Home » Columns » Page 6

Category: Columns

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

A Requiem for Trolls Gone By

Published by Starshine Roshell on June 2, 2018

I’m Nostalgic for Nasty Online Commenters

For a decade, they plagued me. Called me bitch, boob, bigot. Speculated about my weight and marriage. Pronounced my children morons. They spewed countless frothy phrases at me from the online comment section at the end of my columns.

Now they’re gone.

In February, the Santa Barbara Independent joined the growing crowd of news sites shutting down their online comments. Reuters, CNN, Bloomberg, NPR, NBC News, the Chicago Sun-Times — the websites of media companies are slamming their windows on the fast-flying fingers of the fractious fruitcakes who spend their days anonymously picking fights with writers, public figures … and, well, mostly with other fractious fruitcakes.

The Call of Target’s Toilets

Published by Starshine Roshell on June 2, 2018

Do You Know About The Bull’s-Eye’s Bathroom Phenomenon?

A dozen years ago, despondent at the dearth of a Target in our town, I scrawled out a joke petition to bring the all-providing Bull’s Eye to Santa Barbara and emailed it to friends. Just for cackles ’n’ snorts. Turns out the entreaty expressed a longing that was shared deeply — and widely. Friends sent it to friends, and within a few weeks it had amassed thousands of local residents’ signatures, including the mayor’s.

For years after, developers tried in vain to bring a Target to town. This year, at long last, we finally get one! Well, we get a quarter of a normal-sized Target. Locals are all asplutter over the traffic and parking snarls they’re sure the store will spawn. And those of us who make pilgrimages to our merchant mecca in neighboring counties wonder how a 32,000-square-foot retail space can hold all of the throw pillows, jaunty Panama hats, diabolically soft jammies, decorative storage solutions, pink kettlebells, Boho goblets, chunky espadrille wedges, and Soap & Glory face masks with which a modern woman likes to deliriously overstuff her red shopping cart. How, I ask you!?

Even so, there’s another important issue that’s being overlooked as we ponder our new Target, and I want to call developers’ attention to it before construction begins: the bathrooms.

Raising a First-Person Shooter

Published by Starshine Roshell on April 7, 2018

‘Fortnite’ Video Game Blowing Holes in My Anti-Gun Policy

The hypocrisy of my life is corroding my insides, and confession is the only cure. Outwardly — in dinner conversations, on social media, at girls’ nights — I go all frothy-mouthed about gun control, all soapbox-y on the nefarious NRA, all high-horsey over our nation’s sick obsession with firearms.

But in a dimly lit corner of my home, probably even as you read this, my sweet 12-year-old son who still orders off the kids’ menu is entertaining himself by assassinating animated strangers with a digital assault rifle — the very weapon now dominating public debate.

He’s playing Fortnite, the viral video game that 45+ million people are currently obsessed with. It’s a Hunger Games–style scenario: You drop into a dystopian landscape with 99 other players and try to be the last player alive at the end. An AR, a shotgun, and a sniper rifle help you accomplish this goal.

I’ve never allowed shooting games in my house before. “It’s not a shooting game,” my son insists. “It’s a survival game.” Well … you survive by shooting people.

Theater Kids Save the World

Published by Starshine Roshell on April 7, 2018

Drama Class Prepares Students to Lead a Revolution

Everyone who’s been to high school knows it: Jocks top the student hierarchy. They earn the yearbook’s Most Popular designations and dictate, by their mere arrival, where the coolest after-prom parties are.

But when a group of outspoken, articulate, enraged students galvanized the nation after last month’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, it wasn’t a pack of athletes. It was a ragtag troupe of theater kids.

That’s right: drama nerds. Who typically hover hierarchically down around stoner, delinquent, brainiac, and band geek.

Speaking with the Enemy?

Published by Starshine Roshell on March 10, 2018

Chatting Up Christian Gun Owners ‘The Benham Bros.’

Much has been sermonized about the incivility of modern American discourse: We’re too polarized, too entrenched in our own viewpoints. If we spent less time ranting and more time actually listening to our ideological opponents, this might be a less hatey, less shooty place to live. And heck, (say it with me now) we “might even discover that we’re not as different as we think.”

So this week I reached out to a pair of Jesus-preaching, evolution-denying, gun-owning abortion opponents to see if we could find common ground. And guess what? We’re precisely as different as we think.

Rooting Against Your Kids

Published by Starshine Roshell on March 10, 2018

Yes, Sometimes We Do Want Them to Fail

There’s tough-love parenting, and then there’s just “tough luck, kid!” Wisconsin GOPSenate candidate Kevin Nicholson got a heaping helping of the latter last week when his Democrat parents each donated $2,700 — the maximum amount allowed by law — to support his opponent’s campaign. Which is bound to make Easter dinner exceptionally awkward.

But it got me thinking about the times I’ve rooted against my own kids, and whether it was the right thing to do. Since, you know, they’re not even Republicans.

This Is Not Your Parents’ Sex

Published by Starshine Roshell on March 10, 2018

Women Share Stories About Sex After 50

Nobody wants to think about their parents having sex. Or their parents’ friends. Or, really, anyone their parents’ age. Because old-people sex is not hot.

We know this because countless magazine covers, soda commercials, music videos, and romance flicks tout taut-skinned hardbodies and shiny newness as indisputable turn-ons. Society is very clear: Gray hair ain’t no aphrodisiac … unless it’s on a guy … who’s charming a significantly younger woman … in a Viagra ad … as nature intended.

But then something freaky happens while you’re busy worshipping at the Church of Titillating Youth: You suddenly become your parents’ age. Gray hairs and all. And you realize that while you and your somewhat slack-skinned softbody are not likely to nude up in a music video anytime soon, you’re still fiendishly hot — and have oodles of sexin’ left to do.

So you write about it.

#Me … NotSoMuch?

Published by Starshine Roshell on March 10, 2018

Confessions of a Last-Wave Feminist

Ladies, I gotta come clean. From the first time I saw it on a social media post, #metoo has rubbed me the wrong way. And I don’t mean, like, in a #metoo way.

The first wave of confessions was powerful — a silent but staggering wail that exposed the shocking pervasiveness of sexual assault and oppressive harassment in a nation that regularly applauds itself for equality.

For me, though, the hashtag became a maimed meme when women began tossing unsolicited ass pats and insufferable catcalls into the mix along with the egregious, menacing affronts. Though these may all be evidence of men treating us like property, it feels both insensitive and overly fragile to lump together the rapiest of rape with the old man saying, “Hey, how about a smile, sweetheart?”

Then came the naming and shaming, the firing and blacklisting and the systematic picking apart of each public apology like flesh from a carcass. That’s when my hackles went on high alert — and for a couple of good reasons:

Will I Marry You? Why Knot

Published by Starshine Roshell on January 21, 2018

Reverend Starshine Reporting for Duty

Only two men have ever seriously asked me to marry them, and I said yes to both. One was my husband, John, 23 years ago, which led us to say “I do” on a Malibu cliff overlooking the ocean. The other was my beloved friend Mott from college — about two months ago.

Mott wasn’t asking me to be his bride; he was asking me to officiate his wedding to his bride. So I got myself ordained on the interwebs as legit damned clergy — and last weekend I married them. On a Malibu cliff, as luck would have it, overlooking the ocean.

An officiant — also known as a solemnizer (yeesh), celebrant (… better), and vow master (now we’re talkin’) — has to sign the marriage certificate, give a charming little nuptial speech, keep the ceremony rolling along at a perky clip, cue the vows, pronounce the couple hitched, and, importantly, leap out of the photographer’s shot for The Big Kiss. All of those duties suited me just fine.

Safe Table Talk for the Holiday Season

Published by Starshine Roshell on January 21, 2018

Conversing Peacefully with Your Family at Thanksgiving

It’s been quite a year, folks. Hell, it’s been quite a week. In the last few days alone, our exalted leader tweeted a tweeny tantrum about the height and weight of a cranky and well-armed foreign leader. (Dear Diary, Rocketman hurt my feelings today, but I put a nuke in his locker, so we’ll see who’s laughing after fourth period…)

That’s only the very latest jaw-dropping moment, though, in a stunning string of horrors since we last sat down to Thanksgiving with our families. There was the Election That Enlighted Us All About Our Racist, Terrified Neighbors. That was followed by the daily matinees from the White House circus, including incompetent appointments to crucial government posts. There were hurricanes, floods, and fires. Domestic and foreign terrorism. Revelations of high-profile sexual harassment and abuse. And all of these things, miraculously, were politically charged.