Writer & Columnist | Santa Barbara, CA
Author: Starshine Roshell
I’m about to take you on a journey to the dense, chewy nucleus of the grape Tootsie Pop that is my head. You have been warned.
You see, my brain is very busy. It’s a frickin’ railway junction. I pride myself on my ability to juggle, organize, and accomplish, even in a crunch — no, especially in a crunch. “Show me a quiet mind,” I always say, “and I’ll show you a to-do list that’s been criminally neglected.” This morning I did Kegel exercises while writing my column lead while being power-flossed in the dentist’s chair while feeling rather smug about it all.
But I had no right, it turns out, because multitasking is out and meditation is in. The Huffington Post declared 2014 The Year of Mindful Living, and Time magazine’s recent cover story declared, “If distraction is the pre-eminent condition of our age, then mindfulness is the most logical response.” Rupert Murdoch is meditating now. So are 50 Cent and Kourtney “it’s possible I can’t spell meditate” Kardashian. Meditation is the new kale; it’s the balm for all that ails us.
Carr Winery, 414 N. Salsipuedes St., Santa Barbara
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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.
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.
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 “… 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.
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.
Then a pediatrician told another friend that it’s getting harder and harder to recognize when his patients hit puberty because that primary indicator has vanished — on both girls and boys.
There’s even a new men’s grooming product called Edge Body, the first-ever shaving cream designed for shaving “below the neck.” (Its thicker formula is supposed to “combat irritation and bumps on sensitive areas.”) And some salons now cater to guys who want to be waxed in zones where previously only females dared to be bare — giving rise to the term “Brozilians.” Yes. That actually happens.