Category archive for: Columns

Sex, politics, fashion and everything else a gen-X everygal loves to dish about.
Published bi-weekly, 2 or 3 times a month

PMS: A Safety Guide for Men

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 15, 2013

To the males in my household and all the rest of you:

We have arrived, yet again, at that odious interlude of each lunar cycle when there is a small chance that I will throw something heavy at your head. There’s also a chance that during the next three days I will snatch something out of your hands because you are doing it wrong, shriek “WHO ATE THE LAST BROWNIE?” at a pterodactyl pitch, and begin weeping inconsolably because you set the table and gave me that fork I don’t like — that one freaking fork that is so easy to avoid in the utensils drawer and that you know very well I dislike, but you just had to put it at my place, didn’t you? You never have respected me, not for one minute of our lives, and this is how you choose to show me.

Welcome to hell, fellas.

Because I am kind and generous for 27 days of the month, I’m going to offer you advice for surviving this bumpy patch with me, and any woman who is riding the prickly premenstrual pony. It is dangerous to be you in this situation; I won’t lie. Your wife/mother/girlfriend/sister is a porcupine who has swallowed a hand grenade and doesn’t want to die alone. But with a steady supply of wine and simple carbohydrates, she might — might — be able to keep The Beast shackled in the basement of her soul.

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Kids Left in Cars

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 18, 2013

This column won’t make you laugh. In fact, if you even crack a grin, then I’ve done something wrong. But I have to talk about this issue because it haunts me, and I need to believe some good will come from airing it.

Every year in this country, about 20 infants and young children die after being accidentally left in a car. Not left for 30 minutes while a frazzled mom runs into a Walmart. Not left for an hour while a delinquent dad ducks into a bar. Those are just bad decisions: deliberate and ill-advised.

I mean left for hours upon hours in a closed-up car, where temperatures can climb to 125 degrees, by otherwise responsible but disastrously distracted parents who forget that their baby is strapped in the backseat and so get out of their vehicles and go blithely about their lives while their child suffers heatstroke and dies alone.

It’s horrific. Gut-twistingly, skull-throbbingly unthinkable. Yet it happens all the time. It happened to babies in Virginia and Maryland over the Fourth of July weekend. It sounds like something that only happens to soft-headed imbeciles unfit to reproduce. But it’s happened over the years to a college professor, a cop, a rocket scientist, a clergyman, a nurse, a social worker, a pediatrician… It happens to protective parents who put foam bumpers on every sharp corner in their home and organized parents who start college funds while their babies are still in utero.

I know because it happened to me.

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Teenage Summer Views

Published by Stone Roshell on July 4, 2013

I asked my 14-year-old son to write my column this week because he was “bored” and couldn’t think of anything to do with his summer besides parking himself in front of back-to-back episodes of Ancient Aliens on The History Channel. Yes, it’s really him, and not me pretending to be him. Kid has a sarcastic side; not sure where he gets it.

Hi. Judging by my one-word lead, you probably know that this is not Starshine. My name is Stone, and I am Ms. Roshell’s oldest son. This column will not, for a change, make fun of Christians, vegans, or any other thing my mom is not.

If that’s what you’re into, you’d best stop reading now and check back a couple of weeks when my mom will probably write a column that straddles the line between raunchy humor and uncomfortableness, as usual. This column, however, will discuss a few things my mom doesn’t talk about and will not mention vaginas or flossing. Or vagina flossing, for that matter.

You may be wondering, “Why is Starshine making her son do her work for her?” Well, I’m not sure either, but the reason I accepted her offer was because she told me the only way I could get a glimpse at a TV before 8 p.m. was to bang out a column for her. And of course, desperate times call for desperate measures.

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Lines 'n' Lies at Disney

Published by Starshine Roshell on June 20, 2013

School’s out and more than 5 million kids, teens, and adults are already looking forward to visiting Disneyland and Disney World this summer. I’m guessing that 4 million of them are dirty, rotten liars.

I wouldn’t have thought it before. But recent stories in the New York Post and on the Today show exposed a disturbing trend: families hiring disabled tour guides to escort them through the theme parks so they can skip to the front of ride lines. Both Disney parks allow handicapped guests and their families to bypass long lines and enter rides at a special entrance. So guests with a glut of cash and a dearth of scruples are paying upward of $1,000 per day to abuse that privilege.

“This is how the 1 percent does Disney,” a Manhattan mom reportedly told the Post — which makes you want to shove her mouse ears where mouse ears don’t belong, doesn’t it?

But I asked around and discovered something: This isn’t new. And it’s not uncommon. Friends of mine confessed to strapping on an old knee brace as teens and taking turns pushing each other around the park in a rented wheelchair to get quick ride access. Another tells me that although her son has outgrown his mild autism symptoms, they still use his diagnosis report to get front-of-the-line passes at the Magic Kingdom — and they have no intention of stopping.

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Atheists Saved!

Published by Starshine Roshell on June 6, 2013

For a brief moment last week, I was saved — and as an atheist, that was new for me.

During morning mass at the Vatican, Pope Francis offered a sort of absolution for heathens. The Lord has redeemed all of us, he said. “Not just Catholics. Everyone! … Even the atheists.”

Well, the world gasped. After 2,000 years of astonishing rigidity and intolerance, the Catholic Church was suddenly handing out pardons?

But ole Franky didn’t stop there. The Vicar of Christ upon Earth (for real, that’s what he’s called) went on to imply that our character is reflected as much by our actions as by any religious affiliation — maybe more. “‘But I don’t believe, Father; I am an atheist,'” the pontiff posited. “But do good. We will meet one another there.”

Wait, did he just …? It sounded like he … What the heaven just happened?

It was an interesting week for infidels all around. The Boy Scouts finally voted to allow gay scouts to join their ranks — while godless lads remain unwelcome. But nonbelievers found a hero in Oklahoma tornado survivor Rebecca Vitsmun, who responded to CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer’s comment “You gotta thank the Lord” by giggling, “I’m actually an atheist.” As odd as it was for a journalist to suggest that she praise God while standing in the rubble of her former home, and as unlikely as it was for Blitzer to get stuck on camera with an “out” atheist in the middle of the farm belt, the woman’s admission inspired thousands of faithless folks to contribute to a relief fund to help Vitsmun and her toddler son. You can even buy “I’m actually an atheist” T-shirts to aid the cause.

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No, I Won't Go to Your Kid's Show

Published by Starshine Roshell on May 23, 2013

The last few weeks of the school year are a grueling gauntlet — a narrow, clamorous chute of activity that swallows every last hour of a family’s free time. Evening performances. Weekend tournaments. Early-morning muffin-and-melon affairs in Appreciation of Someone or Other. The only way to get through it all is to keep your eyes focused straight ahead and be impervious to distractions.

It’s like Zumba class or (from what I’ve been told) the urinals in a public restroom: You’re supposed to just mind your own shakey-shake and pay no attention to the person next to you.

And yet you have a friend — we all do — who is going to break this sensible, unspoken rule and invite you to her child’s concert/meet/ recital/play-off even as you’re scrambling for something clean to wear to your own kid’s ceremony/championship/potluck/musical. And when you don’t show up to her child’s event, because, let’s face it, you haven’t hit a grocery store in 19 days and your family is eating old trail mix for breakfast, she is going to judge you. She is going to raise her eyebrows, purse her lips unattractively, and be wounded by your conspicuous absence.

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Backyard Chickens a Fowl Idea?

Published by Starshine Roshell on May 9, 2013

It seemed like such a good idea. And it was — until it clucking wasn’t.

Last week, I dragged my family for an overnight stay at a working farm. They didn’t want to go; it was a long drive, and they had concerts and ball games to attend back home. But I thought it would do us good to get off the grid for just a single stolen day — to slow our pace, dirty our hands, smell weird stuff, and touch base with our agrarian, distinctly non-iPodian roots.

We fed pigs and cooked flapjacks on a wood-burning stove (you’re required to call them flapjacks in these circumstances). We petted sheep and hauled logs in a wooden wagon and had a ferret habitat cage visit. We chased chickens and collected their warm, pastel-colored eggs. It was farmulous.

To be honest, though, my favorite part was leaving. To me, that’s why you go on hikes, or camping, or visiting working farms — so you can fully appreciate how clean and bug-less and easy your life is back home and so that the next time you’re inclined to whine about the timer of your Cuisinart Grind-and-Brew Thermal 10-cup coffee maker going off an hour too early, you can just be immensely thankful you don’t have dirt in your teeth.

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My Midlife, Half-Hearted Crisis

Published by Starshine Roshell on April 25, 2013

My grandmother, who is twice my age, is always threatening to die. “Yep,” she tells me, in that matter-of-fact way that only wise old people can, “I’m about ready to take this show on the road.”

It amuses me when she says it, and saddens me. But it also stops me in my tracks because if her predictions are right, and my math is correct — then I’m officially middle-aged.

This is it. The notorious half-life point. The infamous midlife milestone that lands men in the bucket seats of exorbitantly priced sports cars and spins women into torrid affairs with beefcake boy-toy trainers, neither of which sound like torture exactly, but …

But over this?

Forgive me. I thought middle age would be different. With all the credit it’s given (or blame it’s bequeathed) for sending forty-somethings into existential marriage-busting, job-quitting, marathon-training tailspins, I just thought that becoming halfway-to-dead would be more dramatic. More disruptive. More electric.

I always assumed that balancing atop the very fulcrum of my own personal timeline would be all-consuming, wholly engrossing, 100 percent distracting. Maybe I secretly hoped it would.

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Manhattan Made

Published by Starshine Roshell on April 11, 2013

Start spreading the news. I’m leaving today. I want to be a part of it …

I grew up in a big city with billboards and litter and bellowing horns. We lived in a concrete jungle with beggars and highways and smog — and we vacationed, naturally, in charming, palm tree-punctuated beach towns.

Now I live in this charming, palm tree-punctuated beach town. It’s lovely — a safe, peaceful, pretty place to raise kids. And yet a part of my urban-bred brain wonders if there’s something missing from the soul of children who don’t know how to hop a subway turnstile or sleep through the blare of constant, distant sirens. Are they too content? Too … untested?

So when the tourists began pouring into Santa Barbara for spring break, I dragged my family to Manhattan for a lesson in culture, congestion, and crabby cabbies. We needed grit, I felt. Too much sustained simplicity makes ya soft in the head.

But could two laid-back pups from paradise really glean value from a week in a city that never sleeps? Could my dyed-in-the-wool country mice ever truly appreciate the bracing bedlam of Gotham?

Most of what the boys knew about New York came from Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind”: “Yeah, I’m up at Brooklyn, now I’m down in TriBeCa, right next to De Niro, but I’ll be ‘hood forever. I’m the new Sinatra, and since I made it here, I can make it anywhere …”

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