Welcome to Bad Advice, a weekly column looking at the misguided guidance of the Internet’s agony aunts.
This week, Dan Savage auctioned off the job of writing his column to a civilian named Eric Rescorla (the proceeds went to an organization that provides job training for the homeless). Ironically, Rescorla wound up giving advice to another novice sex columnist, a college student who complained that her column has ruined her love life. Since she signed her name “There are a lot of gorges at this school,” and since Cornell is gorge central, is it fair to assume that the letter came from Jenna B, author of the Cornell Daily Sun column Bedroom Eyes? If so, it seems like Jenna really does need to work on concealing her identifying details.
Speaking of overexposure, I guarantee that in three months, the 26-year-old calling herself “Waiting for a ‘Closer’” will have forgotten all about the subject of her letter to Slate's Dear Prudence this week. She complains that she met a cute guy who didn’t ask her out after a night of flirting. Prudie, to her credit, tells her to friend him on Facebook. Which provides a pretty excellent litmus test: If the answer to a question is “Just friend him on Facebook,” that question is maybe not worthy of being featured in an advice column.
By far the best thing happening in the world of advice columns this week, though, is the appearance of Lisa Loeb in the Forward’s Bintel Brief column. Lisa Loeb, as I’m sure you all know, is the bespectacled singer-songwriter best known for her song on the Reality Bites soundtrack. In the Bintel Brief, she stirs up controversy by telling an irate father to be more accepting of his daughter’s “parasitic” Chabadnik husband.
Previously: Bad Advice
Also, whatever happened to those vaunted shields that in the television show always protected the ship from harm? In this movie the shields are about as effective as paper-mache as the Enterprise is strafed, bombed, rocketed, smashed, tossed, toppled, and shaken like a baby’s toy.