Culture

Jonathan Denby, who has owned the hotel for ten years, knows that it is inappropriate to have a religious book in a diverse, largely secular world, not to mention a little bit rude to place it right into people’s bedrooms. He’d been thinking about this for a while and initially considered replacing it for Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” (goodness!), but seeing that everyone was going crazy about E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey,” he decided to go with the erotica novel instead even though he himself has not read it.

The message of Alain de Botton’s How To Think More About Sex is: Sex is a problem we have to suffer, but it’s not our problem. Our parents and childhoods did it to us and we can’t really do anything about it, so, you know, whatever. It’s bad and corrosive anyway, so let’s not even worry about it. We can get a therapist to come every Friday night at dinner time to help us maybe do it once a week so nothing bad happens to our relationship, which we don’t care that much about anyway, since our partners are starting to remind us of our parents.

That’s right, ladies! Drop them panties — it’s Duke Nukem. But wait, there’s more. He wants to read you a little story.

Lacey Wildd appeared on Dr. Drew On Call last week to discuss her breasts, which are currently an L-cup. The segment opened with Dr. Drew announcing, “joining me is Lacey Wildd, a mother who is risking her health and perhaps her family’s well-being to have a record-breaking endowment.” Below Wildd’s name on the marquee, the words “ADDICTED TO PLASTIC SURGERY” flashed. Just in case the show’s angle was unclear to anyone.

Mistresses are under represented in non-fiction for good reason — they’re the home-wreckers, the sluts, the tramps. It’s no easy thing to make readers sympathetic to you when you decide to take a machete to someone else’s family. Mimi Alford proved that keeping the secret for decades before dishing is a good start. But if Alford’s memoir is a guide offering suggestions on how to do this the right way, Rielle Hunter’s new memoir about her affair with disgraced presidential hopeful John Edwards is the opposite.

In an effort to make itself feel better because no one uses their Facebook e-mail addresses (what? Facebook has e-mail addresses?), the social network decided yesterday to change everyone’s profiles to list only their Facebook e-mail addresses, thereby screwing up all your settings.

If Rajeev Rawat had known was was about to befall him, it’s highly likely he would have logged in to Facebook instead of Google+. But Rajeev liked Google+. Unlike Facebook where most people — especially women — were in the habit of locking down their profiles, the atmosphere on Google+ was different. On Google+ he could browse for hours, jumping from one woman’s profile to another’s often finding a lot of photos. And, of course, he could comment on most public posts.

L.A. is not the best place to try to find love. Love is second fiddle to the Dream. The Dream is paramount. The Dream is why we’re here. Face it, when you’re working your way from the bottom, invites seldom come with a plus one. It’s true. L.A. sucks when it comes to love. And sometimes we’re so lonely, we want to pack up the U-Haul and go home. Okay, not really, but we do our fair share of bitching while under the influence only to delete the tweets in horror the morning after.

This week, the sportswear brand Stüssy launched a Facebook campaign to get an extra bit of edge. The campaign, centered on Facebook, enables users to strip the model by liking the Stüssy page. “The more likes, the more clothes come off!” Stüssy promises fans. Clicking the Like button enabled us to watch the model — who is apparently decked out in their entire Spring/Summer 2012 collection — do a little dance, removing a piece of clothing in each frame until she was down to her skivvies.

That’s right ladies, going out with your Facebook settings not fully locked down is a lot like wandering outside with too short a skirt. You’re practically begging for all of that delicious data to be harvested and abused. Statements like these clearly suggest that the fault lies with the girls who childishly don’t realize what they’re getting into by using a social network like — gasp — Facebook. It certainly doesn’t lie with the folks over at iFree who made the app. They are, according to Brownlee, “nice guys.”