I heart Girl's Gone Child

I've said it probably many, many times, here and elsewhere, but I really love Rebecca Woolf's blog Girl's Gone Child. The content, of course, but also the design; it's so stunning, and what I'd want my blog(s) to look like if I could ever afford to spruce them up (not a complaint, I don't have the time right now to contemplate cleaning my living room, let alone my blogs). But still, it's a visual treat and I think I'm going to get 4 days in LA in January/February and am gonna make it a priority to see Rebecca after...way too long. Last trip was fun but also madness; this next trip, in between work stuff, I want to hang out with my favorite moms.

The mamas and the papas

From three of my favorite parents, Romi Lassally and Rebecca Woolf in the first case, Robert Wilder (also see last year's Father's Day cupcake interview with him) in the second. True Mom Confessions will feature Mating in Captivity author Esther Perel (who I wrote about in my Village Voice column "Keeping Married Sex Hot.")

Is infidelity the new black?

More women - and their husbands - are going beyond their own picket fences for love. Are modern marriages surviving, thriving or falling apart?

May 3rd at 2pm pst/5pm est

Stay tuned for details.

Daddy Needs a Drink


Daddy Needs a Drink, the critically acclaimed book of essays that People magazine said “go down like a gin and tonic on a hot summer afternoon,” is now out in paperback! And to celebrate the paperback release, Team Daddy is having a “Daddy Needs Your Stories” Father’s Day Contest. Three winners will receive signed copies of Daddy Needs A Drink mailed to their home (or detention center) just in time for Father’s Day. For details, rules, and a funny picture of RobertWilder and his own father, just check out http://www.robertwilder.com/contest.html

Random, like me

Todd Levin is one of the funniest people I know. Sometimes I think he could say anything and make it funny. I love that his work is on a friend of mine's wall. I love that everyone who was there remembers his so-funny-my-face-hurts performances at my last two birthday parties. I love that he was unexpectedly at SXSW and I kept getting these reports on him, even though I'm sad to have missed his dirty storytelling. I love that he writes things like:

I tend to think I am more entrenched in the Internet and online technology than most of my close friends, but at SXSW I sincerely felt like a retarded child who had been given a digital watch for his birthday.

Whether you were there or not, check out his awesome "South by South-BEST" piece at The Morning News.

My favorite part was his made-up but spot-on panels:

“Damn, Girl, I Wish I Were That Scoliosis Brace”: Leaving Comments on Women’s MySpace Profile Pictures and the Art of Seduction

I missed out on the "nuclear tacos" in Austin. I should be scared, but I now see them as a challenge for next year. Who's with me?

I'm gonna start sounding like a broken record, but Rebecca Woolf. Damn. That girl makes me cry. Just so you know, she has two blogs, Girl's Gone Child and Straight from the Bottle.

A review of Hanne Blank's Virgin: An Untouched History, which I look forward to reading. The notes I'd read from her website sounded fascinating, and I quoted Hanne in "The Virgin Non-Suicides" (another column title I didn't write and didn't love, but those near-the-end two columns on virginity are two of my all-time favorites).

"Families, religious authorities, and governments once faced little opposition to the idea that they had a legitimate stake in people's sexual behavior. Now we are increasingly likely to believe that the primary legitimate stakeholder in an individual's sexual life is the individual him- or herself." Our federal government's official recent support for abstinence over contraception troubles Blank, but she takes heart that "perhaps the only thing that is at all clear about this unprecedented legislation of virginity-flavored agitprop is that a politically powerful right wing, faced with the cumulative social change of the last century, has begun to panic in earnest" and that it "may be best understood as a signal of nothing more than a deep-seated terror of change."

See also virginbook.org

Look Both Ways author Jennifer Baumgardner on bisexuality (I've started this but haven't finished it, so will have to save my thoughts for another time, though I suspect I'm not quite so passionate as I once was about labels as I am about getting my own life, personal and professional, sorted out. In other words, I'm not not bi, I just am not as obsessed with sex as I was in my twenties and hence less concerned about what anyone thinks of what I do, or don't do, but that's a bit off the topic.)

Baumgardner credits feminism as a hugely liberating factor in allowing women to consider the option of sapphic love—which she sees, in a way, as a political act. In addition, she focuses on the idea that, as she writes in the intro, “Sexuality isn’t who you sleep with, it’s who you are. It doesn’t change according to who is standing next to you.” That’s a bold notion in a world where lifelong lesbians who fall in love with men inspire eye rolling among their friends, and in which outwardly straight men who enjoy secret gay trysts are shamed into silence. It’s in this way that Look Both Ways tackles yet another bit of bi baggage: invisibility.

SXSW plans and "Super Glossy!" opens March 9th

I'll be going to Courtney McLean's solo show "Super Glossy!" on March 9th, before heading off to Austin for SXSW Interactive on March 10th. The one productive thing I did last week was book my plane ticket, so I'm in Austin March 10-13, my panel "Do You Blog on the First Date?" is Monday, March 12th at 5 pm. Full Interactive schedule is posting tomorrow night. Also, my friend Rachel Fershleiser of SMITH is looking for a place to crash during SXSW Interactive - if you have space on your hotel room floor or something like that, email her at rachelfershleiser at gmail.com - thank you!

Anyone wanting to meet up or join me for probably a Sunday trip to Babycakes, please get in touch. Sex blog types I know are going are Violet Blue, Cory Silverberg, and Seska Lee, and my fellow panelists, Alyssa Shelasky, Emily Listfield, and Melanie Boyer, though I'm not sure all would call themselves "sex bloggers." I guess Tucker Max too, but my one interview with him was probably more than enough to suffice, though I do want to check out his panel on turning blogs into books, especially since we need to bust our collective asses ASAP to get out cupcake blog a book deal. I'm also very excited to get to meet Rebecca Woolf of Girl's Gone Child, go to one of Neal Pollack's panels, and hang with Annalee Newitz for more than five seconds. I'm really hoping some of the Happy Corp. crowd will be out there as well. They are everywhere, including showing up at Sexytime Comedy on Friday night and being some of the most enthusiastic audience members.

I will definitely be blogging my way through my first SXSW. Anyway, do check out Cory's (he's the co-author of The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability and also a co-owner of Canadian sex toy store Come As You Are) response to this week's Village Voice cover story "Something In The Way He Moves." (I'll join Cory in not even llinking to it, I'm sure you can easily find it yourselves.)

Here's Courtney's show info:

Get tickets for "Super Glossy!" here

And here are the dates/times:
Friday, March 9 @ 9pm
Saturday, March 10 @ 2:30pm
Sunday, March 11 @ 8:30pm
Thursday, March 15 @ 6pm
Saturday, March 17 @ 8:30pm

Tickets are a measley $10. TELL EVERYONE!!

Cosmopolitan (the magazine and the drink – 3 or 4 of them) meets The
Stepford Wives meets The Venture Bros in this science fiction satire on
women’s magazines. “Super Glossy!” is the story of Jane Fuller, a
self-proclaimed adversary of the beauty industry who finds herself in a
downward spiral after a “chance” meeting with the extremely famous
husband of Melinda D’Alteo, uber-celebrity and Jane’s middle school
best friend. Inspired by Heather Woodbury’s living novel plays, “Super
Glossy!” is told through the context of a women’s magazine, complete
with Reader’s Letters, advice columns, and advertisements for useless
beauty products.

Yay, or Books That Make Me Happy Before They Event Exist

Rebecca blogged about this recently (beautifully, as is almost every blog post of hers) and now it's officially official:

NON-FICTION: PARENTING
Rebecca Woolf's ROCK THE CRADLE: Adventures in Urban Motherhood, Based on the blog (This) Girl's Gone Child, following a free spirited city-girl who goes through the biological makeover of an unexpected pregnancy, childbirth, and the first years of babyhood, navigating it all without a rule book, to Brooke Warner at Seal Press, in a nice deal, by Laura Rennert at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (NA).

I extra love this cause I've recently fallen in total love with Rebecca's blog and go there and am simply awed by her way with words and her ability to cope with parenting at an age when most of us are stumbling home at the crack of dawn. Certainly I wasn't ready then, though, as I probably tell at least one person every day, I am now. Anyway, I raced to email Brooke Warner and, as is our way, she was already on it. I didn't even know Rebecca was shopping a book proposal but I'm so glad, and truly can't wait to read it.

Don't worry, though, I don't quite need this one just yet:

NON-FICTION: PARENTING
Magazine editor and journalist Louise Sloan's KNOCK YOURSELF UP: No man? No Problem. A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom, a humorous and heartfelt guide for the increasing number of women opting to have babies without men, to Lucia Watson at Avery, at auction, by Ryan Fischer-Harbage at Vigliano Associates (world).

Also, from yesterday's Publishers Marketplace:

Cancer Vixen author Marisa Acocella Marchetto's graphic novel about what a powerful New York woman who is suddenly "connected" to what everyone else is saying and thinking, again to Robin Desser at Knopf, by Elizabeth Sheinkman at Curtis Brown UK (US).

I just got a galley of Bright Lights, Big Ass, which I think should really be read while on the exercise bike or treadmill or something at the gym. So good thing there's more Jen to look forward to:

NON-FICTION: MEMOIR
BITTER IS THE NEW BLACK and BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG ASS author Jen Lancaster's third book, PRETTY FAT: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big; Or, Why Pie Is Not the Answer, the story of the heretofore-unabashedly-plus-sized Jen's quest to lose fifty pounds in six months by any means possible, to Kara Cesare at NAL, for six figures, by Kate Garrick at DeFiore and Company (NA).

As busy as I am lately, as much as I stress and freak out, books keep me sane. I hoard them, I admit, stacking them up next to me, starting one and then putting ti down in favor of another. I'm fickle, but I also want to read everything. I know I can't, but that doesn't stop me from trying. On some very primal level, kindof like babies, books make me happy. Holding them, reading them, telling people about them. I geek out over them and I can never understand people who maybe manage to read a book a year, and it's an effort. "I'm too busy to read" just isn't a phrase I can comprehend.

SXSW excitement building

I'm borrowing this logo from my new favorite blog, Girl's Gone Child by Rebecca Woolf, brililant mom and brilliant writer. Seriously. Also check out her Straight from the Bottle blog at Babble. I admire her raw honesty so much. And it turns out she's on a panel about parenting with Alternadad author Neal Pollack at SXSW Interactive! Woo-hoo!

I'm speaking on the "Do You Blog on the First Date?" panel organized by Mikki Halpin, with Glamour blogger Alyssa Shelasky, Redbook single mom blogger Emily Westfield, and Washington City Paper "About Last Night..." blogger Melanie Boyer.

More happy news:

I love Miriam Datskovsky (and she's clearly not the new Village Voice sex columnist)

I'm performing at my favorite comedy show, The Rejection Show, on Valentine's Day

My new favorite blog: Girl's Gone Child

This luxurious and rare three-day weekend I plan to read the entirety of my new favorite blog, Girl's Gone Child. That woman can WRITE. I mean, she blows me away and has brought tears to my eyes and made me realize the kind of writing I truly want to do. Honest, open, heartfelt. Maybe not on this blog and who knows for what venue, but it reminded me again why I love writing. And that I want to be a mom, not that I needed reminding, but it's good for me to see that it is possible, even for someone like me. Sometimes I just feel like I've boxed myself into a corner writingwise, and while I still have lots of plans with erotica and Sexual Freedom for All, I never want that to be all I can do or all that I think I'm capable of. I guess I'm greedy and I want it all, and these kick-ass mommy and daddy bloggers show me a way out, a way to be real and honest and true and sexy and still be a good parent. I know I have a ways to go but I feel like I am trying to move beyond the little niche I've somehow created that too often feels like a noose. I love it, don't get me wrong, I just don't want to ever settle whether it's relationships or writing. I feel like I found this blog just when I needed to be reminded about authenticity and emotion and everything I love about writing.

This post, "On Past and Present Futures," really wowed me:

I said I love you to everyone who needed to be loved but did I love them? Of course not. I loved saying so. I loved that my love was enough to make a difference, at least until morning. I loved that my words could be an easy fix, could numb the pain. Fix a moment. Fix an hour. Fix a life. I loved that I could be the strong one, even though I was falling apart. I felt like I was worth something. I was alive.

Rebecca also now writes Babble's "Straight From the Bottle" column.