Unbelievable Epic Fabio Movie: I suffered for my art, and now it's your turn!

Fabio, he of the Afghan hound tresses and solid square profile known for his endorsement of love and romance the world over, actually produced a supercheesy direct to video film back in 1993 called "A Time For Romance." My favorite is the place on the box art where it calls the Fabster "every woman's perfect man." (Hahahahahaha.)

I know that it's always unwise to link to copywritten material on YouTube because it doesn't last very long up there, but my gut tells me that nobody's going to be challenging this particular infringement anytime soon...except for maybe an embarassed Fabio himself.

Remember a while back when I said Zeb Atlas is the kind of guy you admire but can't help but laugh at? Fabio would be "Exhibit A" when it comes to that definition. I wrote my thoughts on his bizarre fame and my one meeting with him here.

But I have to say, at least he's got a pretty striking profile and at least in this particular movie was built at least as big as most of the Herculeses.

"A Time For Romance" is pretty hilariously bad and unintentionally funny at every point. It's great to see when drunk and with your friends. I swear, at no point does this movie ever ratchet back a notch from "11."

As a side note to amuse my fellow Millennials (or Generation Y, whatever we're called now), the heroine in the first Viking scenario is played by Raja Baroudi, the leader of the Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers. What I find even more amazing is this movie isn't even listed on her IMDB page.



A few things to notice:

Fabio, dressed as a Viking, looks like a young version of Vigo the Carpathian.

6:30 - There's no way to ever possibly do a realistic romance story of this type, because actually being a captive of a Viking or pirate reaver...would actually be pretty horrifying.

6:45 - This shot of our heroine's plunging cleavage is pretty bizarre, especially considering the target audience for this film.



1:08 - Why? Why is Fabio shirtless at this point? The only person that compulsively took his shirt off with this much gusto was Shatner.

3:55 - Is that the same dress Karen Allen wore in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

4:20 - You know, I feel kinda bad even saying this because of my own regional accent and I know firsthand how terrible it is to have your intelligence judged on the basis of how you speak, but still...it's almost laughably funny to hear Fabio speak English. Arnold had an accent, but at least it was obvious he knew the words he was saying meant.

8:12 - The matter-of-fact way rape is discussed in this film is one of the most amusing things about it.



My favorite part about all this is the obvious way they're using public domain music like Pachibel to cut down costs.

0:20 - Is he wearing some sort of wizard's robe? Anyway, it's a vast improvement over his previous outfits, which look like he got them by raiding Liberace's closet.

1:53 - Fabio gets beaten at Chess by some random person. How unintentionally realistic!

2:55- Jesus Christ, that is some horny, angry kissing. It's like watching two Klingons mate.

4:25 - You can just see what Fabio is thinking here. "Hey, where's the Power Ranger chick? You know, the one that's considerably less dumpy looking?"

4:40 - Yeah, I can't believe it either, lady.



0:15 - That is one comically huge rose. It's like something Krusty the Klown would give you during courtship.


Final Fun Fact: according to IMDB, Fabio, as a baby, was the infant in "Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops." Apparently, Fabio was selected by DESTINY to be a supercheesy beefcake star!

Black Fantasies for Gays and Ladies

There's a well known phenomenon among straight women (especially Caucasian and Latina women) and gay men who love black men, and as of yet there is no term to describe that social trend ("Jungle Fever" is more associated with black men that love white women). I have a theory why this is. If you give a name for something, it's an acknowledgment something is going on and exists.

One great contribution by the playwright David Henry Hwang to the language was the term "Yellow Fever" to describe white men that have a thing for Asian women. I remember I burst out laughing the first time I heard the term, because it was something I saw going on around me. For instance, when I first read the ultimate "airport" paperback, "Meg" by Steve Alten, the moment he described his heroine with the magic word "Asian" I knew just what was going to happen next!

I was always amused by Yellow Fever because it seems to happen with men that are unfamiliar with or have close contact with actual Asians. As astonishing as it seems to me at times, not everybody is from New York City. I remember once meeting a guy cousin of mine from Arizona that had a bad case of Yellow Fever, and it came up that I had a Vietnamese friend that had acne.

He was a little astonished. "I didn't know Asians had acne."

I couldn't stop laughing. "Of course they can get acne. They're not some kind of magical elf."

The website Stuff White People Like, in addition to painfully unfunny humor about Starbucks Coffee and the TV show "Friends," has a few gags about Asian women. You know, I can't stand that website. It's a funny thing about self-deprecating parody: it very quickly becomes a coy kind of self-admiration.

Likewise, I'm startled by how many of my gay friends have an extreme (dare I say it?) blackfantasy. I don't even pretend I have enough readers to possibly do something like make a contribution to the English language, but hey, who knows, I just put it out there! In fact, it seems shockingly all-but universal, but almost no one is talking about this phenomenon.

What I find interesting is that, despite the fascination for black men among white gay males, there seems to be a lot of conflict between the two groups. African-American culture, even more so than Latino culture, is notorious for homophobia. Likewise, there's a lot of conflict in New York City between middle and upper class homosexuals and blacks as a result of the "gentrification" of many traditionally black neighborhoods. Many black residents of these neighborhoods see the loss of their neighborhood's identity, and find themselves pushed out by higher housing prices.


Unexpectedly, female sex tourism is a big market, especially in places like the Caribbean, where you have institutions like the so-called "Rent-a-Rasta." Because female sex tourism is practiced by women on men, it shouldn't receive a free pass from criticism as a fundamentally exploitative relationship. It happens in any third-world or developing country there are beaches and lots and lots of underemployed men.

A good place to start for anyone interested in the phenomenon of female sex tourism is with the movie Heading South with Charlotte Rampling, about female sex tourism in Haiti in the 1970s. If you want a double-bill, follow this up with Wes Craven's best movie, The Serpent and the Rainbow, about Haiti in the 1980s, where apparently secret police officers were regularly moonlighting as zombie-creating voodoo priests.

Another good choice would be How Stella Got Her Groove Back, which did for the tourism industry of Jamaica what "Crocodile" Dundee did for Australia. Stella was almost the Disneyfied version of sex tourism.

Read this Reuters article, written about older white women tourists to Africa:

Some choice quotes:

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls."

Many of the visitors are on the lookout for men like Joseph. Flashing a dazzling smile and built like an Olympic basketball star, the 22-year-old said he has slept with more than 100 white women, most of them 30 years his senior.

Incidentally, I hope everyone forgives me for the totally gratuitous images of the hunky Brazilian Orso Orfeo. But jeez, I'm a size queen, I can't help myself!

Pumping Iron: A Review

Periodically, a list comes up of the greatest film villains of all time, which contain the usual suspects like Hannibal Lecter, Cruella de Ville and Darth Vader. I'm astonished that Arnold Schwarzenegger never made these lists.

Like any good movie, the reason to see it is for the villain, and Pumping Iron makes you truly hate Arnold. His personality dominates the film, Arnold is goal-focused and very intelligent, a guy that you're not sure whether to be frightened of or admire. When asked what he thought he'd do if he thought the other competitors might be better than him, he says "I'd just talk them into losing."

There was also the detail, the one that almost everyone remembers from this film, that Arnold missed his own father's funeral so as to not lose focus on a contest. There have been debates about whether this was actually staged for the film, but considering Arnold's near-fanatic dedication and general coldbloodedness, it's perfectly in character. Additionally, Arnold talking about how a good pump at the gym is better than sex is the kind of grandiose thing a James Bond villain would say in an over-the-top soliloquy, if a James Bond villain was into bodybuilding.



It doesn't surprise me that of all the personalities in the film that Arnold was the one to go on to fame and fortune. He was clearly the smartest person there, and the most driven to the point of scary ruthlessness. It doesn't surprise me at all, after seeing this film, that Arnold went into politics, either. Arnold running for political office is only surprising to people that don't know him. He is a "great" man, the kind that makes other men seem little in comparison besides him, along with Julius Caesar, Teddy Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin.

What's more, it doesn't surprise me that Arnold got his big break as a ruthless and implacable villain, either. The Terminator was the scariest new movie monster since Boris Karloff played the Mummy. What does surprise me, though, is that Arnold got work afterward as a heroic figure.

If you're someone that's never been a bodybuilder, the movie is recommended as a great insight into what this niche sport is all about...which I think was the original purpose of the old Max Rep Astrotitan comics in M&F. The one thing you're left with is the incredible level of fanatacism needed to compete, the minimal rewards, and overpowering sense these guys are doing something very strange.

At times, us fans of muscular guys are so immersed in our interest that at times we lose perspective, and fail to see that, to a lot of people that "don't get it," the devotion to muscularity comes off as very weird. In that sense, while many people point to Pumping Iron as one of the big exposures of bodybuilding to a wider audience, it probably discouraged and turned away more people to the gym than brought in.

I'd be curious to see a followup. I'm sure the modern sport of bodybuilding is as different as an alien planet to the world of 1975.

Anyway, it was worth it to see a few shots of Serge Nubret near his peak!

Commercial Illustrator Glen Hanson

The first place I ever saw Glen Hanson was on the back of inexpensive men's fragrance BOD. Which apparently had really stylish commercial art featuring gorgeous guys that are objects of desire by submissive women.

Visit the BOD Website at Parfums de Coeur.

Visit Glen Hanson's Website.

The guy on there immediately got my attention! The fragrance sure as hell didn't: despite the supervirille and provocative names like "Really Ripped Abs," the stuff smelled like the gland secretions of a musk ox in mating season.

Guys, just be clean, okay? This stuff is a turn-off to most women...well, those not from New Jersey, anyway.

Hey, here's a Jersey joke: what's the difference between Jersey girls and trash?

Sometimes, trash gets picked up!

(Ahhh, now I have to go to blogger confessional. "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I took the easy way out and did Jersey jokes.")

But I've got to admit, while Axe did the ad best, BOD did it first: and I have to admit some of the abs on their ads were really yummy. Check it out:

When I first saw the ads for Axe, my reaction was at first anger, and then it became laughter. The fundamental immaturity of the male target audience is pretty obvious from the advertising, and shows. Like with the equally vile energy drinks, I've never met a man over 23 that touches the stuff.

(On an unrelated note, I can't stand energy drinks, not only because they taste like liquid aspirin or because of the insufferability and immaturity of the target demographic, but also because it troubles me that something as adult as morning coffee or tea could be replaced by something so childish. It was something of a mistake for Starbucks to start to sell coffee milkshakes.)

Now, as for Glen Hanson, he's the kind of guy that you intend to grow up to be when you go to school to become a commercial illustrator: raking in the bread for advertisements and album covers, with a distinctive, immediately identifiable style.

What startles me is how an openly gay artist could do women so well, and with such obvious gusto. I have trouble thinking of a halfway decent, beautiful female sculpture by famous gay artists like Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci for instance.

Over Six Foot and with a Six-Pack

Some of the greatest bodybuilders are short guys, who look very impressive when they get massive: they have a certain quality of thickness and mass that is truly astonishing as opposed to more elongated and spread-out, slimmer bodies. But there's something to be said for really BIG guys. Like the above Nate Christianson, who is 6'2". Or Steve Reeves, who is 6'1", or Mike O'Hearn, who is 6'3".




Then there's Zeb Atlas, who is one of those guys you admire but can't help but make fun of a little. Depending on where you look he's either 6'3" or 6'4", and when it comes to men, especially those in the entertainment industry, it's good to usually assume the lower estimate is more truthful. On the one hand, he's a hairy chested, virile thick-pec alpha male weighing in at an incredible 250 pounds. His measurements are unreal: 21" biceps, 52" chest.

Look at the stubble in the above pic. Doesn't it look like he just crash landed on that weird island from "Lost" where for some (no doubt supernatural) reason, men are never able to grow full beards, but are never clean-shaven either?


Something stops Zeb Atlas from just being a pure object of desire. Mostly it's the fact he's a gay club go-go dancer (!) and porn star. For men, I think porn star is an occupation temporarily used by bad-boy types like Colin Farrell for bad-boy cred. It's hard to take seriously a guy that does that all the time...even though real porn stars don't have the cheeseball eighties porn 'stache anymore, they have it in spirit...and it's really hard to take them seriously. Especially when they're described as a "club go-go dancer." That's like a code-word for a professional himbo. Still, as far as Man Candy goes he's a big, sensational beast.

Natural Bodybuilder Tuan Tran

What is it with natural bodybuilders, and why do they generally look so much better off (healthier, less bloat, sleeker, better proportioned) and have much more attractive bodies than, er, the other kind? The examples include Mike O'Hearn, Cleveland Thomas and Ulisses Williams Jr. In fact come to think of it, most of my favorites are naturals.

It may be due to the fact they train differently and is more about proportions, hard work and dedication as opposed to who can blow up like a sponge the fastest thanks to genetics.

Tuan Tran is a powerful, attractive looking bronzed guy that has a certain sort of spunky, working-class quality. He's got a lean, hard and sleek frame that looks like he could be a great acrobat. He's a lightweight, but I can't hold that against him because he's powerful and sleek, like a jungle cat. Besides, I'm a lightweight myself too... :-)

I can't imagine him as Beowulf, but I have a real feeling he'd be a great casting choice for a future film version of the Thief of Baghdad.

"Beowulf" is definitely worth a second look

I was absolutely startled to see the Robert Zemeckis film Beowulf. For one thing, the animation was so spot-on after a little while you forgot you were actually looking at a cartoon, something I never forgot in the supercreepy Polar Express, where after coming out from the theater with the kid I was math tutoring I got a delayed attack of the heebie-jeebies.

What's even more extraordinary is that the actor that played Beowulf was Ray Winstone, a great Shakespearean stage actor in his forties with a great Lorne Greene-esque "Voice of Doom" perfect for a mythical hero. Thanks to computer technology, they could take an older actor with an ordinary physique and make him look exactly like Beowulf ought, with powerful muscles, the appropriate age, and a suitably heroic height (when the real Ray Winstone is average, around 5'10" according to IMDB).

Does anyone else realize the potential of this animation technique?


Now you can have a well-trained and skilled actor with a great voice play a heroic, muscular character regardless of piddling little details like age, height or the actual shape of their physique. I for one would love to hear Patrick Stewart's sexy voice come out of Hercules, Tarzan or other mythic heroes; nobody else could be quite as vivid. This is a problem that goes back to the beginning of Peplum: Steve Reeves had to have his voice dubbed because he had a rather un-Greek Montana accent. And let's face it, none of those Hercules, Goliaths or Macistes from the peplum boom were great actors (with the possible exception of Mark Forrest, who I have always thought was extremely underrated as an actual actor).


Ask any casting director and they'll tell you that it is all but impossible to find a Meryl Streep or Anne Hathaway type that is beautiful, intelligent and can act! Those three Venn diagram circles very rarely meet together, after all. Nowhere is this problem more obvious than in the camp-classic Flash Gordon, which featured Topol and Brian Blessed, two of my favorite actors of all time, not to mention Timothy Dalton and Max von Sydow, all of whom were perfectly cast and brilliantly acted. The one standout terrible performance is the actor who played the title character, a Playgirl model meathead that was clearly given the part on the basis of his physique, and who couldn't hold his own against the international all-star cast. It's somehow a tribute to what a nonentity he was that right now I just can't remember his name.


In fact, name me one good actor, the kind you can imagine playing Hercules, Beowulf or Flash Gordon, with large muscles. Even the very handsome Dwayne Johnson (the only good-looking professional wrestler in the entire history of that sport) is not that great an actor, though he makes up for it with a ton of personality and charisma that makes him very, very watchable. Still, I can't see him saying "I come for the woman...and your head!" without cracking a smile a little bit.

A good actor is as rare as a good physique, and both are as rare as a good sports star. In fact, come to think of it, that's part of why the WNBA has marketing problems: they want a talented athlete that is also extremely camera-friendly, telegenic and attractive to be the symbol of their league, sort of like how the very beautiful and personable Venus and Serena Williams are to women's tennis or the rugged Joe Namath was to the struggling NFL. But the trouble is, their WNBA players look like...well...WNBA players. Amazing how, in something like ten years, that just hasn't worked out for them. It just goes to show how very rarely talent, personality and looks come together.

As a big fan of Tarzan, I've never found an actual actor that was ever as entirely buyable as the big, bad Mr. T, as almost any given illustration of the character. This isn't a problem anymore with the Beowulf motion-capture technology.


People that talk about CGI near-constantly always say it's the "next big thing" and the next step for film, but I've never been convinced. CGI has a big limitation: no matter how good it gets, you can always tell that it isn't a physical object. It doesn't have a sense of solidity. In fact, the best CGI using blockbuster was the first to use the technique, Jurassic Park, because computer imagery was their last choice and not their first and it was supplanted with traditional techniques like puppets and claymation. Beowulf on the other hand, because everything was animated, no one thing stood out as "fake." It actually did live up to the promise the special effects people offered when they started to use computers for special effects.

Beowulf came out two years ago, and in that time I'm a little astonished that the real significance of this film hasn't entirely been acknowledged, not just technologically (since then no other movie has been made with this technique) but also in the history of animation as well, and how Beowulf represented a shift in the way animation is discussed, something I don't think anyone else noticed. Here's what I mean by that: you can't ever read a book about Fritz the Cat's Ralph Bakshi without them going on about how darn shocking Bakshi's adult and counterculture themed animation was, especially in cartooning "best identified with Disney-style wholesomeness and kids movies." Heck, if you need another example, look at how badly Nelvana's animated Rock n' Rule crashed at the box office.


Whenever anybody does an animated movie that handles very adult themes, almost all discussion of the movie focuses in on that to the exclusion of everything else, the shock that an animated film isn't a "kid's cartoon." But here was Beowulf, a movie that is animated every bit as much as the Pixar stuff, which nonetheless features drinking, debauchery, violence and a naked Angelina Jolie, and yet you don't get the usual shocked expression from the critics or nonsensical statements like "animation has finally grown up!" (I'd like to strangle any journalist that ever typed that phrase.) Yet nobody noticed this. It was absolutely extraordinary, a real turning point for those of us that like sophisticated animation.

My friend and regular blog reader ManofSteel spends his time using a computer to create his disturbingly specific idea of the perfect man, who despite his best protestations is a dead ringer for Christopher Reeve. Personally, I don't have a single perfect man (though Ulisses Jr. comes close), but a range of twenty or thirty guy types, a series of male fantasies that would be absolutely perfect for me: some sweet, bookish and shy, some hunky, dangerous and masculine, some that are black and others tanned or Asian, some curly haired and others straight, some blue eyed and others brown, and so on. But regardless, if you want to have a "perfect guy" in a movie, the Beowulf technique would be the way to do it. Even Matt Damon gets zits sometime, but a computer model doesn't have to.


For all these reasons, I think Beowulf is worth a second look, not just for its vast potential, but for no other reason than it might have started another boom in muscleman movies. Another thing I find extraordinary about Beowulf is that for the first time, people were talking about Steve Reeves again. One really sarcastic New York Times review said that "somewhere, I hope Steve Reeves is watching this and smiling down from beefcake heaven."


(And incidentally, on the subject of traditional animation, I just saw the promo for the Princess and the Frog. Great idea, guys: do the exact same kind of ubertraditional movie that tanked that kind of film in the first place. Apparently it's supposed to be different because the princess here is black, but as my hero Mr. Spock once said, "A difference that makes no difference is no difference." This particularly smarts on a personal level, because I originally started to go to college to study animation and design. I left to study mathematics because incredibly enough, Disney closed its cel-division, an act even then seemed both temporary and shortsighted. With that, I just changed my major...as, by the way, half of my classmates did when they heard the news. I always thought they'd bring their cel-department back by doing something edgy and unexpected the way studios do when they don't have anything left to lose, and I'm extremely disappointed to be wrong here.)

Answers to the Quiz

Well, it's been a few weeks, and the response to my mystery guest quiz was a loud unimpressed thud. Honestly, these weren't that hard!

The first mystery guest was (of course) Billy Campbell, better known to Star Trek fans as the Outrageous Okona himself.

The second mystery guest was Persis Khambatta, and when I said she'd probably be more recognizable with a different haircut, I wasn't lying.

The third is my fellow Brooklynite Edward Irving Wortis, also better known by his pen name of Avi. I have yet to see a modern young reader novelist as talented as his vaguely autobiographical works like "Don't You Know There's A War On?" and "Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway?"

The third is strip and peplum queen Chelo Alonso.

The fourth is Jack Williamson, and his most famous novel is obviously "The Humanoids." The first work of his I ever read was "Brother to Demons, Brother to Gods," which was startling not just because it was an obvious rip-off of Roger Zelazny's best novel "Lord of Light," but also because it foresaw the scariest possibility of genetic engineering: not that we would create monsters, but that we would create gods.

As for the last guest, the business about Kevin Bacon should have been a dead giveaway. His name is Paul Erdos, the most prolifically published mathematician of the 20th Century, who is the subject of a Kevin Bacon-esque game among mathematicians. In case you're wondering, my Erdos number is 3, as I took a class with someone that was published with Paul Erdos.

The Femme vs. Megan Wants a Millionaire

A while back, I took Howard Beale's advice and bashed my TV in with a Louisville slugger. I don't volunteer this information often because I don't want to be that person everybody knows or has met at some point that doesn't have a TV...and lets everyone know all the time they don't have a TV.

So a friendly blog reader pointed me in the direction of a new series that supposedly premiered recently, Megan Wants a Millionaire. Supposedly, it had a muscular millionaire that was a former male stripper. Now this definitely got my attention and I found the episode online.

If I were an editor of a women's fiction publishing house and a manuscript with a "millionaire/ex-male stripper" crossed my desk, I'd write UNREALISTIC in red ink and moved on to the next bit in the slush pile.

As for the show itself, I could only watch the opening five minutes. Watch it yourself here, if you're sadomasochistic. Not because it was a dating show, or even a reality show (reality shows aren't any worse than any other type of series in and of itself; they're just another kind of documentary) but because I very quickly came to loathe everyone on the series. In fact, I like to think I'm an open minded person. I've never walked out on a movie in my entire life. But this series was so bad I stopped after ten minutes.

First, our large breasted, blonde heroine's startling ambition to be a trophy wife. Yet another case of life imitating the Simpsons, with Megan as a real life talking Malibu Stacy doll and me as a real-life Lisa Simpson. I'd like to get a time machine, go back in time and introduce Megan's present day spray-on tanned self to the eleven year old girl she used to be that wanted to grow up to be an astronaut or scientist.

Also, the tiny accessory chihuahua is a little sad too. I'm no expert on "famous-for-being-famous skank" fashion, but is that even still trendy couture anymore?

Also, the thing I found the most interesting is how apparently all these series are interconnected, sort of like how the Fonz once visited Steve Urkel and there were regular Knotts Landing/Golden Girls crossovers. My jaw hit the floor when I saw Brett Michaels of all people had a reality series. Didn't he stop being famous 20 years ago, when Kurt Cobain smote all cock rock everywhere? Are they going to give a series to the guy that played Eddie Munster next? Frankly I find the idea of a series involving Brett Michaels revolting. I have a feeling if he kissed my hand, I would die 40 minutes later.

Finally, I have some personal experience with the sugar daddy type and they're all loathsome pervs with a patronizing attitude to younger women. Beats me why these millionaire guys would subject themselves to a series like this. I urge them to go to Miami Beach, the Sugar Daddy capital of the world. Or..heck, try any "newly hip" and "rediscovered" part of NYC, like Brooklyn Heights or Chelsea. I remember working at a bar when I was an undergraduate for a semester, and getting hit on by these older rich guys all the time.

Being young looking and short, when asked about myself and I talked about college, I got these snippy, infuriatingly patronizing little comments like "Aw, little honey, you don't need to worry about that sort of thing with me." Gah! Of course I had to smile and be nice, because you never tick off a customer. If a guy invited you to have drinks with him, your response was always supposed to be a noncommittal "We'll see." After a while, those "We'll sees" got more and more angry in tone.

I like playing Gene Siskel about as much as I'm sure everyone else loves to read it, but something about this series got under my skin. I suppose because one of the top priorities in my life is self-sufficiency and self-respect and I get very nervous about a lot of the girls of my generation. I get my sense of pride from working hard and accomplishing things, whereas a lot of them have a mentality that takes pride in not working and getting others to do things for them.

I'm often frightened, disappointed and startled at a diminishment that happens in girls around middle school and high school. Recently, I saw a friend of mine from elementary school again. As kids, she used to teach us card tricks and wanted to be a dog trainer. Now when I saw her, she looked down all the time and only spoke when her boyfriend asked her a direct question. I left that meeting wanting to cry.

Let me tell you about another recent encounter with an old friend: she had an apartment in the Heights, yet she had NO JOB, her toddler was more or less raised by the maid. It came up in conversation that she once dated a guy just so she could have money to get a tooth fixed. She used to say things like "I'm a Queen and I should be treated that way." When I told her I got my Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, she scrunched her nose up as if she smelled something terrible and said, "Well, you always did like that sort of thing, Cristina..."

This is something I see going on around me all the friggin' time, a part of the world I live in, and...well, it frightens me. I guess there is one little upside to being a math and science nerd: I'm the first girl of my generation of my family to graduate high school before getting pregnant.