Click to embiggen. And em-heart-en.

​The people of Frisco buy so many romantic comedies, romance novels, relationship-help books and Barry White albums on Amazon.com that the website has ranked it the 20th "most romantic" city in the United States.

Amazon's methodology was to ask a bunch of 12-year-olds (or James O'Keefe) what constitutes "romantic" and rate accordingly. Joining Frisco on the illustrious list are noted hotbeds of sexy schlock Miami and Las Vegas, as well as that bastion of free-wheelin' free-love and Joseph Smith-sanctioned underpants, Salt Lake City.More >>

MySpace / Rick Moran, ASUP

A stairway ghost at the Pride House.

​Back in August, I drove out east to Jefferson to get a lesson in paranormal investigation at the Pride House, Texas' first bed and breakfast and noted haunt spot favored by Southern Paranormal Investigations and Upshur Paranormal. I'm not sure if the house is inhabited by ghosts, but I do know that it's charming as all get-out, and so the Man O' The Hour and I decided to head back to the B&B this weekend for a birthday getaway. In anticipation of getting the pants scared off me yet again, I went back and had a listen to the EVP's that investigator Ian Powell e-mailed to me after he listened to hours of tape of our August investigation.

You may know of EVP's -- electronic voice phenomena -- from one of Michael Keaton's finer latter works, White Noise. Paranormal investigators love them. We spent hours with recorders in hand at the Pride House, calling out to whatever spirits may have been present. Powell spent the next several weeks listening closely to the tapes, and came up with two EVP's he thinks might be legit.

If you ain't afraid of no ghosts, join me after the jump.More >>

KTVT-Channel 11

​​The question shouldn't be "Are these dresses too sexy for homecoming?" but "Why are we so interested in asking that question?"

I find the hand-wringing over the homecoming dance dresses worn by high school girls in Mesquite to be extremely creepy. Talking about tight dresses and short skirts on teenage girls is an excuse for some people to ogle young, beautiful women -- many of whom I reckon are not 18 -- disguised as deep concern about morality and propriety. If you care about the sexual well-being of teenage girls, do things that actually help teenage girls instead of gawking at news reports about their short skirts. (Ideas: let's educate our daughters -- and all teens, really -- about healthy sexual behavior instead of pretending they'll suddenly sprout genitalia on their wedding nights. Encourage them to be media literate and proud of their bodies despite what other people -- advertisers, television, their peers -- want them to look like. Don't hold our daughters to a higher sexual standard than we do our sons.)

For women, clothing is seen as some kind of reflection of our sexual behavior, or of the sexual behavior we might unwittingly incite in powerless others who can't -- or more accurately, don't have to -- control themselves around a girl in tight pants. (See Sainz, Ines.) Women and girls always walk a fine line when it comes to their clothing -- whether it's folks grabbing the smelling salts at the thought of a female lawyer wearing open-toed shoes in court or mocking Hillary Clinton for wearing pantsuits (She's so frumpy! Why doesn't she try to look pretty? Because if she did, we'd rib her for that, too.), we love to let women know that no matter what they wear, it's pissing someone out there off. Too sexy? Slut! Not sexy enough? Prude!More >>

Of course, you probably already have this, you giant lush, you. But if not ... here.

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Here's one for the multitudes who will be struggling not to nap the afternoon away after a three-martini lunch: According to research conducted by UT-Southwestern Medical Center, boozing is on the rise. What appears to have been a decline in drinking that began in the mid-'80s through the '90s has officially tanked, as it were. People today drink more than they did 20 years ago -- across both sexes and three identified ethnic groups.

An article in R&D Mag quotes Dr. Raul Caetano, dean of the UT-SW School of Health Professions, who speculates that "changes in the population due to aging, the influx of immigrant groups, and a decline in mean income level because of economic recessions" could all be causes for an increase.

It also helps to not be a white lady if teetotalism's your thing:More >>

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Maybe the reason so many people avoided the census workers coming to their doors was because they didn't want to tell strangers about self-esteem issues related to the appearance of their own asses -- a question I must have missed when I filled out the paper version. I'm not sure how else the esteemed Dr. Bill Johnson of Grapevine's Innovations Medical could possibly know that a procedure called a "butt lift" is going to become more popular among Hispanic people starting this year.

PR Newswire, where I get all my breaking news about unprovable, junk science crap that doesn't matter one iota, has the scoop about a procedure that "creates the so-called 'Brazilian Butt' made popular by many Latin performers and models." No? Doesn't sound familiar? Just because you haven't heard of the term "Brazilian Butt" doesn't mean you can't start feeling bad about your own non-Brazilian Butt immediately. But don't worry, Dr. Bill can help!

As Dr. Johnson explains to each client, fat transfer has numerous advantages over surgical implants: it has a quicker recovery time; it involves no foreign device being introduced to the body and almost always produces a more natural look and feel.

Recording Artist and Actress Jennifer Lopez (JLo) helped make the "Butt Lift" concept popular. When results of the 2010 Census arrive, many experts predict growing Hispanic demographics will drive more and more U.S. products and services designed to attract Latin clients. This is one.

Presumably it would be white people, who are not born with (JLo) style asses, who'd want to get this assurgery, what with Latino people probably already sharing some physical characteristics with "many Latin performers and models." But who am I to question Dr. Bill Johnson? He's been the subject of at least one journotisement on CBS-11 earlier this year, so I reckon he knows his stuff. And he's so good at explaining it for our little ladybrains!More >>

Photos by Man O'The Hour

Hordes this size and larger took off to run the Jailbreak every half hour for two long days this weekend.

​The thing that people like me -- people who hate running -- say about running is that they don't do it unless they're being chased. But I'm not even sure that being chased is an especially good reason to run. If you can't outwit a dinosaur, thief or zombie using your wiles and tool-making skills, you really may as well just hand over whatever it is they seem to want from you. And if you are running for reasons other than being chased, well, you are the worst kind of crazy. The kind of crazy that society has normalized because what the hell else can you do with large groups of people with a supremely disturbing pathology except pretend that it, well, isn't? Explains lots of things, like the NRA and Jonas Brothers fans.

That said, I know a lot of nice people who do the running. And they're nice because they keep that shit to themselves, largely staying out of the way except for the one day out of the year wherein the White Rock Marathon stragglers make it a little harder to get to the bar once I've peeled myself out of bed around noon. (Though, to be fair, waking up to watch the nuts run the marathon is a great excuse to perfect your Irish Coffees, your Bloody Marys, your Natty Lights.)

I'm all the more pissed off, then, that after yesterday's Jailbreak race out at some redneck paintball dreamland in Denton County, I'm forced to report that I had a good time running 3.8 miles through stinking mud and stagnant water. Add to this the whole cliched thing wherein I'm being the writer who hates something until she tries it and then she discovers it's not so bad after all. Powerfully disappointing, whichever way you look at it.

More >>

Smoke

Who wouldn't love a guy who smelled like one of the best restaurants in town?

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As the mayor of upscale Oak Cliff barbecue joint Smoke on the Foursquare smartphone app, I feel especially qualified to weigh in on the latest sales-science attempt from Axe, the grooming product line for men that like to smell like nervous 12-year-olds. According to a "scent expert" enlisted by the Unilever brand, Dallas women like their men to smell like smoky fire-pits. Which I won't turn my nose up at -- oh my, but I am hilarious -- because I do love a warm camp fire, cold beer and frosty evening out in the woods with my man o' the hour.

However, the overall results from this no doubt very highly scientific study make you wonder if Axe didn't just ask Dr. Alan "Scent Expert" Hirsch to play word-association with cities and smells and slap something down in his notebook. New York women apparently like coffee-scented dudes, while San Diego women seem to prefer sun-tan lotion, and Houston women the sweet aroma of barbecue. But wait, there's more rocket science to come, per the study:More >>

​It's hard to say if anyone anywhere really gets to have his or her cake and eat it too, but it's especially frustrating to me when women are asked to support good causes that also ask them to get behind demeaning stereotypes and objectification. (Looking at you, PETA.) This often happens in conjunction with breast cancer research and campaigns that cast breasts as the most important part -- the part worth saving -- of a woman.

The new "Are You Obsessed?" campaign is a good example. Disembodied and body-painted perfect-breasted torsos are shown alongside the question "Are You Obsessed?" with things like hair and shopping. So not only do the ads imply women are too stupid to worry about breast cancer (Really? Dear God, who hasn't muddled her way through a BSE and spent the next five hours huddled in front of WebMD?), but that if they do worry at all, it's about superficial appearances.

Enter the local and ubiquitous Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the Dallas Cowboys, whom you may also have heard of. Per a press release, they've paired up for a campaign called "I Promise," which appears to concentrate on actual human lives and stories, instead of the importance of saving the titties.More >>

Patrick Michels

"Cotton-Eyed Joe" has his way with an imaginary tree stump in the final round of Air Sex last night. We've got more photos in our slide show.

​An invisible lion, an invisible cow, and a whole cornucopia of simulated human partners got the go-rounds of their lives last night at Trees for Dallas' first-ever turn at the Air Sex World Championships. The fauxnication was graphic, titillating, and at times, a little bit disturbing. No, let's be fair: a lot bit disturbing. Like when "Jack The Dripper" (I KNOW) demonstrated a thoroughly necrophilic bang.

But the big winner was "Colin Oscopy," a tall, gangly dude whose first performance centered around a vigorous devirginizing of a mild-mannered nice guy. He competed with "Rick Ramrod" for a shot at the finals, participating in what emcee Chris Trew called a "fuck off," wherein Ramrod, while charismatic, just couldn't pull out in front of Colin's aw-shucks demeanor.

But just moments before the show was to start, Trew says he didn't know if the whole thing might go limp. Contestants who'd signed up before hand dropped out. Myself and my fellow judges -- Air Sex past champion Slut Truffle and improvisors Clay Barton and Amanda Austin of the Dallas Comedy House -- didn't know if we'd have any doin' it to dig on. In the end, Dallas didn't disappoint, with a number of competitors signing up well after they'd walked in the door.

Says Trew: "We walked into Dallas with a mere three people signed up. Didn't know what to expect. Moments before the show started a mob of contestants showed up ready to make pretend love on stage in front of a couple hundred people. The energy and the sex were both beautiful."

Our own Patrick Michels was there with his camera, and has plenty more photos in this slide show.

​Irving-based Kimberly-Clark, they of the toilet paper and tampons and whatnot, are already in the business of being in your business, as it were, so maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that they're currently looking for 250-word essays on how your underwear got to be so nasty.

"Project Makeunder," for which the company has roped in Kathy Griffin as shill, was made known to us in a press release earlier this week, and since then we've all be working extra hard on coming up with synonyms for "skid marks" so that we can win new panties from Kimberly-Clark brand-buddy Kotex. Per the flakkery:

The right undergarments can keep you feeling fabulous all day, but women still keep unflattering, worn out lingerie around. Thanks to its Panty-Approved Protection, the Kotex brand is on a mission to help women throw out their worn undies, mangled bras and beat up pajamas and have teamed up with Emmy Award winning performer Kathy Griffin and celebrity stylist George Kotsiopoulos for "Kotex Project Makeunder."  The program gives women who are ready to upgrade their lingerie drawer the chance to receive a head-to-toe "Makeunder" and star in an online video series documenting their experience.

Whereas I would probably shell out any amount of money to keep my faded ladybusiness-week drawers from appearing in an Internet video series, apparently Kotex is betting some women will air their dirty laundry, literally, for a chance at some lacy underthings.

I'm more interested, however, in how Kotex came to this conclusion, per the Kotex brand manager:More >>