The Campaign Palace/Red Cell, Darlinghurst, Sydney, Australia
Art Director: Cameron Hoelter
Copywriter: Kelly Putter
Photographer: Ian Butterworth

Seen here in an episode from the first season of Being Human, which was probably the most homoerotic thing my living room has witnessed since that documentary about the pizza delivery boys of L.A.

Also, in crappy iPhone form:

Yes, I know it’s out of focus. Does that really matter? Can’t we all just get along?

[via Towleroad]

Among the painful things I have had to witness today: this clip of a “guerrilla burlesque” artist doing…well, something for a bunch of tourists in Montmartre. Blasé Parisians would probably be more interested in a “gorilla burlesque” artist. I know I would.

You can thank Honda for that. Luckily, other parts of the campaign aren’t so bad:

Advertising Agency: Mullen, Boston, MA, USA
Executive Creative Director: Mark Wenneker
Creative Director: Jim Amadeo
Art Directors: Allie Hughes, Alyssa Wilson
Copywriters: Kerry Shea, Greg Almeida, Elena Romeu, Dylan Klymenko
Digital Art Director: Danielle Marino
Photography and Imaging by John Holt/Dock25
Art Buyer: Tracy Maidment
Production: Kristine Ring
Digital Productions: Jane Allen, Andy Keyes, Kristina Loycano
Project Manager: Caroline Senn
Account Service: Drayton Martin, Amanda Chandler, Jessica Zdenek, Eugene Kim
Media: Erin Bilenchi, Vanessa Higgins, Gina Preziosa, Ryan Chan

Anton Walbrook was:

• Born in Vienna, Austria.

• One in a long line of Walbrook actors (ten generations, in fact).

• The son of a clown (who broke with tradition, obviously).

• Jewish.

• Gay.

• Smart enough to head to Hollywood in the 1930s.

• Smart enough to change his name from Adolf to Anton when Things Began to Turn.

• Smart enough to avoid returning to Austria.

•Not smart enough to realize that England was within striking distance of Germany and its pesky luftwaffe.

• Prone to Jean Cocteau-esque hairdos in his later years, which is not surprising.

• Handsome, and occasionally, devastatingly so:

• The star of a 1940 British version of Gaslight, which is generally unknown because the producers of the 1944 Charles Boyer version that most people have seen bought the rights to Walbrook’s film and canned it. The magnificent Stephen Fry explains:

[much, much more at AntonWalbrook.co.uk]