Starshine Roshell – Page 15 – Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA

Foodies and Babies

Published on January 30, 2014

Remember the Harryhausen’s scene from the Pixar flick Monsters, Inc.? A variety of furry, fanged, tentacled beasts are enjoying a civilized evening at a fancy restaurant, the kind where you have to pull strings to get a reservation. And the sudden appearance of a wide-eyed, pig-tailed human toddler — believed to be toxic — sends them all shrieking into the streets, summoning hazmat teams and inciting mass panic.

A five-eyed blob tells a news camera, “I tried to run from it, but it picked me up with its mind powers and shook me like a dog!”

An eerily similar scene recently played out in a super swank Chicago restaurant, sending foodies shrieking into the blogosphere for days on end.

It seems a party of four dared to bring an infant into Alinea, a sort of culinary art gallery, where the morsels of sculpted monkfish and squab resemble flowers more than food. Once named the best restaurant in the U.S., Alinea sells tickets in advance to its nightly tasting-menu-palooza at about $250 per person sans tax, tip, or wine — and believe me, when your dishes include fiddlehead fern, something called “mastic,” and, I kid you not, helium — you’re going to need a lot of wine.

Sex Robots

Published on January 16, 2014

There’s a scene in the new movie Her in which Samantha, the sultry-voiced computer operating system of the film’s title, talks up the benefits of being nonhuman.

“I’m not limited,” purrs Scarlett Johansson as the artificially intelligent heroine. “I can be anywhere and everywhere simultaneously. I’m not tethered to time and space in the way that I would be if I was stuck inside a body that’s inevitably going to die.”

I’ll bet she never feels bloated, either. Or insists on switching over to Downton Abbey when the game’s gone into overtime. Or complains about the lingering lunchy onion stench on the breath of Theo, the lonely divorcé who buys Samantha and falls in love with her.

Both onscreen and off, modern society is flirting with the notion that technology can satisfy us in ways that flesh-and-blood lovers can’t.

Don’t believe me? Check out InvisibleGirlfriend.com, set to launch this Valentine’s Day. For a monthly fee, the company will conjure up “believable virtual and real-world proof” that you have a girlfriend. Yup. You can order up voice mails, text messages, social-media interaction, cards, and even flowers from a nonexistent female in order to, say, convince a roommate you’re not gay, put an end to a coworker’s come-ons, or get your nagging parents off your back.

I Am Not Making This Up: I Interviewed Dave Barry

Published on December 19, 2013

Here’s how life works: On the day you’re scheduled to interview your idol, you wake up with acute laryngitis. I mean bad. You can’t speak above a guttural whisper and the occasional deep, booming croak.

Fortunately, Dave Barry’s got enough voice for the both of us.

Perhaps the best-known columnist in America, Barry wrote a humor column for the Miami Herald for more than 20 years. It was syndicated to more than 500 newspapers and earned him a Pulitzer Prize — which is a really serious award to give a man who once wrote a column titled “Decaf Poopacino” and for whom exploding Pop-Tarts is a well-trod motif.

Known for the catchphrases “I am not making this up” and “â€¦ which is a really good name for a rock band,” Barry has an unmistakable voice; his style is recognizable even before you see the byline. When I tell him this — rather, when I squawk it at him, sounding like a phone-sex operator who is gagging on a small toad — he agrees that it’s easy to spot his work “because it has the word booger in it somewhere.”

Barry, who comes to town in January, is more than a columnist; he’s written more than 30 books, including the new novel Insane City. He’s responsible for popularizing International Talk Like a Pirate Day. And he plays guitar in a rock band with authors Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Mitch Albom — which makes him, like, the Bono of the publishing universe.

It's here!

Published on December 13, 2013

Men Are Going Bare. Down There.

Published on December 5, 2013

I don’t have a lot of bad things to say about monogamy. Most of the time it’s a sweet deal: I never worry I’m going to blurt out the wrong guy’s name in bed, and I always have someone to drag with me to the office holiday party. But there’s an undeniable downside to sharing naked time with just the one person. And that is this: I am the last one to know about fascinating new pubic-hair trends.

While I’ve been hibernating in holy matrimony, it turns out that an increasing number of men — from pubescent teens to been-around-the-block bachelors — are going utterly hairless in their private regions. And thereby giving a whole new meaning to male-pattern baldness.

I first heard about the fad from a single girlfriend of mine. “I haven’t seen a male pube in a long time,” she said.

"Broad Assumptions" available for pre-order

Published on December 2, 2013

Transgender Students

Published on November 21, 2013

A new California law will allow K-12 public-school students to use restrooms and join sports teams based not on their sex — but on their gender identity. That means that starting January 1, transgender students who are biologically male will be allowed into girls’ bathrooms and those who are biologically female will be welcome on football teams and in boys’ locker rooms.

So, naturally, some folks are freaking out.

Signed by Governor Brown in August, the School Success and Opportunity Act is the first of its kind in the U.S. But a group called Privacy for All Students has gathered thousands of signatures hoping to bring the issue to a public vote — and ultimately overturn the law. They say it’s unfair to regular guy-guys and girl-girls to have to share their facilities and, I don’t know, bonding zones with someone who has differently shaped private parts.

This particular fight centers around urinals and communal showers, but the transgender rights movement neither begins nor ends at plumbing. It’s happening on Dancing with the Stars, where Chaz Bono cha-cha-cha’d; and in the U.S. Army, where Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning reinvented himself as Chelsea; and in the Girl Scouts, where a Colorado troop’s decision to allow a 7-year-old transgender child to join its ranks inspired a cookie boycott; and in the Miss Universe pageant, where a transgender Canadian contestant won the right to compete in 2012; and so on, and so on.

Best Part of Parenting: The Music

Published on November 7, 2013

First smile. First steps. First day of school.

Certain moments in the parenting canon are aggrandized as monumental milestones that justify all the emotional trials of ushering infants into childhood and children into adulthood. You know the ones:

Learning to read. Hitting the home run. Passing the driver’s test.

And they’re all great; don’t get me wrong. But there’s another transcendent moment that no one ever talks about — and it’s so good that if you don’t have kids, you should consider getting some just so you can experience it.

It’s the moment when you discover that your kids dig your music. Not just recognize it or tolerate it, but genuinely love some of your favorite songs. When you happen upon them listening to the Isley Brothers while doing their homework, or singing Amy Winehouse as they unload the dishwasher, or blasting Bowie from the family iPod during a road trip — and not groaning and saying that they meant to click Bowling for Soup.

Those moments flood me with joy like a garden hose filling up a plastic backyard wading pool. Only much, much faster because those things take freaking forever. Why should it matter so much to me that we hanker for the same harmonies, throb to the same rhythms?

Happy Amnesia-versary

Published on October 24, 2013

When it comes to celebrating wedding anniversaries, there are two distinct types of wife: the needy ones who demand hearts, flowers, and other manufactured, predictable demonstrations of affection just so they can feel appropriately, annually adulated. And there are the more evolved, laissez-faire ladies who reject clichéd notions of romance and not only prefer but even inspire frequent, spontaneous acts of tenderness from their un-put-upon partners.

And I’m totally that first one.

But I’m not proud of it. You see, I have a kind and generous husband who regularly, spontaneously, exuberantly fills my gas tank (absolutely not a euphemism), rubs my back, and fills my gas tank (yeah, that time was a euphemism). He’s creative and patient and funny and smart, handsome, hardworking, and pretty much perfect in every way.

Except he has acute flipping amnesia about our anniversary. He’s lived through 19 of them now (only because I have lousy aim), and it’s the same every year: I wait for him to mention that it’s coming up; he doesn’t; I finally remind him; he is surprised; the day comes; he does nothing; I confess that I was hoping for some small acknowledgement of our enduring … you know … love linkage; he gulps and says he’s sorry; I huff around for several days telling myself that gas-tank skills are nothing to sniff at.

Best Columnist 2013

Published on October 17, 2013

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