1) Young Americans is on display at the High Museum.

2) Kenny Chesney and LeAnn Rimes perform at Turner Field.

3) The Five Spot hosts Just Think!, a night of political exploration.

4) Unplugged in the Park continues at Piedmont Park.

5) Atkins Park Tavern hosts the Dave FM Sunset Live Concert Series.

(Photo © Sheila Pree Bright)

1) Civil Rights activist Dick Gregory speaks on Sen. Barack Obama, health and more at Shrine of the Black Madonna.

2) Soul Asylum and Gin Blossoms perform at Chastain Park Amphitheater.

3) CL hosts a raging party for Best of Atlanta 2008 at Star Bar.

4) Vans Warped Tour comes to Lakewood Amphitheatre.

5) Callanwolde Fine Arts Center hosts Summer Coffeehouse Series Open-Mic Poetry Reading with Kodac Harrison.

(Photo courtesy Dick Gregory)

1) Atlanta Pride wraps up its celebration.

2) Lyle Lovett performs at Chastain Park.

3) The Atlanta Braves take on the Houston Astros at Turner Field.

4) The musical Urinetown is at Onstage Atlanta.

5) Doomsayer, Royal Thunder and Let the Night Roar perform at Smith’s Olde Bar.

(Photo courtesy Atlanta Pride Committee)

1) The legendary Tom Waits performs at the Fox Theatre.

2) Jim Henson: Puppeteer is on display at the Center for Puppetry Arts.

3) The Atlanta Pride Festival continues in downtown Atlanta.

4) Eddie’s Attic hosts the Asylum Street Spankers.

5) Chunklet magazine presents Boris, Torche and Clouds at the Earl.

(Photo courtesy Tom Waits)

2) Barbara Ann’s features Blues Jam Session with Frankie Lee Robinson.

3) Lyfe Jennings plays at Center Stage.

4) DJ Romeo Cologne hosts Funk Disco at Star Bar.

5) Summer Slaughter Tour 2008 comes to the Masquerade.

(Image by Bob McGill)

1) Comedian Bill Burr finishes his three-day run at the Punchline.

2) Sha’ni and the Tiger’s Eye Collection host A Midsummer Night’s Dream with world-renowned dancer Ava Fleming at Sketchworks Theater.

3) Lakewood Amphitheatre strikes a fun trifecta: R.E.M., Modest Mouse and the National perform.

4) Leslie Jordan reads and signs My Trip Down the Pink Carpet at Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse.

5) Blues Traveler and more perform in Candler Park for the Midsummer Music Fest.

(Photo courtesy APA Agency)

In the world according to Jay Louis, there’s no such thing as too many douchebags. No, not the countless politicos that Jon Stewart likes to skewer on “The Daily Show,” but the tatted-up, hair-spiked, shiny-foreheaded, six-pack-packed, hand-symbol-thrusting, shades-sporting, wife-beater-wearing, tongue-thrusting, hand-gesturing and pec-bearing American men who somehow wind up with really attractive women in living color.

Louis, aka douchebag1, hosts the phenomenally popular website Hot Chicks with Douchebags, in which he and alert readers hip the rest of us “normal” folk to the cheesily over-packaged American men hanging out with women who would seem way out of their league. As popular as the site is, the next logical step would seem to be a book, Hot Chicks with Douchebags (Simon Spotlight Entertainment), which fell into our reluctant hands this week and will hit bookstores July 8. The book’s thesis seems simple enough:

In this book, we will identify every type of ’bag within the douche spectrum, from the youthful stage-1 Fratbags to the polluted, noxious stage-4 DJ Club Douche. We will tap directly into the core of not only how douchebaggery manifests, but also how it corrupts the hottie within its wily, greased-up charms. These unnatural cohabitations must be exposed to the disinfecting light of detailed scrutiny if we have any hope of societal redress.

Louis fancies himself a culture critic; his diary-style blog posts are laced with heady name-dropping that actually lead nowhere: “Lighting up a stogie and pouring a shot of rum for Jobu, I contemplated the famous words of 16th Century astronomer Tyco Brahe, who stared up at the Prague skyline one night and casually remarked, ‘I have to pee.’ So I peed.”

It’s all kind of dismissive, smug and superior in a Greg Behrendt/He’s Just Not That Into You kind of way that isn’t nearly as female-empowering as the title suggests. (Women don’t exactly come off that well either.) But HCWD is at its funniest when coming up with the seemingly endless labels for these poor creatures: The Greasy Euro-Douche, The Garden Gnome, The Furry-Man, The “He’s My Best Friend” ’Bag,” and so on. The book’s denouement suggests a 12-step program of “De-Douchification,” which starts with “Accept That You or Your Loved One is a ’Bag” and concludes with “Disband the Woo Hotties and Douche Scrums,” a form of bold group disassociation that would appear to be the height of naivete. (These douches ain’t going away anytime soon.)

Ground Zero for the douchebag, according to Louis, is former ’90s power couple Richard Grieco and “Baywatch” babe Yasmine Bleeth, whose tragic tale is recounted in these pages. It’s all not nearly as funny as Louis thinks he is, but the photos of them, and all the other douchebags/hotties, suggests incontrovertible evidence of their existence.

Now, if we could get a book featuring Dick Cheney, Lord High Douchebag, and his minions, we’d be getting somewhere. But I fear we’ll never see Condi in a thong.

(Photos courtesy Simon Spotlight Entertainment)

Jordan will be plenty busy over the next few days, starting Saturday with a book-release appearance at Outwrite Books. The reading/signing starts at 7:30 p.m.; admission is free. He follows that up with a two-night stand at the 14th Street Playhouse with his one-man show of the same name, Sunday and Monday at 8 p.m.

Unfortunately, the status of the sitcom “12 Miles of Bad Road” (in which he co-stars) seems hopelessly up in the air, according to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Anyone know anything different? Perhaps Leslie will enlighten us, in a way only he can, as he shows in this clip taken during his recent Stonewall Columbus fundraiser.

But as chronicled in Entertainment Weekly’s recent profile of Myers, there’s no love lost for him in Hollywood. In a city filled with egomaniacs, Myers seems to be a particular target of scorn. Some think he’s singled out unfairly; others wish he’d just go away. The man who once supposedly had the Midas touch with the Wayne’s World, Austin Powers and Shrek franchises seems to have, ahem, lost his mojo on this one.

I know it’s a predictable bit of pile on, but while I’ve always found Myers amusing, I’ve never really gotten the depths of praise heaped on him over the years. I’ve often thought of him as the right comic talent at the right time, a “Saturday Night Live” sketch genius who had been able to stretch sometimes brilliant gags, sound bites and wordplay into movie-length hits. But, really, how hard did you laugh at any of the Wayne’s World or Austin Powers sequels? (I completely avoided the last AP installment, Goldmember, as well as the third Shrek cuz just I figured it would be more of the same.) Frankly, I think the most daring movie work Myers did was portraying Studio 54 owner Steve Rubell in 1998’s 54. Besides delivering a spot-on mimic job, Myers captured the tragedy of Rubell.

A lot of Myers’ critics believe his style of comedy is already played out. I’m inclined to agree. The thing is, Myers’ style is so facile, it doesn’t warrant much examination. To borrow the current phrase du jour, it is what it is. And that’s just not that much to get excited about. I have a bad feeling that, come Monday, the box-office receipts will bear that out.

(Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures)

It takes awhile for Piper to get to the Lauper incident, but everything’s hilarious …