Gourmet has gone under, Bon Appetit is hanging on for dear life, and the TV Food Network has turned into the all-travelogue channel, with barely any actual cooking instruction taking place. But never fear: The Stupid-Magazine specialists have leapt into action, and we will shortly all be introduced to Deen Bros., the cooking magazine for men. MEN, dammit, who aren’t afraid to incinerate a pork chop on the backyard grill. Being the principal cook in our household–and a man with neither backyard nor grill–I call bullshit, on three principal points:

1) I was not aware until now that cooking instruction was gender-specific. All this time I was working off Cook’s Illustrated and my old food-flecked copies of  Julia Child; turns out I may as well have been wearing a frilly lace dress and skipping rope.

2) I also thought that Paula Deen, the charming if slightly crazy-eyed southern-cooking specialist on the Food Network, was a pretty minor success. Apparently she and her buttery pie crusts are a smash, though, because these two guys are her sons, who appear on her show. That’s right: Even two bit players on a basic-cable cooking program can now get their own magazine. This speaks loud and clear about the state of the publishing business. (I should point out here that three of the four Dadwagoneers work for major magazines with lofty editorial ambitions, and all three of said magazines are laying people off and/or running in the red.)

3) I haven’t seen a copy, and I am jumping to conclusions here. But I have a very strong feeling that its first issue will have a big section on dry rubs, and will include the phrases “fire up the grill” and “comfort food” at least four times.  There will be virtually no baked goods, vegetarian options, or anything involving bok choy.

At my dentist’s today, for a small and painless procedure: He noticed on a recent visit that I had a little crevice on one molar, one that threatened to turn into something worse. (“You have a teenage cavity–very exciting,” he told me.) So he flowed in a plastic resin–a sealant, they call it–to smooth out the groove and keep bacteria from getting a toehold. And, as he finished up, he remarked to me that my son would most likely have similar sealants put on all his back teeth, probably as a matter of course, once they came in. “They’re 93, 94 percent effective now,” he said. “That plus New York’s water, which is fluoridated, means nobody gets cavities anymore.” Really? Really? “They’re going to be an antiquated disease, like diptheria.”

You know, there are times that I question how much medical advancement I want in my life, especially as I get old. Ten extra miserable and diminished and painful years added to the end of your life are not necessarily a bonus. But this seems to me an unmitigated delight. You spend an hour in the chair when you’re 10 or 12, for a procedure that is (I can report firsthand) FAR less irritating than most dental work, and that’s it. My god! Can you imagine life without the prospect of the high-pitched drill, the smoky smell, the post-novocaine ache? Ever? One in which dentistry is solely the province of the elderly or the vain? Terrorism, shmerrorism: My son may actually have lucked into a good time to be born, after all.

Why is it that all of my idols from childhood are drug addicts? Lawrence Taylor, Dwight Gooden, Jean-Michel Basquiat (kidding, sort of), and yes, Corey Haim. I will admit to shedding a tear at the demise of my favorite Lost Boy. Why couldn’t it be one of these guys? There’s no justice in the world.

Picture me flicking my bic in his honor, and please enjoy this little clay-mation tidbit:

Ah, the hysteria.

The Boston Globe reported yesterday on girl-bullying by mostly quoting a bunch of people who are in the girl-bully-business. People like Barbara Coloroso, author of The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander (“If we don’t handle it in grade school … it only gets worse”). And Rachel Simmons, who wrote Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls (“By some accounts [bullying] happens preverbally in girls”). Or Deborah Weaver, who runs self-defense courses for tweens (“what’s different is how uninhibited it has become”).

The article also reported that hard-working Massachusetts politicians have proposed an anti-bullying bill that would oblige school employees to report acts of bullying (yay! more cops involved in schools!). There might be some legitimate complaints about whether the state legislature should really concern itself with bullying, or whether there really is an epidemic that needs to be addressed. But the article only entertains one possible objection to the bill. Namely, that it’s not tough enough:

But critics say the bill does not go far enough because it doesn’t criminalize bullying, nor can schools be held liable if they fail to protect children. “It’s a real toothless tiger,’’ says victims’ rights lawyer Wendy Murphy, who teaches at New England School of Law.

You can bet that Murphy, when looking for big payouts for bullied girls, will be citing this article and saying that [name institution here] ignored public warnings about the wave of bullying incidents.

This is all tied to the unfortunate suicide of a Massachusetts teen in January which got all buzzed up because it involved “cyberbullying” (the “teasing went digital,” Good Morning America intoned somberly at the time). Sad as that case was, it is hardly part of an epidemic: the most recent Massachusetts Department of Public Health death report (.pdf), from 2007, shows that boys were still six times more likely than girls to commit suicide, and that suicide rates for both are down significantly since the mid-’90s.

Sometimes I wish the media could say something completely true, like: people get bullied, it sucks and should be mitigated, but that, you know, it has always been that way.