Category: Columns

Sex, politics, fashion and everything else a Gen-X everygal loves to dish about.

My Kingdom for Bloody Bandwidth

Published on September 24, 2009

Shakespeare never had to put up with this crap. I sit down at my computer this morning with a hot cup of fresh coffee and grand plans. I mean grand. I need to post my latest column, answer questions from confounded students, confirm an interview for tomorrow, check who’s coming to one son’s birthday party, find out who’s coming to the other son’s band practice, and complete research for a story that’s due today.

These are all tasks I accomplish online, so when I discover that my Internet is down — defunct, dead — I panic.

I call Cox for an explanation, and a recording tells me they’re having technical problems in my neighborhood. This is not news to me; this is what I called to tell them. The voice does not explain what they plan to do about it.

I click my “get mail” button just in case the connection has resumed while I was busy pounding on the phone (who uses the blasted phone anymore?), trying to find someone to shriek at.

Nothing happens. I click it again — “get mail,” “get mail,” “get mail” — hoping it will miraculously, spontaneously decide to obey. I am impotent. I am a eunuch. I am flipping the freak out.

Begging for Tuition

Published on September 17, 2009

I have friends who’ve gone to great lengths to ensure a first-rate education for their kids. Mortgaging themselves silly to buy a house in a better school district. Taking a job at an esteemed private school so their kids could attend for free. Even — and I’d sooner endure AP Calculus all over again — pulling them out of 6th grade, mid-year, to homeschool.

At least I thought these were great lengths. But a mother in Redmond, Washington, has put them all to shame. Single mom Shelle Curley has taken to begging for cash at a freeway off-ramp to raise tuition money for her son to attend a prestigious dance academy.

Seventeen-year-old DJ was invited to spend his senior year at the audition-only Idyllwild Arts Academy outside of Palm Springs. The boarding school, whose graduates often go on to Juilliard, awarded him a \$45,000 scholarship. But his currently unemployed mother had to come up with an additional \$7,000 to make it happen.

“All the colleges come there to scout,” Curley says. “This is my son’s chance at a higher education.”

So she held cash raffles and car washes. She sold his bedroom furniture. She scoured CraigsList for items that were being given away, picked them up and sold them at garage sales.

One night, with her job hunt going nowhere and DJ’s admission date fast approaching, she burst into tears. Her older daughter joked that she should consider begging at the side of the road.

Missing My Mall

Published on September 10, 2009

The sad truth is this: I’d rather be at a mall than almost anywhere.

As a teen, I logged more hours at the Sherman Oaks Galleria than I did in trigonometry class. Later, as a new mom, I’d schlep my infant to the Pacific View Mall in Ventura — through wretched rain — just to have somewhere dry to stroll.

Malls are the 3-D version of thumbing through your favorite magazine: At best, you find something delightful inside. At worst, you learn what’s current, what other people are interested in. And if you’re crazy-lucky, there’s a Hot Dog on a Stick in the food court.

On sunny days, I used to take my son to La Cumbre Plaza and amble. We’d buy a Mrs. Fields cookie, toss pennies in the fountain, pick up cards at Hallmark, and happily sniff the incense wafting from The Body Shop. It was our mall.

But we don’t go there much anymore. Ever since the recent “enhancement” project — which sent no-frills staples like KB Toys packing and welcomed high-end boutiques like Tiffany & Co. and BCBGMAXAZRIA — it feels like we’re trespassing on someone else’s mall now. Someone with far nicer shoes and a standing facial appointment.

“I don’t think it’s improved at all, just more overpriced stores that squeeze out us regular folks and cater to Hope Ranch,” says a friend of mine. “I’m just waiting for Sears to be replaced by Neiman Marcus.”

The All-Nugget Diet

Published on September 3, 2009

Dear Picky Eater of Mine,

I love you dearly. But you’re going to have to bite me.

I’m done with the dinnertime drama. The passive-aggressive poking at your peas. The pantry full of bland, beige, carb-crammed kidnip that makes up your undigestible diet. Cereal and crackers, chips and tortillas, rice and French fries. What are you, a park pigeon?

The fact that your four-year-old body still has the energy to jump on the trampoline and the cognitive focus to work a jigsaw puzzle is, I’m certain, entirely due to the fact that I manage to get three to five soy beans into you every week by bullying you and bribing you with cookies.

I’m not supposed to do that, you know. I’m not supposed to use dessert as a reward. Or cook you separate meals from what the rest of us are eating. Or allow the family table to become a battleground upon which I demand that you nourish yourself, and you take cruel glee in reminding me that I can’t make you.

The experts say I’m doing it all wrong. And by the way you bellow “that’s YUCK!” at the sight of a bell pepper, I can see their point.

Straight Girl/Gay Guy

Published on August 27, 2009

There’s a man I meet for enchanting lunch dates. We giggle and taste each other’s food. He stands up when I enter the room, and looks me frankly in the eyes. He’s inexcusably handsome, laugh-out-loud funny, and whip-smart.

And when I leave for our rendezvous — wearing a smile, a flirty dress, and a spritz of mango body splash — my husband always comments, “Wow. Who are you having lunch with again?” When I answer, he says, “Oh! Have fun.”

You see, my delicious date is gay. Gay as they come. Dresses-better-than-I-do gay. Big-fan-of-chick-flicks gay. I fancy myself the Grace to his Will. The Madonna to his Rupert. (But not the Carrie to his Stanford. He’s not that gay.)

Apparently I am a fag hag. But I find the term tasteless-times-two, so I go by the gentler, more fashionable “fruit fly.” (The zeitgeist now also allows for “lesbros,” or straight men who covet the company of lesbians. A column for another time, no doubt.)

Lots of my girlfriends have cherished friendships with gay men, and the gay part isn’t incidental. These guys are not “girlfriends with penises.” There’s something about the breezy straight gal/gay guy dynamic that makes other friendships feel like hard labor.

Little Drummer Boy

Published on August 20, 2009

Families are noisy. On any given day, put your ear to the front door of a family home and you’ll hear a predictable soundtrack: laughing, whining, stomping, hollering.

But none of these sounds rumble through my house. Rather, they may, but I can’t hear them. Because I can’t hear anything but this: Thwappety thwappety thwappety BAM! BAM! BAM!

My son is a drummer. An enthusiastic one. With beefy forearms and a double bass pedal.

Boogety boogety boogety CRASH! BASH! CRASH!

The kid, I’m just saying, is LOUD.

I remember the ultrasound when we first heard his heartbeat: a soft thub-thub, thub-thub, thub-thub. It was at once startling and reassuring, familiar yet miraculous.

But once he was born, the only thing that would soothe this colicky baby was a rolling groove. Swinging, bouncing, walking. Funk music, disco, reggae.

Then a sadistic relative (you know who you are) gave him a Fisher-Price drum set. Why he took to it, and not his Elmo guitar or toy piano, we may never know. Before long, another sadistic relative (it’s a genetic thing) eventually helped him buy a full-scale, take-up-half-the-garage, gleaming chrome drum set.

Derby Dames

Published on August 13, 2009

I was pretty sure I was bitchin’. Dope on a rope. Wicked hip. I was fairly certain I had “badass” scrawled all over me. Then last week I met the roller derby chicks.

Half-scrambling, half-gliding around a no-frills rink in a concealed corner of Earl Warren Showgrounds, the Mission City Brawlin’ Betties learned me that there’s cool — and then there’s roller-derby cool. And while I may take the occasional lap around the former, I will never so much as accidentally roll downhill into the latter. That’s cooler than a polished concrete flat track in the shade. That’s cool on wheels.

I’m no slouch on skates. An only (lonely) child, I spent entire Hollywood weekends shooting the moon in hot pink denim. So when a couple of girlfriends told me they were trying out for Santa Barbara’s new roller derby team, I strutted over to check it out.

Invented in the 1930s, roller derby is a full-contact sport in which knee-padded, hot-pants’d gals race each other around an oval track at break-bone speed, trying to block opponents from passing them. It was huge in the ’70s, selling out arenas like Madison Square Garden, and has enjoyed a recent revival, with more than 75 leagues across the country. Drew Barrymore’s much-anticipated derby flick Whip It opens in October.

Whose Getaway Is It?

Published on August 6, 2009

I fantasize about it all year. The week when my kids go to Grandpa’s house five hours away, and my husband and I get rare, rapturous grown-up time. The luxury of sleeping late. The freedom of going to a movie on a whim. The enchanting silence and shocking simplicity of tidying up the house — and having it stay tidy. Day after day after day.

I crave it. I treasure it. I deserve it.

But when the time finally comes for our boys to drag their duffle bags out the door, I’m faced with a disturbing revelation: Greater than my need to be temporarily childless is my children’s need to be briefly, blissfully motherless.

You see, it turns out I’m a terrible shrew. A nagging control freak. A micro-managing ogress from the soggiest bog of Vex-and-Pester Swamp. As my kids prepare to leave, I chase them around the house like a cartoon mother, wagging a bony index finger and barking orders:

Did you pack your swimsuit? I know I already asked you, but last time you forgot it, so let’s be sure. How do you plan on practicing your drums without your drumsticks? Be sure to wear sunscreen every day. And shower once in a while, for goodness’ sake. Here’s a plastic bag for your laundry; please don’t make Grandpa pick up your dirty clothes every night.

Is Waxing Waning?

Published on July 30, 2009

Times are lean. Money’s tight. Something’s gotta give. Surveys show women are cutting back on their beauty regimens to save dollars: painting their own nails, giving up facials, and stocking up, alas, on Clairol Root Touch-Up in Medium Golden Blonde.
“The economy,” one of my girlfriends confessed, “is wreaking havoc on my nails and hair.”
But not all hair.
I’m always amused at how women’s and men’s pubic hair styles change with the times. In the ’70s, the pages of Playboy were overgrown with va-jungles. Today the Best Razor for Manscaping Below the Belt is being pushed as hard as BBQ’s used to be. With the preference of centerfolds looking like nursing mothers up top and nine-year-old girls below. Skin, as they say, is in.
Gals of all ages seem to favor the Brazilian wax, which cannot be explained adequately without violating obscenity laws. But I’ll try: The waxer removes every flipping follicle on the waxee’s, um, undercarriage, up her backside, and anything (or everything) she wants taken off in front. Landing strip. Triangle. Cougar paw. Or need-a-muff naked.
Since fashion spins in cycles, one has to wonder: How soon before the pube pendulum swings back from bare to bushy? What will it take to end the trend toward hairless hoo-has?

Rated PG for Parental Gaffe

Published on July 23, 2009

It starts like this. You’re chatting with your kid when a familiar phrase pops into your head. A line of dialogue from a favorite movie of your youth. “Eat my shorts” from The Breakfast Club, perhaps, or “Son, you got a panty on your head” from Raising Arizona. Maybe you’re calling the family to the dinner table, Junior is unresponsive and you find yourself blurting, “Bueller? … Bueller? … Bueller? …”

Then you realize, with a cold blast of horror, that your child has no idea what you’re talking about. No frame of reference through which to recognize your superior cinematic literacy.

How can this be? (And this is where the faulty thinking begins.) No offspring of yours is going to go through life without studying the classics, without paying proper deference to the heroes of your adolescence, the big-screen giants whose vast wisdom and extraordinary wit shaped your psyche: Mel Brooks. Eddie Murphy. Long Duk Dong.

So you rent a movie, tell your kid, “You’re gonna LOVE this” and plop down on the couch for a family movie night. Which is exactly when the cursing begins. And the full-frontal nudity. And the powder-snorting, pole-dancing, cop-killing and flagrant cracking of jokes so racist they actually make your jaw clench.

People, what the (rated R for language) were you thinking?