I'm inclined to agree. Demands for gifts are tacky, but a wedding (especially when its a friend) sort of demands a gift acknowledgement—like a birthday party would. You can buy a decent bottle of wine and a card and not be out more then $25.

Yes, but here's the thing—This isn't the first time Fiona Apple has fallen apart on stage and, having watched her career for 17 or so years, she doesn't come across as somebody constitutionally suited for the pop music business. She seems to be extremely sensitive and fragile. While classical and jazz audiences tend…

That looks like a victorian-era sanitary belt. I'm really hoping it's not.

Madonna is a virtuoso at being a pop star. That means she might be a less-than perfect singer, or a less than stellar musician and she might be attention-seeking, and she might cling to every trend that comes along, but that's what being a pop star is about. And nobody does it better than her. A 30 year career at the…

Isn't there a risk of blackmail here? People tend to pursue affairs in secret (for example, by NOT ADVERTISING ONLINE) because they stand to lose a great deal if their spouse finds out. In this case, if "alpha female" means "Rich asshole"—and I suspect it does— there must be money-making opportunities here for anybody…

You made it 6 paragraphs farther than I.

This show was pure, addictive torment! I felt bad about watching these sad, sick people's intimate dramas. Then I felt angry and disgusted with how the helpers and experts coddled them with psycho-babble. But then I felt weird and guilty for being angry at the sad, sick people. And then there was the dead cat buried…

Or less widely publicized or perhaps targeted to a niche audience. I bet a bus load of those naked bike riders from Philly would have gladly made the trip —and probably behaved themselves (mostly).

I think the pornified aesthetic has occurred concurrently with the rise of amateur internet porn and selfies, which contain A LOT of diversity (at least if you use the right search terms). It would be very easy for artist to co-opt the anonymous exhibitionism of the internet under some guise of feminism. But I wonder…

Oh, please. Annie Sprinkle did the whole "diverse vulvae on a giant screen" thing 15 years ago. Why not photograph buttholes to demonstrate how, regardless of gender, we're all kind of the same?

There's an inverse relationship between the length of Benson's hair and the quality of the writing on SVU. Back in the pixie cut days? Amazing show. Paige boy length? Meh. Glamor length? Unwatchable. I can only hope some good will result from this attacker's brutal hair cutting

I'd like to believe that if I were this girl's parent, I would pursue justice with a wrongful death suit rather than a stun gun and a pair of sharp scissors.

Butt wipe haters: I challenge you to use these for a week and then bitch about how bad they are. My ass has never felt happier or healthier than since I ditched the paper and began using these. I feel clean and fresh all day, no matter what's been coming out (or how often). And yeah, in some magic, futuristic world…

I think there's a political trap here: we're supposed to associate R&B music with black musicians because it's "black music" that shouldn't be appropriated by white culture. But when the producer asks for an R&B performance in terms of blackness, then he's racist. Well, which is it? Yes, he was acting like an ass, as…

The producer wasn't asking her to do anything inappropriate—he was asking for an R&B/Soul performance. That's a legitimate performance style and one correctly associated with black performers who created it. So, what was his big faux pas? Not knowing to ask specifically for R&B? Or being a white guy asking a non-white…

No class at all, and Diddy keeps passing with flying colors.

Jane Addams lived well into the 20th century, so she certainly would have been familiar with the new-ish psychological concept of homosexuality as an orientation rather than merely a set of behaviors. But this article makes it sound as if the word "lesbian" didn't really fit her anyway—was she celibate? Was she…

When the regime finally falls, her head will look mighty pretty stuck on a pike next to her husband's.

Moody solitude on a roof is only worthwhile if you're playing a saxophone.

Well, I guess in a place like Juarez the best you can hope for is that this particular violent murderer actually killed for good reason.