Starshine compares nutty astronauts and icy presidential candidates, asking ‘How do we want our female leaders— passionate and unpredictable or controlled and calculated?’
Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
Starshine compares nutty astronauts and icy presidential candidates, asking ‘How do we want our female leaders— passionate and unpredictable or controlled and calculated?’
Starshine answers for her puzzling, pony-tailed gender in The Third-Grader’s Guide to Girls.
With the Super Bowl looming, Starshine reminds us what football’s really all about: The outfits.
Starshine takes a cold, hard look at what’s going on beneath women’s blouses.
Starshine chats with Bella DePaulo, Summerland resident and visiting professor at UCSB, about her new book, which explores the social stigma that America’s happily single faces.
Now that Shindig Season has passed, let’s resolve to be better party guests this year by learning when to set down our snifters and say, ‘So long.’ Too many promising soirŽes run aground when guests–caught up in the evening’s convivial climate–continue to gab and gargle long after their host has started the dishwasher, thanked them for coming, and opened the front door with optimism.
Business trips sound enticing to this work-at-home mom, but kidlessness – it turns out – has its price.
Dearest Friends and Family, We hope this holiday letter finds you merry, gay, and all the other pleasant emotions the season demands of you.Whew! What a whirlwind year it’s been for us. The baby is quite active these days. He likes to bang his head on things and spin around until he falls down. We assume this is because he’s so smart, and he’s trying to slow his poor little brilliant mind down to a more comfortable level.
Chubby children aside, there’s a lot of weight on the lap of a shopping mall Santa.
Encased in fur and velvet, cinched into gut-crushing belts and boots that don’t breathe, these rock stars of the holiday stage not only have to hawk overpriced 8x10s. They bear the burden of keeping the season’s magic alive for hundreds of increasingly incredulous youngsters. One tug on that gleaming white wig could be all it takes to convince them that holiday wishes are for patsies. One harsh word aimed at an incompetent elf could Dasher their hopes forever. Blitzen them, even.
Who are the brave men who accept this challenge year after year? And what, with all due respect, could they possibly be thinking? I did some in-depth research this week (can I just say, how cool is this job?) and discovered there are three basic types of Santa stand-ins.
We all know diamonds are the world’s hardest natural substance, but the jewelry industry doesn’t seem to believe it. Judging by the sappy ads popping up on Monday night football, in men’s magazines, and on billboards along Highway 101, diamond peddlers seem convinced there’s nothing more dense and impenetrable than a man’s skull.