Crazy Little Contest winner!

A little over a week ago I posted a contest to win a signed copy of "Crazy Little Thing: Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad," my book on some of the neurochemistry and psychology of love and why it makes us do the screwy things it makes us do. My winner really surprised me - I got fun tales of some surprise transgender revelations and stick situations involving poison ivy but my favorite was from someone who didn't want their name used and whom I'm going to call Heathcliff*....though his story doesn't end tragically:

“I met and fell in love with a girl I met while getting my MBA. We started to date, and a few months after were engaged to be married. We were inseparable and did everything together. We loved to cook together and we traveled exceptionally well together. We were truly very much in love with each other. As graduation got closer, baggage from our previous relationships started to creep into our relationship. We both had recently been divorced. With two weeks left in the program, she broke up with me,” he writes, and it wasn’t an easy split. Life - including graduation - went on, but “I was completely heart broken. We didn’t speak for a full year. We dated other people and went on with our lives, while at the same time repairing the issues that lead to our break up. Almost exactly a year after we last spoke, she reached out. We met for drinks, and she asked how I was doing. I tried to conceal the affection I still had, and said, “I’ve moved on.” She responded, “well, what if I tell you I haven’t.” I ordered a double whiskey. We talked. We explored. We forgave. We realized we were still very much in love with each other. We made an agenda, set goals, and took it slow. Well, sort of…” They married relatively recently and “are sincerely in a better place today because of our breakup…love works.”

WHEN I SHARED THIS with a novelist friend, he agreed, saying "My favorite line is "I ordered a double whiskey." Here, he said, is man concealing his love for a woman, trying to play it cool and finding she still loves him...the double whisky felt thoroughly authentic.
For me the pathos came with the feeling the weight of carrying on with a broken heart only to find out your feelings actually are shared. Who can forget Emma Thompson as the reserved, sensible Elinor Dashwood in "Sense and Sensibiltiy" when she finds that Edward still loves her after she thought he'd married someone else? The complexity of love is sometimes most masterfully shown in a few seconds like those.


So even though there are no arrests for violent crime, no alligator-skinned people and no vampire conventions (like there are in Crazy Little Thing Heathcliff's story had the element that so many stories of deep connection - and that we can connect with deeply - have got which is the notion that "The heart has reasons that reason knows not of." I love knowing that it happens outside the movies. Thanks, Healthcliff!
      And thanks to everyone else who wrote to me! There are probably going to be other contests coming up so stay tuned! And cheers!

*(the woodcut image of Healthcliff and Cathy above from a very nice blog by Fairweather Lewis on the power of illustrations in books)

What's Hot in Central Florida

This week on WMFE's What's Hot in Central Florida the Zora Neale Hurston Festival, Joni Sternbach's Surfland at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona and the Florida Opera Theater presents The Barber of Seville - another weekend full of fun stuff to do - see you out there!

SexCult: I love therefore I'm nuts - "Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love"

Affairs, open relationships, hookers, murder, STDs, disgraced preachers, closeted sexuality and even some kink....had you known philosophers were this interesting you'd have paid a little attention in school right?

Well, they are and Andrew Shaffer gives us the juicy stuff our teachers didn't in Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love, which I happily reported on this week in SexCult: I love therefore I'm nuts. We get a peek inside the private lives lives of great Western thinkers from St. Augustine to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Ayn Rand to Albert Camus and most of them prove that when it comes to love you might as well give your brain some cruise tickets til you're done because it won't be working anyway. An excellent read - and a comforting one.

SexFeed: Stephen Hawking, Scientology and the human library of Ottawa

The past few days have been busy ones on Sex Feed....we had Britain allows abortion clinics to advertise on TV and President Obama vows to protect women's reproductive rights. alongside a goofy story about a School that board doesn't want to use the name "Cougars" in case human cougars get mad.....Friday of course we had some fun with Newt bringing open marriage to the campaign trail....and my personal favorite of the week Ottawa library system allows you to check out a human being for 20 minutes. Well, there's no better way to learn something than just asking someone, is there?

Catching up with a few pieces there was a scary story about outing the homophobia in Scientology but my all time favorite was Stephen Hawking deems women a 'complete mystery.'

What's Hot in Central Florida! Sweets, surrealism and slammable phones!

This is the first week I've managed to totally shed the post-holiday-season blues, largely thanks in part to a last weekend's full calendar of events, which were great fun and which I'll post about later. In the meantime on What's Hot in Central Florida I can't even wait to go to the very first Florida Key Lime Pie Festival! And I can't believe what a beautiful weekend we're going to have in January to make a beach trip sound so appetizing. Pie...of course....is always a draw but they're also going to have tiki carving, key lime margarita and martinis and lots and lots of other stuff. I think it'll be like a little taste of the Keys without having to drive eight hours to get to that atmosphere!

Also up this weekend at Twelve 21 Gallery in Orlando featuring work by Eric Althin, Scott Donald, Johannah O'Donnel and Steve Parker- click the link to see a video trailer for the show which is full of beautiful, whimsical and satisfyingly transporting images. As everyone knows reality and I are not on speaking terms and the magical, surrealist visions in this groups show are a sure bet.

Finally...WANT! I don't know if the phone below will actually be at the Antique Telephone and Insulator Show (the best description/contact info for which is here at the Orlando Sentinel's website) at the Maitland Civic Center on Saturday - but oh my god, what an object of desire! There will be dealers from all over the country bringing us back to the days when you had to actually sit/stand in one place to make a call and, when not everyone could get hold of you 24/7 (remember the joyful power of just letting the damn phone ring without having the responsibility for returning messages because you couldn't get messages?). It's super nerdy, I know but it sounds swell to me!

     Anyway, whatever you do this weekend it's going to be a beautiful one so get out there and enjoy it!
     Cheers!

Sex Feed: Advice from French women and Mongolian dinosaurs

Today...well, now yesterday...on Sex Feed we got some terrific advice terrific advice vis-a-vis sex from French women via The Stir and even better advice from the tale of some idiot in a North Carolina jail who  hit a gun up his heinie.

Meanwhile, back in the early part of the year, we had Weak breast implants filled with fuel additive....medical staffs get new recommendations for treating transgender patients....does Lego need to make a separate set of Legos for girls?....the Museum of London features an ancient coin depicting sex positions....will the world's tallest transvestite please stand up? and my favorite, mostly for the pictures...French kissing dinosaur statues in Mongolian theme park. Seriously....does this make anyone else want to go on a road trip to see all those roadside attractions that are going to close any minute now that you don't want to miss? Anybody?

WIN a signed copy of “Crazy Little Thing Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad”!

Love drives us all a little mad sometimes and my book Crazy Little Thing: Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad from Cleis Press/Viva Editions explains some of the chemical and psychological reasons why, along with stories of people who will help you realize how crazy you aren’t…some people really do go off the deep end. Surely you never have….

So what’s the craziest thing that has ever happened to you in love? Tell me in 250 words or less - the best story will win a signed copy of the book - click the link to check out the reviews on Amazon! Hopefully this book help you see crazy coming before it happens again and - no hopefully about it, it will definitely keep you entertained.

You can send me your story via Facebook or at crazylittlecontest@gmail.com. Contest deadline is a week from launch - Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 3pm and I’ll announce a winner on Friday January 27. 

So what constitutes the “best” story? Well, humor helps a lot, degree of insanity is a strong factor, story-telling ability a plus, fake names are fine (no feelings should be hurt in the making of this contest). It needn’t be smutty…this is love we’re talking about, not sex. If I want gratuitous nudity I’ll go look in the mirror. But if it’s essential to the plot, ok. And it doesn't have to be bad crazy - we're not entirely allergic to happy endings. :)
That’s it! 


Good luck!