Liz Langley

       Shopping…how I miss it. We all do. I browse in stores like a ghost hovering around a kitchen, missing the pleasures of food but still wanting the scent. I’m so out-out-of-touch with retail that the day before Thanksgiving I asked a Target employee, “Will you be open on Friday?”        Friday of course is Black Friday - today - the biggest shopping day of the year outside Xmas eve (and so named because it's hugeness propels retailers back into the black)  The Washington Post predicts that more shoppers will be out today than last year -   they’ll only let some moths out of their wallets for decent-sized discounts but they’ll be out.          And then there are those who will be working today, making some more money to get in on the tail end of the shopping day or in hopes of just staying solvent. If you're stuck at a desk like I'll be (for at least part of the day -  hell, a girl can’t do all her browsing on the web),here’s some light reading for you – a list of

      Happy Thanksgiving! What the hell are you doing online?       Wait, let me guess. Hiding from your family.       Liz knows. On the very day you're away from work and meant to be having a good time you find yourself sitting with a handful of people you only see once a year for a reason. Well, here are some things you should know:         a) Wine purchased from gas stations isn't so bad. Have a snootful while you're standing on the door mat waiting to ring the bell. Sneak it into the bathroom.         b) You may be alarmed to find that one of your relatives is a teabagger or otherwise avid Fox news fan. Now that you're drunk it'll be fun to tell them what "teabagging" actually means over dinner, especially if grandpa's alive and present. If you're not drunk enough show them this video: c) If Thanksgiving is really awful just think of it like premarital sex - at least now you know and you can dodge the bullet of commitment that is Christmas.   

       Despite having dodged the mania of “Twlight” I’m still a sentient American with a TV so I do, at least, know what "Twilight" is: a teensploitation vampire romance starring a brooding young actor with eyebrows that should have their own publicist , a pale young actress who bitched about fame and will never live it down and another actor who is said to be dating Taylor Swift.        Knowing little more than this I would never in a million-qwajillion years have thought “Twilight” would be the crux of   the best story on relationships that I’ve read in quite some time.       In “ So the Woman you Love has the Hots for a Vampire. What does that say about you? ” by Details magazine's Jeff Gordinier, the author spends time with some of the film’s dyed-in-the-blood fans, many of them middle-aged women who burble about Edward Cullen in a way that will stop you as if you'd walked into a sliding glass door.         W e know all about obsessed fans. They’re easy t

'Crazy Love' Crazy Love Trailer @ Yahoo! Video         Usually on Movie Mondays I review adult films but over the weekend I came across a story by which I’m so spellbound that if I could come to all your houses and we could watch it together I would. It’s called “Crazy Love,” a documentary by Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens that played the Sundance Film Festival in 2007 and it concerns one of the most bizarre tales of love and terror…and then love again…that I’ve ever heard.        It’s told quite beautifully here in the Washington Post by Paul Schwartzmann , but the nutshell version is this: in the 1950’s Burt Pugach was trying to woo Linda Riss and when she dumped him he hired an assailant to throw lye in her face, partially blinding her. When he was released from prison he proposed to her. AND SHE MARRIED HIM.        Sweet insanity of humanity! And it gets weirder!! I’m not going to tell you anymore – you should read the Post story or rent it like I’m going to do.

        Wahoo! I always love writing for new outlets and this is my first story for Sexis, an online magazine focusing on sex, culture and their effects on one another. My first piece is on the Carrie Prejean fiasco: The Runner-Up Smile and Other Tales of Sexual Irony . There’s sex tapes, tales of historic love letters, half-naked Mormons but even more provocatively, some hopefully compelling questions about why a private sexual expression shouldn’t be considered ‘a mistake’ and whether it’s ok to moralize AND get naked in public.          Go to the home page (after you’re done reading my piece and passing it on to 100 friends, of course) find that Sexis has a lot of great stuff, from personal sex stories to to cultural analysis to a section on fetishes with my favorite headline of the week, “Ladies and Gentlemen: The Kinks.”        Anyway, link in, look around and as always, enjoy!

        `When I was a kid in Catholic school, probably around 6 th grade, I remember reading a short story about a little girl who studied the violin. The details are hazy but someone, I think her teacher, told her that another student was getting the gift of a new violin and that there were two to choose from but he didn’t know which to pick. He asked the student to help him out by trying both and telling him which one was better.        After playing both the girl knew that the first violin was far and away the superior intstrument, but knowing she would soon be in a competition with the other student she said the second, lower-quality violin was better and that that one should be the gift.          The gift turned out to be for her. She ended up getting the bum deal she was trying to give someone else.          The nuns didn’t use the word “karma” but that’s what the story was about. Do unto others. Etcetera. You seldom see morality plays as swiftly and compactly played out

Whee! My  Alternet   story,  "9 Silly Things People Say When they Hear You Don't Want Kids"  was one of the most popular of the week this week! From the response I'd say it's a hot subject and if you didn't get a chance to check it out I hope you'll do it now and as always Enjoy!!!

       Today is my 45 th birthday which means I’m likely more than halfway done with my time here and I’m as merry-as-a-schoolboy to be able to say that middle age is so so so so so so so much better than you would ever imagined it to be. Whoever is in charge of PR for middle age should be fired and sent to live out their days in some pastoral nuthouse, because they have the wrongest view of anything since the Tea Baggers named themselves Tea Baggers and began “screaming their mind” (as someone put it on Facebook yesterday).        No entertainment product can really explain the benefits of middle age. It’s this serene state of power you end up in when you’ve failed enough because you’ve tried A LOT and you worry less because you’ve seen how inconsequential most of your worries have been.       Sex is better because you know more about it in every way - you know your body, you have a much better idea of what's out there and frankly you're too tired to bother with anything that

        When I was among the crowd of 4000 at the Parliament House  on Halloween weekend I found myself talking to a young woman who was sweet as a circus peanut  and reality-show drunk. Out of nowhere she asks “Do you have children?”               I’m so used to everyone knowing I’m usually a solo act that the question sounded bizarre to me, like she was a sleepwalker asking if the emu could give her change for a banana.        But it was interesting that she asked because I was, at the time, in the middle of writing this piece I did for Alternet, "9 Silly Things People Say When They Hear You Don't Want Kids (and ways I've found to counter them)  (and this is the first time I've been on the Reproductive Justice and Gender page, so I'm kinda proud) Funnily enough, when I told this drunk stranger I didn’t want them, she shrieked “WHY NOT?” like I had just gotten a bee in my underwear and stated my intention to never ever let it out.        The decision about whethe

I've only been in a few relationships long enough to have anniversaries and my day to day romance with "Lust Never Sleeps" has been one of them. Today is my 200th post so I'm going to do what a lot of artists do and give myself the luxury of coasting on a retrospective today - what follows is a list of some of my - and your - favorite posts out of the past 200. There's a PayPal button at the end just in case you've enjoyed yourself and/or learned so much that you want to buy the author some sushi, if only to enable the kind of brain function these post have helped you enjoy. ENJOY! The post I heard the most about from you: Hobosexuality: It's Not Gayness with a Cold   Most surprising and gratifying event of the year @ Enzian: The Four Dimensions of Greta   This is still my favorite vibrator, still available at Fairvilla  : I love the Nite Lite   This movie restored my faith in smut: Adult Film Parody: Crock of Love   And though I've made tons

       The news yesterday that Maine voted down same-sex marriage really disappointed me, but at least 47% of the voters there get that it’s unfair for people to pay the same taxes without getting the same rights as everyone else, and 47% is an OK start. No one has ever been able to me why people are so petty about gays getting married, but then no one has ever been able to explain to me why anyone gets married (beyond the legal BS), so once again humanity, to me, is Hardy Boys mystery with the last page torn out. *sigh* Thank God for science (how zat for irony?), which has stepped quietly into the room, lit its pipe and and offered what could turn out to be a perfect explanation as to why we reach a certain point of decency in our advancement as humans and then we crap out land start treating people unfairly again. Evolution - get this - seems to have speed limits.        Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have been studying the potential evolutionary trajectory