Bad Advice

The People of Ohio Say Yes to Dategirl!

Okay, so it's only for one week, but the Cincinatti City Beat re-ran a New York Press column I wrote about spending the holidays with a non-festive partner. Please click on it and read so the editors realize they should make me a permanent presence in Ohio.

In other holiday news, my friend Sarah is a nurse in Paterson, NJ. Each year she rounds up some of her young patients who are about to have a very dismal Christmas, gives me their info and I make sure that Santa doesn't forget about them. If anyone feels like contributing, I set up an Amazon Wishlist with a bunch of toys and things I think the kids would like. But I'm no expert so if you have some better ideas, please email me. The kids descriptions are after the jump. Prepare for a tugging at the heartstrings—one of the little girls uses a rolled up towel for a doll. Oy vey.

A couple things . . .

• I need to preface this by fully admitting that I am about as far from fashion-forward as one person can get. I only started wearing pants last year and sometimes look like a homeless person. Yet still, I felt moved to give this tidbit of fashion advice: Please do not wear white leggings. The girl in this picture is a model, so I guess she doesn't look awful (though I suspect that if she put her legs together, she'd wind up with a Great White Cameltoe), but most of us are not built like her. This is on my mind because I walked up the subway stairs behind a fairly slim woman in white stretch pants and found myself unable to look away. These pants hugged every little divet and pooch of cellulite. And she was definitely skinny on the skinny side! Such a bad look.

• My friend Diane Mapes (who would never wear white stretch pants) is all over the place this week—her column about the prejudices against the unmarried is out at the Seattle P-I, and she quotes yours truly in a story about ogling others while attached.

• I had a big culture week last week and saw Margaret Cho's burlesque-themed show and Julian Temple's Joe Strummer documentary. I enjoyed the Cho Show, though I thought her whole "everyone's beautiful, no matter what size they are" was a tad disingenuous as she certainly wasn't cavorting naked on stage back when she was packing a few pounds. But mostly I had a really great time.

The Strummer documentary was also overwhelmingly great and moving, but if I could just nit-pick, I would've plucked John Cusack and Johnny Depp's contributions out and left them on the cutting room floor. Do I really care what some smarmy actor thinks about Joe Strummer? Answer: NO. Both of them came off as completely full of shit. Not all of the actors were annoying, though—Steve Buscemi was adorable talking about how intimidated he was at the thought of working with Strummer. The opening scene of Strummer singing "White Riot" into a mike with no backing music was worth my $11 alone. I left the theater in tears, glad I'd gone alone.

• One last thing—If you're not doing anything else that night, please come see me read at Rachel Kramer Bussel's holiday-themed In the Flesh on December 20th. I will not torture you with white leggings, though I can't promise that the gentleman friend won't be wearing a pair.

Not sure why . . .

. . . but(t) lately I've been writing about butts a lot. I'm on deadline and am about to resort to reading through old journals to find a topic, so please help me. The last time I did that, I read page after page about some guy I was deeply in love with, only to realize that seven or eight years later, I had no memory of this dude at all. While that's probably for the best, given my track record, it's also highly unnerving. Don't make me go back there. So if anyone has any sex, romance, or even hygiene-related topic ideas, leave them in the comments or email me here. Thanks!

And to think, some people call it "the curse!"

Did you know that your menstrual blood was chock full of valuable stem cells?!? Yeah, me neither! But according to a company called C'elle, the gunk that we ladies normally just soak up in a tampon and chuck in the trash is rife with possibilities:

Stem cells from menstrual blood may potentially be utilized in the future to treat a host of life-threatening and debilitating medical conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, and spinal cord injury, just to name a few.

Which is why C'elle (get it—a fancy, French-sounding way to say "cell") is offering consumers a chance to collect their Red Menace and have it flash-frozen—just in case, on the off chance, technology can one day figure out something to do with it! Isn't that awesome?!? And it'll only cost you $499 for the initial sign-up fee, collection kit (would that be something akin to the Diva and a couple test tubes?), and pre-paid Fed Ex label, so you can send what they refer to as your "monthly miracle" back to the lab pronto. You then get charged a very reasonable $99 a year for storage after that. Freezin' Auntie Flo don't come cheap!

Oh lord, please don't let this be a hoax!

(Thank you, Ms. Ziss, for bringing this to my attention!)

Big-Time Comedy Show!

When the extremely nice and talented Nichelle Stephens asked me to perform one night at Chicks and Giggles, the all-lady comedy night she  runs, I said yep without really thinking about it.

As it's this Friday night at 10pm, I have to think about it now and it turns out that the idea of being a stand-up comedian is slightly terrifying. Not only do I have to be out somewhere at the ungodly late (for a granny) hour of 10pm, I have to be funny. At 10pm on a Friday I'm usually home getting all hot and bothered over Law & Order.

Hopefully I'll have recovered from the booger illness that has floored me for the last couple days by then. Though being sick wasn't all bad—I really enjoyed the strange dreams that came along with the cold—last night I dreamt I was Kimora Lee Simmons and you could buy candy-colored panda bears at the grocery store.

But I'm going off-topic. Anyway, this Friday night at the Time Out New York Lounge at New World Stages,
340 West 50th Street between 8th and 9th avenues, you can see Desiree Burch, Livia Scott, Michelle Buteau, Michelle Dobrawsky and myself do funny things. 

A Valuable Lesson Learned. . .

When you see a number you don't recognize pop up on your cellphone screen, don't automatically assume it's a friend calling from a different number and then answer the phone using your "kooky," high-pitched, old lady voice. Especially don't do this the week after you sent out an assload of resumes.

Help!

I'm writing this week's Seattle Weekly column and I need a little help. Have you ever been in a long-term relationship with someone who, after you'd been together a while, revealed a completely revolting habit? Like say maybe now that you live together she waxes her bikini line in front of the TV instead of in the bathroom? Or he feels comfortable enough to show off his ability to fart along with pretty much any '70s pop tune?

If so, how did you deal with it? Did you yell? Did the other person quit it? Do tell. You can either email me (names will be changed) or you can let loose in the comments. Thanks!

A Question for the Ages

As some of you know, I write an advice column. Normally the questions I get asked are fairly straightforward, with a minimum of subtext. However this week I'm stumped and am asking you, fair readers for help. To avoid any confusion, I'm just going to run it as I received it:

is it posible to pop ur cherry gett'n finger'd. ?

because i think my boyfriend poped mine.

Fashion Faux Pack

Father's day is just around the corner and won't dad look fab in this!

Because what every man needs is bigger hips and a giant, lumpy, ass. Where is this guy going? Iraq? Is he going to stuff all those totally inconspicuous pockets with shoplifted gummy bears and gallon bottles of water? He should think about using them to store another outfit for when his girl/boyfriend gets a load of him sporting this fashion atrocity.

In case you were wondering, you don't have to wear it around your waist. According to the designer, it can be "thrown across your shoulder for an equally hot look." Oh, and you'll be relieved to know that this fine piece of man-luggage—crafted from "deliriously hip leather"—has been marked down to $412 from its original $588 price tag.

I once had a boyfriend who—despite my near-constant mockery—rocked the fannypack. That is until he started a temp job at Details and one of the snippy queens there (this is back when they knew they were a gay mag) read him to the tune of: "Honey, the last thing you need is more hips." Amen!

Thanks, NotCouture!

I Spy. . . .

This weeks' Seattle Weekly column is up. I realize that for whatever reason, I haven't been linking to them lately. I think it's because the paper keeps relegating me to online-only and it's getting on my nerves. But I'm going to mention this week's effort because it marks a departure from my old way of thinking.

I used to be one of those women who swore they'd never check up on their boyfriend. I would castigate snoopy friends for their mistrustful ways and just generally pat myself on the back for being above all that. Not anymore. Though I don't advocate anyone devote hours to investigating their beloved, I've heard enough stories lately that I think that in a relatively sane relationship, people resort to snooping only when they can tell their partner is hiding something.

That's not to say I check up on my boyfriend—I have no reason to mistrust him—but if I got that feeling, whoa whoa, that cheating feeling, I'd probably do a little digging.