We both enjoy playing Texas Hold ‘Em, but of the two of us, I (Lo) enjoy it a little too much. So much so that when I just need a night away from it all, I go to Foxwoods to play the low limit table with a bunch of 65 year old men, half of whom have a drinking problem, the other half of whom have a gambling problem. It’s not as sinful or sexy as Vegas, naturally, but it does the trick.

When I went this past weekend, I had the added delight of catching one of our favorite comedians at the casino’s comedy club: Myq Kaplan. He was a finalist on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” in 2010, he’s been on all the major late-night shows and Comedy Central, and his latest CD was “one of iTunes’ top ten best-selling comedy albums in 2010” (of course, that’s coming directly from his own website, so who knows — we’re going with it). The great thing about Kaplan is that his brand of comedy satisfies our inner liberal activists and our outer sex writers. And this past weekend’s set did not disappoint: he covered the stupidity of homophobia, the overrated-ness of anal sex, the correct technique for fisting, the inherent gayness of Genesis, sex-related Harry Potter puns, transgender issues, his openness to open relationships, and how the word “sexism” is too sexy for it’s own good. Sex themes + smarts + math jokes = swim fan! The fact that he’s a vegan is just a little liberal cherry on top.

So check him out! He’ll be at the West Bank Cafe’s Laurie Beechman Theater in Time Square this Wednesday at 7pm (see the Comic Diversity show) and you can download his Vegan Mind Meld CD from iTunes or buy it from Amazon.

• College Candy: When your backup boyfriend dumps you.
• The Frisky: 5 things to talk about before you move in together.
• TresSugar: Sexism, stereotypes, and the Super Bowl — recent ads that sexualize women.
• YourTango: 7 Valentine’s Day ideas for singles.
• Eden Fantasys’ Sexis: A Valentine’s Day gift guide.
• HuffPost/Women: How to break up with a friend.
• How About We: 3 ways to avoid breaking up before the first date.

There are many reasons not to read women’s magazines. One of the biggies? All the retouched photos. The genetic mutants we call models and celebrities can beat the shit out your average Jane’s self image, but Photoshop can chop it up with chainsaw. This before and after cover of Red Book from a few years ago thanks to Jezebel.com says it all. In fact, Jezebel has made one of their crusades exposing the evils of Photoshop (here’s their most recent “unveiling”). One of the funniest commentaries on how fucked up Photoshop is when it comes to setting impossible beauty standards is this recent parody of a beauty product commercial by Jesse Rosten on Vimeo: “Just one application of Fotoshop can give you results so dramatic, they’re almost unreal…istic.” One of the coolest — and yet still kind of similarly frightening — advancements in make-fake technology is…

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• College Candy: 10 signs you’ve been friend-zoned.
• The Frisky: 13 things to do after sex other than sleeping or cuddling.
• TresSugar: 16 actors who’ve cross-dressed in movies. 
• YourTango: The phrase men hate to hear. 
• Eden Fantasys’ Sexis: I love therefore I’m nuts: great philosophers who failed at love.
• HuffPost/Women: Heidi & Seal divorce over this deal breaker — what’s yours?
• How About We: The flirtiest video game for a first date.

A few weeks back we jumped on the Twitter hashtag #lessambitiousbooks bandwagon, with a list of our Top 10 Less Ambitious Sex Books (The Joy of Dry Humping, Slight Hangup About Flying, etc.). This time around we figured we’d create our own damn hashtag — #dirtierbooks — so that nobody could accuse us of being late to the game. The trick with #dirtierbooks is to be clever without sounding like a cheesy porno (The Da Vinci Load, A Tale of Two Titties, et al). Below are our top 10 best attempts. So, er, anyone want to jump on our bandwagon? (That came out dirtier than we meant it.)

1. Who Moved My Cucumber?
2. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret — I’m About to Masturbate and I Don’t Want You Watching
3. The Masochistic Tree
4. The Lord of the Cock Rings (okay, we admit that one’s walking the porno line)
5. Wife-Swapping on Tuesdays with Morrie
6. The Girl Who Played Without a Safe Word
7. A Room with a View of the Neighbors’ Bedroom
8. Oh, the Orifices You’ll Go!
9. Bi-Curious George
10. Men Are From Mars, Women Want to Do Them With Strap-Ons

• This post is a part of Sundance Channel’s SUNfiltered Blog
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• College Candy: An interview with Booty Parlor founder, Dana B. Myers.
• The Frisky: The 7 most baffling things about women’s clothes.
• TresSugar: 18 ways Michael Fassbender puts the sex in sexy.
• YourTango: When it comes to dating, are we shallower than we admit?
• Eden Fantasys’ Sexis: For the love of god, let my vagina sleep.
• HuffPost/Women: Gadgets for women gone wrong.
• How About We: 10 signs you need to go on a date.
• YourTango: To take his last name or not?
• College Candy: A guide to “dormcest.”

Instead of waiting til the last minute like usual, why not get a jump start on some Valentine’s Day card ideas, you know, before Monday, February 13th sneaks up and cupid-arrows you in the ass?

• From Someecards, the king of irreverent greetings: e.g. “Sorry the only ring you’re wearing this Valentine’s Day is a contraceptive in your vagina” (that’s just one of 99 hilarious ones)
• Five DIY Valentine’s Day cards to make with the kids, collated by LilSugar.
• “Yo! We’ve got some great chemistry, bitch!” Breaking Bad Valentine’s Day cut-out cards by Butthorn. (via The Frisky)
• WTF: A collection of “incomprehensible, awful, ugly, strange, bizarre, weird, creepy or just plain inappropriate vintage Valentines” on Flickr. (via HowAboutWe)
• A genuinely sweet collection of sincere yet still stylish cards available from all over the web, collated by iVillage.
• Before there was the Ryan Gosling Hey Girl meme (any number of which could be used as Valentine’s Day cards), there were Something Awful’s “A Very Star Wars Valentines.”
• And if you’re gonna go the box-of-chocolates route for your Valentine, make it count.

• This post is a part of Sundance Channel’s SUNfiltered Blog
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Before we get going, you need to know that this post contains monstrously huge plot spoilers for THE IDES OF MARCH. We’re not joking — scroll down at your peril.

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The trouble is, it’s kind of hard to talk about THE IDES OF MARCH (out today on DVD, it was nominated but totally — unfairly — shut out at the Golden Globes on Sunday night) without spoiling the plot, because one of the major story lines — which is nowhere in any of the trailers, for once — is meant to be a huge crazy surprise. And the reason this story line isn’t in any the trailers is not because the trailer makers were feeling magnanimous and didn’t want to spoil the movie for you. Nope. We’re guessing, rather, that the trailer makers — who aren’t the filmmakers, fyi, and whose only goal is to get bums into theatre seats — didn’t want to scare off potential viewers by mentioning the topic that “rhymes with smashmortion” (as one character so memorably put it in KNOCKED UP).

That’s right: THE IDES OF MARCH is not just a tense political thriller -slash- political morality tale starring people way too good-looking to ever be seriously involved in politics (George Clooney and Ryan Gosling). It’s also a bit of an abortion tale. And while we don’t think the filmmakers intended this movie to be an abortion morality tale, it sure comes across that way at times.

The film takes place during the Democratic primary in Ohio and follows the campaign trail of a Democratic governor Mike Morris (Clooney). As Ohio goes, so goes the nation, we are reminded. Clooney’s press spokesman (Gosling) soon starts a booty-call relationship with a pretty young blonde campaign intern, played by Evan Rachel Wood. Actually, she’s the one who initiates. Their flirtatious dialogue feels incredibly real in that cheesy way that smart young people hit on each other. But then it turns out — here’s the real plot spoiler if you haven’t left yet — that she also once slept with hottie married would-be-president Clooney. Oh, and also, she accidentally got knocked up by him.

So far, so realistic — it’s the oldest story in the book, in fact. Promising future leader of America — happily married, good guy, blah blah blah — sleeps with hot young thing. And it’s not exactly a stretch to think that a 19- or 20-year-old would neglect to insist on a condom in such a situation, would neglect to mention she’s not on the pill.

The intern tells her booty call press spokesman that she wants to get an abortion — she’s matter of fact about this because she’s a smart young woman with a bright political future ahead of her. And given the fact that just hours earlier she’d been playfully texting Gosling to set up their booty call, and minutes earlier they’d had hot, light-hearted booty call sex (they laugh about the fact that he’s watching poll numbers on TV while doing it), she doesn’t seem overly distraught. Upset, yes — because abortions are upsetting. But not exactly suicidal. Again, so far so realistic.

But then. As Anthony Lane wrote in The New Yorker, this movie is ”slimy with unfeasible plotting.” Because after she leaves the abortion clinic, she finds out — or thinks she finds out — that her booty call may spill the news about her secret pregnancy and abortion. And so she overdoses on pills and boozes and dies in her hotel room.

Um, what?! Is this really 2011? Sure, we know that abortion is still considered a shameful secret all over this country. And yes, this character had earlier noted that her dad — the chairman of the Democratic National Committee — was a die-hard Catholic. But we just find it hard to believe that an otherwise stable, happy young woman — an educated woman, a playful woman, a woman clearly comfortable and confident with casual sex, a woman who was pretty clearly her own sexual agent — would suddenly turn suicidal after an abortion.

Read the rest of this post on SUNfiltered

• College Candy: Why are men obsessed with breasts? (This guy thinks it’s jealousy: because male nudity, sans boobs, is inherently a joke.)
• The Frisky: 15 skills every woman should master.
• TresSugar: 5 ways to attract love in 30 days! (We’re suckers for anything that sounds like an infomercial.)
• YourTango: How to make (and keep) resolutions as a couple (we know you’ve already forgotten yours!)
• Eden Fantasys’ Sexis: Why being thin is not a privilege. 
• HuffPost/Women: 5 must-know facts about your brain and desire.
• How About We: 10 movies to AVOID on date night.

For our book club, we’re reading the 2003 novel “We Need to Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver.* I, Lo, knowing nothing about the book or its author, began reading and was amazed that a male author could create a female narrator that sounded so authentic and convincing, especially regarding childbirth and motherhood. That is, until halfway through the book when I happened to catch a glimpse of the author photo on the inside back flap: turns out Lionel is a woman.

I must say, after my initial surprise, I really wasn’t surprised — after all, how could a man have captured the mental cog work of such a complicated female character? But then there was a part of me that was a little disappointed — both in the fact that Lionel wasn’t a man, and in the fact that I was so quick to dismiss a dude’s ability to get in touch with his feminine side. It would have been kind of cool to have my expectations challenged, especially as someone who’s always raging against gender stereotyping.

I didn’t have to wait long: flipping through last week’s Time I came across this article: “A Few Good Men: Work It is a drag, but TV does right by guys elsewhere” (you have to have a subscription to read the whole article). It comes straight out and calls the new men-in-drag show sexist: “The concept — men do man work, and ladies do lady work! — feels bogus at a time when some of TV’s best male characters are taking on different roles at home and work, without (literally) shedding their pants.” The review goes on to …

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* Cannot wait for the movie starring Tilda Swinton!