And speaking of jocks and incredibly fine asses, Channing Tatum hosted Saturday Night Live last week. Yeah, I know. Not the best segue I’ve ever made, but it gives me a flimsy excuse to explain why, despite appearances, I’m not obsessed with Chan. But am in love with his penis.

Last May, I was having a ‘spirited and lively’ discussion with my friend Jay who is a nerd and considers himself an expert on all things geek. We were discussing search engine optimization (SEO) and he was singing the praises of Google’s algorithms. I called bullshit and said the only algorithms Google should be praised for are those they use to add up the bucks they collect for paid placements on their search results.

Jay was busy trying to bolster the idea that if you say something often enough it will become established fact. That pretty well sums up Google’s magical search algorithms which they are cagey about and treat as the equivalent of the secret recipe for Coke. Google likes to claim its stellar search results are the reason it gained dominance among search engines. I’ve always claimed it was thanks to a home page that was not filled with ads and worthless information as most were in the day. Back then, internet speed was not. Every graphic added to the long wait for a page to fully load. People gravitated to Google because of its quick load time thanks to an absence of graphics. Not because its search results were any better than the next site’s.

Search Engine Optimization is big business. Anyone with a website gets tons of spam from companies offering SEO services. Each claims that for a price they can ensure your site gets listed in the top percentile of search results. When I’m not cussing at the large amount of spam I have to trash because of SEO come-ons, I laugh at them. Obviously if your company does not come in within the first half dozen non-paid results when a search on Search Engine Optimization is performed, you ain’t that good; if your company is one of the other 117,999,994 in those results, you suck at what you do. Jay disagreed. But then he makes a tidy sum selling SEO services to the uninitiated.

Without going into all of Jay’s inane ramblings, he trotted out the Google magic algorithm thinging in defence of his stance. And I claimed any idiot could grab a top ten search result spot on any subject – bar one hurdle that can’t be overcome – regardless of the search engine you use. Put your money where your mouth is became the game of the day, and I set out to be the idiot who could. The parameters were simple: a non-too specific topic (i.e. it could not be the breeding habits of the Brown pelican in Sumatra), that still fit in with the subject matter of my blog. And within a week, placement within the top five search results on Google.

I always play fair, so I did not do any pre-search research. I can’t remember why Channing Tatum popped into my mind, but since I’d recently begun doing my Gay of the Week posts, I wrote one on him. Specifically gearing it for SEO. That post has been in the top Google search result spot ever since. And has with few exceptions been the most read post on my blog daily. And I won a bottle of Macallan 18. Most of my friends already know not to make bets with me, I only bet when it’s a sure thing. Jay knows that now too.

The rest of the world is much more enamored with Chan than I am. Or at least with Chan’s penis. Chan’s gay penis to be more specific. That post generates over 1,000 visits to my blog daily. A few stick around, so it’s not a complete waste of bandwidth. That number spiked hugely late last Saturday night. Chan hosted SNL, and the world took notice. Of how gay he is. ‘Channing Tatum gay’ searches, and its derivatives started flooding Google, and has continued throughout the week. Searches on Sunday alone brought over 8,000 web surfers to my blog.

I caught Chan’s appearance on SNL. It was the first time in quite awhile I watched the show and I noted two things. First, the regulars suck. They are a veritable Who’s Who of who? SNL has traditionally gone through bad seasons interspersed with the type of cast that brought the show its original fame and glory. The current crop of Not Ready For Prime-Time Players are not even ready for not being ready. The resident fat guy position has always been a springboard to stardom (think John Belushi and Chris Farley). The current fat guy, Kenan Thompson, has been around for several seasons and has managed to not be funny in all of that time. He is not destined for a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. But then he probably won’t suffer an early death like his predecessors either, so maybe that’s not a bad thing.

The second thing I noticed, along with the rest of the world, is how gay Chan comes across. Lorne Michaels was smart enough to keep Chan as undressed as possible, and allowed him to exhibit his singular talent, stripping, in every skit he was in. Of those, two included specific gay references, the longest during Chan’s opening monologue. If you didn’t see it, I’m sure it is on YouTube by now. If you’ve never seen Chan in one of his movies, which is hard to do these days as he is the current Gene Hackman of Hollywood, you should catch his opening monologue on SNL. It epitomizes his talents, a tour de force in which he exhibits his entire range of emotion. And then there is the ‘yeah, I used to have gay sex when I was a stripper’ thingy too.

Chan’s appearance on SNL was obviously a promotion for the soon to be released Magic Mike movie, a film about Chan’s days as a stripper. I’ve covered the movie in a few posts already, more because of Joe Manganiello’s appearance than Chan’s. (Which is really more about Joe’s penis, than Chan’s.) I don’t know if Chan and his agent intentionally tried to beef up gay interest in the flick, but it sure seemed to have worked. All of a sudden the world is asking Google the same thing: Is Channing Tatum gay?

Interest in Chan’s gay penis will undoubtedly wane. At least until his stripper movie comes out. In the meantime, my blog keeps getting a steady feed of new visitors thanks to Chan and his penis. If I was Thai, I’d probably have a shrine to Chan’s dick in my home by now. So though this is my fourth post about the two of them, it’s not that I’m obsessed with either. But I do hope that at some point I get to acknowledge their impact on my blog’s Alexa ranking, and thank Chan’s penis in person.