JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

I issue a limited number of direct compliments every year; I prefer to give backhanded compliments, or as the good people of Merriam-Webster call them, complisults. Complisults can be twisted and retwisted to suit your nefarious purposes, but direct compliments you have to stand by.

Recently I referred to someone as a Hubbell, and to my distress they have no idea what I meant. Bad enough you make a compliment at all, but to have to explain it? Then it occurred to me that the ungrateful recipient might not have gay Streisand-loving friends to enlighten him. Not everyone is as lucky as I am (Sometimes days pass before I speak to another heterosexual. I should form a party list for marginalized heteros).

So for the record, this is a Hubbell. From the 1973 Sydney Pollack movie The Way We Were, Robert Redford as Hubbell.

The Hubbell is not to be confused with The Clooney

who thrives on irony,

or The Baldwin. In the Jane Austen-Amy Heckerling classic Clueless, a Baldwin meant this.

Since then, the Baldwin has evolved into this:

Portly, angry, but hilarious and therefore still hot.

I hope this clears up any confusion.