1. Never steal a kiss. “I have a secret to tell you”? It’s like a sucker punch: cheap and ignoble. If you have to fake someone out to get them to kiss you, then you shouldn’t be kissing them in the first place.
2. The pain killers you get at the E.R. are just as good as Jack Daniels at screwing your romantic courage to the sticking place. (And the pain from a broken appendage is a lot less shameful than the pain from a hangover the next day.)
3. While honesty is the best policy, opening your first date with the admission that you have a child with a crazy ex who pressed domestic violence charges against you is probably not the smoothest of moves. (Almost better to just admit you were once gay.)
4. Seriously, we said it before, we’ll say it again: Actual laughter in the face of other people’s tragedies is not cool (Des). Yes, maybe admitting on national television that you fell for your d-bag boyf’s line about needing a break for the exact amount of time it takes to shoot The Bachelorette (and then admitting you had sex with him as a send off) is kind of ridiculous, but so is starring on The Bachelorette. (Plus, the jilted lady’s skin-tight pants looked better than yours, so who is really getting the last literal laugh here, huh?)
5. If you are a man and you wear this tank top, you are a douche. Better yet: if you are a man and you wear any tank top, you are a douche.
Take a tip from a 12 Step Program: no trauma bonding! Admitting to your absentee father / drug-addict mother / type 1 diabetes / poverty status / lactose intolerance is not first-date A material.
That said, if you’re forced to wear an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny flesh-colored bikini bottom and shake your junk in front of the girl you like and you do it with good humor and without shame, then you can (almost) be forgiven for any uncontrollable bouts of said trauma bonding.
When someone is telling you their most painful personal story, don’t smile. Whether it’s a nervous habit or pure evil, it’s not cool.
If a man refers to himself as “old fashioned”, that means he’s overly macho, aggressively Neanderthal and benevolently sexist.
You can’t have staples in your head AND wear your hair like Frankenstein’s monster.
Okay, if you can get past the fact that the entire series revolves around the brutal murders of pretty young girls, “The Killing” on AMC (whose third season premiered last night) is actually a great feminist television show:
- The main character, homicide detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos), is a strong, tough, independent woman who doesn’t need a man. She doesn’t even want a man. Her passion is her job.
- There are lesbian characters (plural!) who are also strong, tough and independent. In the first two seasons, Sarah’s best friend is a lesbian; in this season, she’s getting married. And there’s a new character, a street kid named Bullet who’s as compelling as Linden’s colorful partner from the first two seasons, Stephen Holder; Bullet is in love with another runaway girl (who doesn’t know it). None of these romances is given any special treatment — they just are.
- Stephen Holder, her badass partner, is also — you guessed it – strong, tough and independent. He’s rough around the edges, has a street accent, and is covered in tattoos. But he’s got a sweet and smart girlfriend, doesn’t participate in macho posturing about sex, and is outspoken about being a vegetarian (with zero fear of being called a “pussy” for it).
- Sarah is a sexual creature without being sexualized. She has a sex drive, she has sex — and in this season, with a much younger man, to boot! But she’s never been portrayed as an object, with cleavage or side boob or butt crack or a sexy pout or in lingerie — all the stuff that’s become de rigueur for women starring in late night cable dramas.
- Her styling is realistic. They don’t put the makeup on thick. She hasn’t Botoxed the wrinkles off of her face. She wears sensible shoes and warm clothes that make sense in the damp Seattle climate the show takes place in. And her hair is not perfectly, impossibly curled and defrizzed — it’s in a low, boring ponytail for most of the shows. Enos’s hair and makeup and wardrobe don’t have to shine because her acting does.
There’s still time for the producers to swoop in and say “We need a sexy strip club scene” or “Sarah needs a sexy makeover.” But hopefully now that Mireille Enos and her anti-glam looks have been cast as Brad Pitt’swife in World War Z, Hollywood will continue to create more and more roles for women that are both realistic and compelling.
2. If you have a sense of humor, please use it when you’re one on one with the person you’re trying to charm. (We’re talking to you, Mr. ER doctor with the glasses and the droopy eyes). And while we’re at it, if you have a suit of armor, please don’t use it.
3. If at first you don’t succeed (at luring someone to your impromptu fantasy suite with a twin mattress on the floor), give up, go home and enroll in some sensitivity training — or just look up the definition of the word “no.”
4. Bangs are the all-natural way to Botox. (i.e. Des, we miss yours!)
5. If the cheeseball who showed the most skin on the first episode can get a rose and the guys who do the most crying get all the play on the season teaser, then we may be closer to true equality between the sexes than we previously thought.
Never be a narc. It won’t get you laid or married. Ever. (We’re talking to you, Kacie.)
If you want your music career to go nowhere, get booked on The Bachelor (even more effective if the couple you’re supposed to perform for breaks up before you strum your first note).
If you’re going to an amusement park for a date, wear sensible shoes and an outfit with a sensible hemline, ESPECIALLY if your date is basically wearing gym shorts.
“Accidentally” pooping your pants might actually be an effective way to garner sympathy and attention from a man (or at least Sean). For example, after the faux stairway spill and the fabricated baby breakdown in the club hallway, we were surprised this wasn’t one of Tierra’s later tactics. Future Bachelor contestants take note.
The volleyball competition will now become the obligatory group date for every future season of The Bachelor. (Let us pray the same can be said for every future season of The Bachelorette.)
Missing an appendage does not automatically make you an interesting person. (On that note, another tangential lesson learned: Just because you don’t have an elbow doesn’t mean you can get out of wearing elbow pads at the roller derby.)
If you ever want to be truly, deeply loved, never talk about your inner “sparkle” to anyone. In fact, it’s probably best if you forget about your sparkle all together.
Eating bugs is a great way to show a guy you like that you will put ANYTHING in your mouth.
Don’t judge a book by its cover.* Who would have guessed that Sean’s last girlfriend was black, or that he, the life-long Texan and conservative born-again virgin, would end up picking the feisty part-Filipino tattooed vegan from Seattle? (*Of course, this lesson does not apply to situations in which the “book” in question is a contestant on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. In those cases, judge away!)
Bachelors who chose temporary abstinence are bad for the ABC show’s brand. This season treated Sean’s recent choice of celibacy like a secret teddy bear collection, acting like it didn’t exist, instead giving lots of sexy airtime to Sean’s special relationship with his bar of soap in the shower. And while we’re all for a little equal opportunity objectification (you know, just to help balance the scales a bit), we also would have liked a little more attention paid to the fact that a grown man with amazing abs and a gleaming smile actively decided to forgo casual sex. But oh no, that would waterdown The Bachelor mythology that all men have to have sex, that intercourse always happens in the fantasy suites, and that the power of the show alone miraculously turns these guys into faithful fiances overnight. We’re not saying abstinence is a choice everyone should make, or that some God should be dictating what you do or don’t do with your genitals, but being thoughtful and deliberate about your sex life, especially if you’re a straight guy in this society, is a nice change of pace from what’s usually presented on television when it comes to sexuality. Too bad ABC didn’t embrace it. Then again, this is The Bachelor we’re talking about — our expectations should be about as low as a pole at a Trinidadian limbo competition.
It wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without a bunch of sex-filled commercials to excite, offend or turn off. Kissing is still the sex act of choice for advertisers (thankfully), so here’s a round up all the big, bold and (only sometimes) beautiful Super Bowl ad kisses.*
GoDaddy.com’s “Perfect Match”
If you’ve seen or heard about any Super Bowl commercial, it’s this one from reliably tasteless GoDaddy, created by their female(!) chief marketing officer and starring their female spokesperson Danica Patrick. In previous years, they’ve relied on women with careers (police officers, TV interviewers) suddenly becoming strippers or on the stereotypical “bimbo” having a wardrobe malfunction. None of that this year (thank heavens for small mercies). No, this year GoDaddy decided to offend with the suggestion that people can’t be both sexy and smart, that all beautiful women are dumb and need a smart man to get by. Then they added gorily juicy horror movie sound effects to the kissing, just to make it that much more cringe-inducing. Somehow, their ad exec manages to deny the ad’s sexism with a straight face in this interview with Forbes.
Old Milwaukee’s “Bus Kiss”
This ad — starring a mustachioed Will Ferrell in a tank top making out with an older Asian woman on a bus — aired in only three cities, but it’s gotten national attention for its weirdness. In the category of awkward Super Bowl kisses, this one is FAR superior to GoDaddy’s. With kissing that’s passionate and even tender, the couple seems genuinely into it. Unlike the GoDaddy stinker, this ad you cannot look away from.
Bell’s “Viva Young”
Apparently, you’re never too old to party: an elderly gang busts out of the retirement home to pull an all-night rager, including dance-club makeout sessions and bathroom stall hookups. Again, unlike the GoDaddy ad, this commercial is not gross, it’s inspiring! Who, no matter how old, could argue with the tagline at the end “Viva mas”? We hope we’re still kissing like that at 80. Hell, we hope we’re still kissing like that at 45.
Audi’s “Prom”
Initially, we loved this John-Hughes-esque ad: high school boy is heading off to prom dateless, but Dad gives him the keys to the suped-up Audi and this gives him the courage to make a move on the prom queen. It’s a romantic underdog story…until you think about the kid totally taking the girl by surprise and planting one on her without her consent. Then it becomes a bit sexual-assault-y. Like, hey, even cute sensitive loner boys can become sexual aggressors and take what’s rightfully theirs from passive girls if they just drive the right car! Of course, the prom queen doesn’t pull away — she’s into it — so we’ll just imagine that she gave him her blessing in a note passed to him earlier that day in AP Calculus.
Budweiser’s “Brotherhood”
There definitely seemed to be something more going on between this man and his horse besides grooming and feeding, if you know what we mean. The kiss is quick, but we swear there was tongue!
In honor of the Golden Globes last night, we — the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler of the sex writing world — decided to give out our own awards for the evening:
Most Sensual Congratulatory Kiss Sally Field to Daniel Day Lewis (Best Actor for Lincoln). Her hands cradling his face and their slow gentle lip-on-lip action put his wife’s lifeless kiss two seconds before to shame.
Best Feminist Moment A tie between:
In her acceptance speech for Best Actress for Zero Dark Thirty, Jessica Chastain thanked director Kathryn Bigelow, saying “You’ve said that filmmaking for you is not about breaking gender roles, but when you make a film that allows your character to disobey the conventions of Hollywood, you’ve done more for women in cinema than you take credit for.”
AND
After President Bill Clinton introduced Lincoln, Amy Poehler said, “What an exciting special guest! That was just Hillary Clinton’s husband! Oh my god!”
Most Awkward Moment Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement recipient Jodie Foster, in a speech trying desperately to be funny and profound about singledom, sexual orientation and privacy, but just coming across as painfully weird
Worst Fashion Theme Plunging neckline (almost) down to the belly button, revealing underboob cleavage and making everyone nervous (hopeful?) for a nip slip. Worst offenders: Jessica Chastain & Amy Poehler.
Cutest Couple Ben Affleck (winner, Best Director & Best Movie for Argo) & Jennifer Garner (presenter of Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical to Hugh Jackman for Les Miz)
Oddest Couple Jodie Foster & Mel Gibson, there together as BFFs
Worst Shoes Lena Dunham, winner of both Best Actress in a TV Comedy and Best TV Comedy for Girls. If you cannot walk in your shoes without them making you look like you have polio, either wear some bedazzled Chuck Taylors or go barefoot. Otherwise, it ironically cramps your famous unorthodox, do-it-my-way style. No one can see your shoes in these floor-length ball gowns anyway.
Best Romantic Dis
Tina Fey: “You know what, Taylor Swift? You stay away from Michael J Fox’s son [the Mr. Golden Globe of the evening].”
Amy Poehler: “Or go for it.”
Fey: “No, she needs some me time to learn about herself.”
Best Sexual Dis Tina Fey: “Quentin Tarantino [who was nominated as Best Director for Django Unchained] is here — the star of all my sexual nightmares.”
We caught Amy Schumer’s first original one-hour stand-up special, “Mostly Sex Stuff,” on Comedy Central this past weekend, a few weeks after her deft takedowns at the Roseanne Barr roast…and now we’re “swim fans.” We love any comedian who can make a fisting joke work, and Schumer did not disappoint. She’s a straight-talking, porn-watching, potty-mouthed provocateur who cleverly exposes the inherent insanity of money shots, waxing, sexism and plain old sex…
The fifth season of MAD MEN premiered last night on AMC with a two-hour special, and Don Draper did nothing to change our minds about his relationship potential. Peggy may worry that he’s a kinder, cuddlier Draper, but we have no such concerns. After all, she didn’t see him resolve a domestic dispute by pretend-raping his wife. (What was up with that weird retro porn scene anyway?!) Here are our top ten reasons why Don Draper would make a terrible boyfriend:
He drinks and smokes constantly, and we’ve never seen him even pop a mint, let alone brush his teeth. Imagine the morning breath.
Zero sense of humor. Zip. Then again, if Don Draper started to smile a lot, it might look like this — you got a rare glimpse of it in last night’s episode when he was shaving. No wonder he doesn’t tell a lot of jokes.
No cunnilingus. (Just a wild guess.)
Rampant — pathological, even — infidelity. In fact, this could really be points 1 through 10 as far as we’re concerned, but that wouldn’t make for a very entertaining list.
All his anger and denial and repression might look good on the surface (again we reference the dorky smile), but can you imagine living with that on a daily basis? It’s way too much existential angst for a man who doesn’t believe in therapy (or surprise parties). In fact, the closest he came to dealing with his issues (and how he’d roll his eyes at the word “issues”) — one of his major issues being that his mom was a prostitute and his dad was too cheap to spring for a condom – was when he asked a prostitute to slap him during sex. Talk about baggage, Oedipus.
He once said, “I don’t feel anything.” And it wasn’t because he’d fallen asleep on his arm. Sure, lots of women fantasize about changing a man, but that’s too much damn work. The dude flat-lined already.
He’s kind of a fuddy duddy old square despite it all. (Remember that scene in the jazz club with his downtown artist mistress? Not to mention his stony reaction to his swingin’ surprise party last night.)
He dates by type and you can never be all of them — in fact, he doesn’t want you to be all of them. He prefers to date one type at a time and then move on. He’s cycled through the all-American dream girl-slash-model, the bohemian artist, the wealthy sophisticated heiress, the mother figure, the accomplished peer, his mirror image in a skirt (Bobbie), the swooning secretary… As Faye told him at the end of season four, he only likes the beginnings of things — and we don’t see that changing anytime soon.
We recently ran a post on EMandLO.com about television shows with hot sex scenes, but if we’re being honest, the stuff that really floats our boats is the hilarious, cringe-worthy stuff that just seems a lot more realistic — after all, sex is often awkward, full of miscommunication, with some head bonking and disappointment, maybe tears. Which is why we loved, loved, LOVED last night’s episode of “New Girl” on Fox. We’ll admit, we were pretty eh about the pilot — it was close, but no cigar. So we never scheduled a second date with the show. But a friend encouraged us to give it another chance last night and we are so glad we did — because we can’t remember the last time we laughed so hard, especially not from of a television show (we’re talking tears and stomach pain). Not to get your hopes up, but it’s one of the best sex scenes we’ve ever seen on TV* — it should win an Emmy. We liked it so much, we went online so we could watch the earlier “penis” episode (officially titled “Naked”), which also did not disappoint. Oh, if only the same could be said for sex.
Now “New Girl” is fictitious comedy, and so the laughter last night’s scene elicited came freely, without any hesitation or guilt. It was truly joyous to guffaw at the characters on the screen. Not so with the giggles you’ll get watching TLC’s The Virgin Diaries — and that’s just the promo. These are real people, adults who’ve waited a looooooooong time to get it on. And so watching the car crash that is a bride and groom kissing (anyone!) for the first time ever is excruciatingly painful, not just because they look like, as Jimmy Kimmel described it (at minute 11 of his monologue), a mama bird regurgitating chewed up food into her baby’s mouth, but because you really feel bad about laughing about them. Not bad enough, of course, to not mention it on your blog the next day.
*Here’s the set up of the New Girl roleplaying scene: Jess recently broke up with her boyfriend of six years, so she hasn’t had sex with anyone else in a really long time. With a new guy on the scene, she’s afraid she’s out of the loop on sex trends and techniques, so she buys some lingerie, watches 5 straight hours of porn, and gets terrible advice from her male roommates about roleplaying. For some reason, the clip ends before the scene does (premature cessation!), so if you want to watch how the hookup ends, you’ll have to wait until next week to catch “Bad in Bed” online here (though unlike saving sex until marriage, it’s worth the wait).
June 11, 2013
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