And you thought Tony Clifton wasn't a real-life person...

[Crankie Avalon]

LEN GUARDINO'S THEORY OF MAN
This Original Hipsta's gonna put his sperm all over town.

By J.R. Taylor

WE HAVE AN early winner in the competition for Douchebag of the Year. Michael Gregory was apprehended in Long Island last week after a dopey prank where he and some teen friends faked a kidnapping. Having alarmed the community and wasted the valuable time of local cops, Gregory explained himself to the New York Post: "Look, I did a stupid fucking thing with my friends. I'm 21 years old."

I'll do at least three stupid fucking things in the coming week. However, I quit using my age as an excuse for those things while in high school. Gregory's just another fine example of today's pathetic young men. And if I'm not qualified to make that judgment, then consider the opinion of Mr. Len Guardino.

"That's a perfect example of a lack of testosterone," Guardino declares. "I once went to see my daughter at her school, and there was a kid I knew sitting outside the nurse's office. I said, 'What are you doing here?' He showed me this little scratch on his knee. I said, 'What the hell are you doing?' He lived alone with his mother, who was an attorney. She had feminized this kid. When I was a kid, the nurse would smack me in the face if I went to her with a little scratch on my knee."

Thus speaks the greatest lounge singer in Manhattan.

Don't expect to be seeing Guardino in any lounges, though. He isn't joining me for lunch to promote any local appearances. He's got nothing on the national horizon, either. Guardino simply has a self-released, self-titled four-track EP that's like nothing you've heard before. Well, the actual cocktail jazz is catchy and familiar enough to make for fine library music. The accompanying philosophy is something new.

Consider the album's opening manifest of "Be the Man I Was Really Meant to Be." It's a striking response to the irritating "It's My Turn" feminist mentality once captured by Diana Ross, and still perpetuated by sappy indie gals such as Aimee Mann. Here's what liberated ladies can look forward to now that it's Len's turn:

You pushed me around/I never made a sound/Knocked myself out to make you what you are today/Treated you just like a movie star/But that's all over now/You'll see what it's like to be on your own/Pay for the house, the car, the phone/Work yourself like I did down to the bone…

Take that, spoiled single mothers! Guardino's apparently the kind of guy who'll get cabaret critics swooning in all the wrong ways. Len doesn't make any more friends as he instructs the ladies in "I'm a Man, Yes I Am." "All you have to do is walk behind me," he explains. "Stop wasting your time/On that women's lib line/You want to be happy/Make your life part of mine."

"They Call Me a City Slicker" is slightly more arrogant.

Continued: http://www.nypress.com/17/47/listings/taylor.cfm