I know three things about Alex Rodriguez: 1. He plays baseball, which is a sport where the players hit a small hard ball with a long stick. This goes on forever. It is very popular. 2. He is not easily distracted. 3. He apparently dates whatever celebrity velociraptor scampers into the general vicinity of the baseball sporting grounds where he hangs out.
But now, thanks to a recent reliable dispatch from the always-credible Us Magazine, I know something else about Alex Rodriguez: He might be the most boring individual to grace our tabloid pages in a long, long while. Let's examine the evidence that A-Rod is really, really dull:
1. He's dating Kate Hudson.
Which is about as exciting as dating a brick of cream cheese. The most interesting thing that anyone can say about Kate Hudson is that she's Goldie Hawn's daughter—which, frankly, would only be interesting if Kate were concieved on the set of Overboard (which, sadly, she wasn't).
Also dating Kate Hudson, like dating Madonna, doesn't seem like an active decision. It's just something that happens to you, like catching a cold or getting a gray hair. No one chooses to date Kate Hudson. She just kind of shows up one day, and the next thing you know, whoops, you're dating a brick of cream cheese.
2. When it comes to sex, he "loves" it!
"They love sex!" a pal tells Us Weekly of the pair who began dating in May. "They talk about it all day. Kate gets graphic talking about his body, even to her parents."
Wow, really? Two human beings love sex? Normally, a statement like this would seem like a case of the couple doth protest too much. If their friends and hangers-on are running off to Us Weekly saying, "OMG. They love sex so much they talk about it all the time!" that would indicate that the couple is painfully celibate. But in this case, Kate Hudson and A-Rod are just boring enough that it's all too easy to picture them saying to whomever happens to be in earshot, "We just love having sex with each other! It's one of our favorite things to do." "We also like kissing and other affectionate things." "On occasion, we'll go out to dinner together. Have you ever done that? Dinner, man. It's so fun!" while everyone backs out of the room slowly. That's their idea of an engrossing conversation.
3. Even A-Rod's idea of a mythological vanity portrait is hopelessly bland.
A former Rodriguez fling remembers seeing portraits of the slugger, 34, as a centaur hanging over his bed.
"He was so vain," his ex tells Us Weekly. "He had not one, but two painted portraits of himself as a centaur. You know, the half man, half horse figure?"
Adds the ex, "It was ridiculous."
There are very good reasons why Carly Simon didn't sing "You're so vain, you probably have two portraits of yourself as a centaur hanging above your bed." For one thing, that's a really cumbersome line. But mostly she didn't sing that because commissioning two centaur self-portraits for your bedroom isn't vanity, it's lack of imagination. I mean, centaurs? Really, A-Rod? Centaurs are the go-to weirdness. If it's an Old Spice ad, and a Harold & Kumar poster, it's not ridiculous anymore. It's bland.
A-Rod has a lot of money, and (presumably) a lot of vanity. Just think about all the other mythological scenes he could have had painted over his bed: The entrance to Hades with A-Rod as both Hades himself and Cerberus, the three-headed dog; A giant portrait of Medusa's head, with the heads of all the snakes replaced by A-Rod's face; A-Rod as young Zeus, freeing all of his siblings (all with matching A-Rod faces) from the belly of his father Cronus (also A-Rod). It could have been so much more spectacularly ridiculous and bombastically ego-centric. Instead, it's about as interesting as a sex-loving baseball player who's dating Goldie Hawn's daughter.