Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
When is a perfect size 6 not so perfect? When it’s really a size 8. Confused? Join the club. If you’re a woman–or you’ve ever tried shopping for your favorite femme–you already know that judging fit by eyeballing the item or checking the tag is a crapshoot. A size 6 Donna Karan skirt may fit like a charm. But if you try that same size in something like Guess? or BCBG, you may wonder when you managed to pack on an extra five pounds.
Get ready for the latest in summer street art. Two years after Cows on Parade won worldwide media attention for Chicago, the city is installing “Suite Home Chicago”–a series of 350 pieces of life-size sofas, chairs, ottomans and televisions, decorated by more than 150 Chicago area artists. Workers began installing the fiberglass pieces at 8 p.m. Friday. By summer’s end, the city expects to have at least 500 of the exhibits on display along Michigan Avenue, on the museum campus and in the Loop. O’Hare and Midway airports will get exhibits, as well. (There were only 320 cows.)
You have met the man of your dreams. Besides being a walking, talking hottie, he’s smart, funny and well-educated. You look at him and can totally imagine making babies with him. Bad news, though. He only thinks of you as a p-a-l; you’ve got a great personality, but he’s not going to be asking you out anytime soon.
Admit it. You’ve fantasized about winning the lottery and what you would do with all that loot. You’d buy homes for your kids, hire a full-time chauffeur for your grandmother, donate to the United Negro College Fund, sail around the world on the QE2, and lose 25 pounds at the Canyon Ranch Spa. You’d be ecstatic 24/7. You’d be dead wrong.
Brooke Shoemaker has a surefire strategy for never appearing in public wearing the same outfit as some other woman: Dress so quirky, so creatively, so out there that there’s no way to duplicate the getup or the xpressions made by passersby as she strolls around, clad in a vintage floral dress, jelly bracelets, fake pearls, way oversize sunglasses and her trusty Van sneakers.
Lara Davidson has never had to change a broken headlight. Nor put together an easy-to-assemble desk. Nor hook up her home entertainment center. She has always found someone to do it for her. What Davidson, 27, learned early on was that with a little negotiating, she could be more successful in her day-to-day maneuvering than her more meek pals, who were too intimidated to ask for special attention.
Margaret Cho has more than a few reasons to be bitter: At 8, Margaret Cho’s classmates dubbed her “Pee Girl.” At 12, she was ostracized by kids at church. At 14, she was raped by a 22-year-old man she met at a party. And at 16, Cho began a year-long relationship with a 26-year-old who tried to convince her to engage in a threesome.
Bulletin to all former bridesmaids: Here’s your chance to give your dress to someone who can appreciate it. Among clothing items collected by the Hyde Park-based Caring Closet are seldom-worn party dresses that can be given to Chicago-area girls who cannot afford a new prom dress.
Two frightened Dalmatian puppies and a beaming baby almost stole the show on the runway Thursday night at the second annual Red Hot Chicago event. But knockout designs by the likes of Tiffani Kim, Jane Hamill and Reginalds made sure that the well-heeled crowd of 900 at Navy Pier’s Grand Ballroom got much more than a dog and pony show.
The pillar of any good relationship, aside from love and all that other jazz, is a willingness to share. Share your feelings, your fears … your clothes?
Anthony Potenzo has one thing to say to about how the men dress on “The Sopranos”: “It’s about time!” A big-time “Sopranos” fan, Potenzo hosts weekly Sunday night parties. In his Gold Coast apartment festooned with photos of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, Potenzo cooks up a pot of homemade soup or pasta, serves wine to his nattily dressed crew and tunes the TV to HBO’s hit mob series, which just began its third season.
“I very rarely see a patient that says she wants to look different than her heritage,” says says Dr. Alan Matarasso. “The goal is to give more definition to the eyelid, but not to make Asian women look Westernized.”
Those shiny, pristine CD-like discs are my obsession. Each time I get a new one, it’s like I’m getting a sweet gift. Besides their affordable price, they are a movie buff’s dream. Sure, there’s the prime attraction of the movie. But most discs contain myriad treats, such as the director’s commentary, alternate endings, the option to watch the film with subtitles or listen to it in a foreign language, interviews with the cast and so on.
The motor-mouth trap: They’re compulsive talkers–and they’ve got you cornered, frantically looking for a way out of their constant yammering. You know the ones. Ask them what time it is, and they tell you how to build a clock. Here’s how to savor the sounds of silence again.
Every time you click on an Internet site–even those having nothing to do with e-commerce–you are taking the chance that some marketer or Web host will take the opportunity to gather personal information about you without your knowledge, says the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Harry Potter fans got a sneak peek at the highly anticipated movie Thursday when Warner Bros. put up the film’s first trailer on the Internet. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” won’t be in theaters until Nov. 16, but fans may catch the nearly two-minute trailer at www.warnerbros.com.
You can’t press it into a scrapbook or frame it. But voicemail messages offer the gift of forever–something Lynn Petrak cherishes. Petrak has one of the last messages her mother left for her before she died six years ago.
“Some people prefer to use an agenda book or aren’t comfortable with techy devices,” says Bill Dyszel, author of Palm for Dummies. “These organizers are the wave of the future because they’re small, store a lot of data, are affordable and can be backed up on your home computer. They’re a lot more secure than your paper datebook because if you lose that, your information is gone.”
Betsy Lancefield knew early on that she didn’t want to live with a man before getting married. But then she fell in love with a man who wouldn’t consider marrying a woman he hadn’t already lived with. She was torn. So they compromised. “Six months into the relationship, we got engaged,” says Lancefield, 37. “He went to work in Indonesia for eight months, and when he returned, he moved in with me. My family and friends were excited when we got engaged, but then when they heard we hadn’t set a date, they were sort of let down.”
There was a little of everything at the Backstreet Boys’ concert Monday night at the Allstate Arena, from pyrotechnics to druids to ballerinas. But for the youngsters who filled the venue to capacity, all that could have disappeared, and they still would have been happy just to see–and, I guess, hear–Nick Carter, Brian Littrell, Kevin Richardson, A.J. McLean and Howie Dorough do what they do.