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

Take My Kids … Please

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 16, 2010

It was like a meeting of Irresponsible Parents Anonymous. Shuffling anxiously into the sterile office, we were strangers to one another, with two shared attributes: shame that we hadn’t taken care of this sooner, and relief that we were finally doing something about it.

We are the laggard parents (perhaps you’re one of us?) who haven’t yet named a legal guardian for our children — haven’t debated the relative merits of various friends and family members to raise our children in the event of our untimely deaths, haven’t had the touchy conversation with said individuals wherein we ask them to accept the onerous responsibility of ushering our spawn gracefully into adulthood, haven’t filled out the legal paperwork making the decision official … But as you see, the process is complex.

It’s one of those parenting chores that fall into the category of “prudence” — and that I stink at. Saving for their college. Having them fingerprinted. Even getting them flu shots. So if I’m an unfit mother for not planning for their potential orphanhood, well, add it to the list.

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Since When Does 'Adult' Mean Dirty?

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 9, 2010

Growing up is no rare achievement, but we did work hard to get here. Stumbling around the house in our parents’ shoes, calculating our ages in cheeky increments of halves and quarters, scrutinizing that slow-growing height chart etched onto our bedroom doorframes in ballpoint pen.

In fact, you could argue that our entire childhoods were devoted to prepping and plotting for adulthood. In my own eager little mind, being “big” meant freedom. It meant confidence. It meant respect.

Imagine my shock to discover that adulthood actually means shopping for vibrating underpants and schmoozing the stars of Busty Cops and Naked Heroines Bound for Trouble!

This weekend, porn stars and erotic toy peddlers will gather at the Los Angeles Convention Center for the annual naughtyfest known as Adultcon. Open to the public, the expo invites guests to meet “over 69 adult entertainers,” purchase “male sexual enhancement products,” and learn about “vaginal rejuvenation centers.”

All of which sound diverting indeed. Stimulating? Maybe. Amusing? Undoubtedly. But … adult?

Let’s ignore the fact that the girls in Adultcon ads appear to challenge even the legal definition of “adult.” And let’s disregard my own clearly twisted associations of “adult sex” with responsible considerations like love, birth control, and (yawn, I know) STD-prevention.

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Life is Laundry

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 2, 2010

Some of my friends are sending their kids off to college this fall and discovering, with some shame, that their offspring — who can build Web sites, play stringed instruments, and locate Latvia on a world map — are deficient in other life skills. Basic skills. Crucial skills.
“We just got back from dropping Devon off for his first night in the dorm,” says my friend Tracy. A superlative mother, Tracy has taught her children to play cribbage, iron a dress shirt, and consider protein and fiber percentages when choosing their breakfast cereals. But that evening, while introducing her son to his new bedroom, she realized there are still some things she’s failed to demonstrate.
“They need to learn how to put sheets on their bed,” she says, describing a slapstick scene of mattress-wrestling that left her shaking her head. “Thank god he didn’t have the top bunk.”
We modern parents are great at teaching our kids the value of empathy, recycling, and broad bandwidth. But have we forgotten to school them in, say, soaping their skivvies?
A young woman I know admits she had no idea how to do laundry when she left home: “My mother always said she paid too much for my clothes to let me mess them up in the wash.”
Another says she’s flummoxed by grocery shopping: “I always forget to buy something important.”
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The Art of the Come-On

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 26, 2010

The perfect come-on. It’s the Holy Grail of dating, the enchanted key that unlocks the glorious gates of Eternal, On-Demand Lady Lovin’. Many seek it. Many fail.

“Shoot, I seem to have lost my phone number. Can I have yours?”

“If I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put U and I together.”

“Did you clean your pants with Windex? Because I can practically see myself in them.”

The notion that a single pick-up line could win a woman’s heart, or even convince her to doff her Hanky Pankies for an exceedingly pleasant 37 minutes, is so far-fetched I’d swear it were a myth. Except that, occasionally, it works.

I was sitting outside a Denny’s recently, waiting for my family to arrive. A couple of young guys were walking in when one stopped and said, “Excuse me?”

I turned, expecting him to say that I’d dropped my car keys. Or forgotten to put on pants. You know, the usual.

“I just want to tell you, I think you’re really pretty,” he said.

And that was it. No creepy alligator smile. No goofy drunk-on-the-dance-floor body language. Just “you’re really pretty,” a shy grin, and he moseyed into the eatery.

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Our Kids are Snitches

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 19, 2010

Running for office requires a hardy hide. Detractors lob accusations as easily as jugglers hurling torches; politicians expect it. But Oklahoma judicial candidate John Mantooth is being pelted by a particularly painful source: his own grown daughter.

Jan Schill (formerly Mantooth) recently took out a newspaper ad that read, “Do Not Vote for My Dad!” on the grounds that he’s “NOT a good father, NOT a good grandfather,” and would make a lousy judge. She launched DoNotVoteForMyDad.com, linking to legal documents that call his integrity into question and describing a Christmas gift she once received from her pop — a box of chocolates infested with worms and weevils.

Eww. I don’t care if you vote for him, but do not under any circumstances invite this guy to a secret Santa swap.

The candidate claims his daughter is embittered by his ugly decades-gone-by divorce from her mother, which may be true. But it’s hard to ignore the shocking shriek of a child blowing the whistle on her own badly behaving begetter.

Cops heeded just such a shriek last week when a 13-year-old New York girl called 911 from the backseat of her mother’s swerving car to report that mom was driving drunk. The good news: Troopers hauled in the besotted mama before anyone was hurt. The bad: Dinnertime conversation at their house will be awkward for quite some time.

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Once Upon Two Mattresses

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 12, 2010

Standing naked at the bedside, my man and I tear back the covers, anticipating ecstasy. We climb between the sheets and press together, limbs entwined. Our eyes close in mutual euphoria and we fall … rapturously … asleep. (That’s right, pervs. Asleep.)

It’s our cherished nightly ritual: tug comforter up to noses, whisper, “Don’t tell them where we are,” and huddle pod-like ’til morning. Our shared shuteye is a horizontal dance — not a provocative bop but a slumber rhumba. Throughout the night, we flop subconsciously apart and back together, finding ourselves reconnected by morning’s first light: feet stacked, knees overlapping, fingertips resting on shoulders.

So for us, the following news was a rude awakening: Almost a quarter of American couples sleep in separate beds or bedrooms, according to the National Sleep Foundation. And builders claim the demand for separate master suites is on the rise.

I thought his-and-hers bunks were a relic from the I Love Lucy days — and even then, a fake-out to placate easily titillated network execs. Who wants to trot off to dreamland solo when you’ve got a buddy to spoon?

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Family Travels

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 5, 2010

You’ve got a lot of nerve calling this a vacation. I’m chasing sun-punchy children around a murky pool with a spray-can of SPF, wondering how the oldest will survive on his all-Doritos-and-no-sleep diet and why the youngest appears to be missing a shoe. Just one shoe, not both.

I took off work for this. I got a dog-sitter. I’m spending $20 a night just to park my car — the same car that’s strewn with minuscule pegs from the inexplicably explosive Travel Battleship game.

This is not hell. I understand: It’s family travel. It’s togetherness-away-from-home. It’s bonding-over-adventures and, more often, under adventures.

But it ain’t my idea of a vacation.

Where’s the cabana boy I was promised? Where’s the bottomless blended cocktail and crisply pressed sheets? Where’s the blessed silence? The divine stillness? The hallowed, hard-won sloth, for flip-flop’s sake?

Vacations used to be different for my husband and me: isolation, rejuvenation, coconut libations. Our idea of bliss is sitting somewhere sunny, doing less than nothing, and consuming our weight (pre-vacation weight, to be clear) in guacamole.

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Comic Books

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 22, 2010

A friend once took me to an authentic Chinese restaurant. The menu was in Chinese, which I don’t read, but I browsed it anyway because that’s what proper diners do.

Ultimately, I had to trust my friend’s discretion and eat what he ordered. It was delicious. But I found the whole experience disorienting, like stepping out of an airport into a city you’ve never visited, clueless to which way is north.

That’s how I feel when I read comic books — which I almost never do. I didn’t grow up reading them, so the navigation system is foreign; I don’t know where to look first (pictures? word balloons?) or where to look second (left-to-right? top-to-bottom?). And so many of them have repugnant content: ghastly violence toward painfully proportioned women and, not to be accused of sexism, ghastly violence at the hands of painfully proportioned women.

A literary snob, I always figured comic books were for people who had trouble with, you know, actual reading.

But then I married a comic-book geek. My husband grew up with his nose buried in Spider-Man comics and now makes his living as a graphic designer in the comic-book biz. This weekend, he’s dragging me once again to San Diego’s annual Comic-Con, the nation’s biggest celebration of pop-culture fringe. The convention’s 100,000-plus visitors are a motley jumble of Star Trek, Twilight, and Bettie Page fanatics, but what binds them all together is comic books. Four-color, saddle-stitched, your-grandpa-used-to-read-’em comic books. Comics about superheroes, bad guys and, lately, nerd girls.

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Mini-Cakes

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 15, 2010

Compact yet fluffy. Decadent but dainty. Self-contained and yet utterly, maddeningly un-portable. I think it’s cupcakes’ inherent contradictions that make them so irresisti-licious. For years now, chic towns across the nation have been worshipping cupcakes; Santa Barbara alone claims several gourmet boutiques devoted to the frosted confections.

And I whole-mouthedly approve. If you ignore the fact that they’re pricey and fattening — and let’s do — cupcakes are the perfect food. “Miniature” equals “adorable” and cake is no different. I like the integrity of a cupcake, each an original and self-contained work of art rather than a crumby fragment of a larger whole, a sloppy slab o’ Bundt, if you will.

I appreciate that cupcakes — whether petite or the size of my head — have a guess-free serving size, and that their frosting-to-cake ratio is considerably higher, and thus more mathematically yumptious, than regular cake.

I like their symmetry and the bling you often find on top: jelly bean, coffee bean, sugared berry. I relish that they’re fork-resistant and, being too tall for a mouth and too precarious to turn sideways, leave frosting on your chin and nostrils, making you look and feel like you’re four years old.

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Why Have Kids? No, Really.

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 8, 2010

I’m sitting with some great old friends from high school, catching up on the last 20 years of our lives. There was a time when we had everything in common, from favorite teachers to lunchtime hangouts to homework due dates. And it’s fun — even comforting — to see how much we’re still alike politically, professionally, socially …

But then talk turns to the way we’re most different: My kids and their cats.

Often there’s judgment implicit when breeders and nonbreeders get to squawking about offspring. But not us. My pals seem genuinely charmed when I brag about my smarter-than-average spawn (whether they find my kids inspiring or my preening adorable, I can’t be sure). And I don’t question it when they tell me their cats are awesome, their life is good, and that they aren’t convinced procreating would improve it. I believe them.

Except … there’s something about the way they say that — is there a flicker of doubt on their faces? a subtle rise in intonation? — that makes it seem more like a question than a statement. It feels like they’re asking me outright: Starshine, why have kids?

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