Whatever happened to Dana "Short Order" Cooke?

other links: hank aaron • the list
the danacooke project

This page appeared on the last Dana Cooke website, posted in 2003. It is made available by the Short Order Heritage Society for historical interest. In Cooke's own words . . .

Most married people have a List. Well, at least the men do.

Your List contains the names of those celebrities for whom you pine. Desperately. So desperately that your spouse agrees to allow you to make a List. The simple rule of the List is that you are allowed to have sex, free of marital consequence, one time only, with any of the celebrity hotties on your List, in the unlikely event that

you encounter one of these celebrities, and
said celebrity inexplicably consents to have sex with the likes of you.

It is exactly because 1 and 2 will never occur that your spouse even allows the existence of your List. (However, what if you do meet your hottie? The List concept was made famous a few years ago in an episode of Friends. Ross had a List. It contained the name of Isabella Rossellini. Well, it did contain that name, but then he deleted it. Then -- wouldn't you just know it? -- Isabella Rossellini surprisingly walked into the coffee shop. When she discovered she had been on but then removed from Ross's list. . . why, it's a recipe for laughter!)

Update: I discovered that my son posts this List in the hallway of his college dorm. His dormmates, though unmarried, create their own lists and post them near mine.

At first I was embarrassed by this. But when my son convinced me it was okay, I said, "Well, at least let me bring it up to date." So the list you see here is new, as of May '06.

This question arose at the dorm: Should a man in his mid-40s list hotties young enough to be his offspring? Some thought I should adopt a cut-off of 30. But I checked with my wife. She said, since nothing will ever come of this, it doesn't matter. So Scarlett Johansson is in.

Funny, but when I went to update the List, I had trouble thinking of new hottes (other than Scarlett). I again asked my wife for help, but she declined.

Anywho, my List appears below.

Now, you didn't ask to read my list. No one did. And it's certainly mighty crass to put it on the Internet for all to see.

However, it's also practical. And here's why. Because it's very very likely that someone on the list -- say, Jennifer Connelly -- will be searching for herself on the Internet, out of sheer vanity, and find this page. (Hi, Jennifer!) When she does, she will be so moved and flattered that she will seek me out. She will learn my home address and how I spend my time, when I'm likely to be home and when I'm not. She will learn my wife's patterns, too, and she will learn, more specifically, when my wife is planning to be out of town for the weekend, with the kids.

Then this celebrity -- let's say, for example, Jennifer Connelly -- will carefully plan an unannounced visit, timed perfectly to coincide with my wife's trip, so that this hottie and I can share a full weekend of consequence-free sex. (I'm gonna bend the once-only rule here.) All of that may sound like a lot of effort and calculation for a celebrity hottie, but if the celebrity in question -- for example, Jennifer Connelly -- has conviction in her fantasy, she will do whatever is necessary to find me, gain access to me, and make her wild celebrity-hottie dreams come true.

Here, then, at last, is my list.

It should be noted that a List has a second purpose. The first purpose, of course, is to facilitate monkey-love with famous celebrity hotties. But the second purpose is to provide a Window Into the Soul of the List's Creator (in this case, me). What does my list tell you about me? Is it sophisticated enough, even with the admittedly pedestrian Sandra Bullock? Are these women surrogates for real women who deprived me of affection and attention, or some sort of counter-balance to the wife I actually ended up with? Am I a whore man or a Madonna man? Do I like them aggressive or retiring? Ginger or Mary Ann? Etc. Etc.

If you have insights, share them with me. Or, as an alternative, keep 'em to yourself.