Pretty dresses, cute shoes, hair and make-up are all part of the prom experience for millions of American girls. But for many teenagers living in foster care, the prom is just one more thing out of their reach. In Los Angeles County, where over 1,200 teen girls are in foster care, CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) volunteers have stepped up to make sure prom happens for foster care kids with the two day special event Glamor Gowns Giveaway. This year, after an email from my wonderful bra shop (Jenette’s “where the alphabet begins at D”), I volunteered to help at the foundation garment table. To Jenette the event is very special, since a number of her family were raised in foster care. The event hit a chord with me because one of my oldest friends, Victoria , raised a number of foster children, facilitated the adoption of one of her fosters, and recently adopted a girl she had been fostering; so for me, this was a tribute to her.

Glamor Gowns was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where weirdly a cheerleading competition was also going on with loads of girls from 1st to 12th grade in full make-up and custom cheer gear, often with both parents in tow holding video cameras, clogging the escalators and halls. Just around the corner, in a large room, foster parents sat with their wards as hair and make-up teams went to work on the girls who had finished “shopping,” while others waited for their section to be called.

In the giveaway room, each girl received a number and was assigned a personal shopper who helped her pick out a dress from the hundreds of brand new donated gowns, along with shoes, jewelry and handbags. At Jenette’s table we helped girls and their shopper choose bras that would fit correctly. Since these were convertible bras which can go from strapless to halter style and back to “regular,” they were more than one-time use items. Jenette had arranged with her distributors to make sure there was a selection donated in every size range. Seamstresses from local studio unions donated their time to adjust the dresses to ensure they fit perfectly.

Personal shoppers included many women from Alpha Kappa Alpha–founded in 1908 at Howard University, it is now a nationwide community service-based sorority–as well as CASA volunteers and women to whom being of service is an important part of their lives. Local KTLA newscaster Michaela Pereira, an advisory board member of CASA who is very active in foster care issues, served as emcee of the event.

It was so wonderful to see the huge smiles on the girls’ faces as they modeled in their gowns, beaming as they picked out rhinestone earring and necklaces to complete their elegant look. By 1 pm almost 300 girls had come through, and my shift was over, but I decided to ask if I could stay longer and take a turn as a personal shopper.

I stood next to the podium with other personal shoppers as girls were called by number. I was introduced to my client, a beautiful 14 year-old girl with long curly hair and a shy smile who said she wanted a purple or red dress, and admitted she was nervous about attending her first prom. She didn’t know what size she was, but I could kinda figure it out. I chose a red dress from the rack and then another one caught her eye, a knee length gray ruched halter top. She tried it on in one the private dressing rooms set up in the giveaway hall. It fit beautifully, and she exclaimed

“This is the dress! This one!”

I agreed. It was totally perfect, and one she could wear to many things, not just the prom. Next stop, the shoe table, where my sweet niece-for-the-day thought she wanted black shoes until a pair of pale pink strap sandals caught her eye. Again a perfect and fashionable choice. A charcoal handbag, dangling but tasteful earrings and a necklace completed her ensemble, and then she was presented with a goodie bag full of beauty and bath products before heading over to hair and make-up.

Even though the guardian for her group home was in the main waiting area/beauty room, my charge asked me to stay with her as she got dolled up, chatting about her desires to be a pediatrician (her favorite subjects are math and science), Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Vampire Diaries; singing one of her favorite rap songs to me, sharing the head set of her CD player so I could listen along, talking about hair and make-up. When she was all glammed up, her long tresses styled with a curling iron, and just the barest amount of make up on her slightly freckled face, she nearly cried when I said goodbye. It was all I could do to hold back tears myself, and once I was on the escalator and moving through the clots of perky cheerleaders and their perfect families, I started to sob.

Marches protesting the killing of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent police sloppiness and inaction are spreading across the country, loosely dubbed Million Hoodie March, escalated by Geraldo Rivera’s idiotic fashion comments on Fox & Friends. Geraldo urged parents of Latino and African American children to stop their kids from wearing hoodies. Shouldn’t Geraldo instead decried the idea that the simple act of wearing an article of clothing can target young people as potential criminals?

Wednesday night in New York hundreds rallied in New York City, many wearing hoodies. In London protestors also marched, wearing hoodies. The Miami Heat tweeted a photo of team members wearing hoodies. Friday night 150  Chicagoans marched carrying Skittles and ice tea, and as many of 8,000 people marched in Philadelphia, while earlier that day  12,000 students in Miami staged a school walk out. A prayer vigil was held Friday night in Sanford, Florida where Trayvon was shot by Neighborhood Watch captain George Zimmerman.

More rallies are planned over the next few days: Saturday in Washington D.C.’s Freedom Plaza, and on Monday, the one month anniversary of Travyon’s shooting, at Detroit’s Hart Plaza and at City Hall Park in downtown Los Angeles.

The names of the five GOP candidates make for some goofy, at times telling, anagrams. The letters of openly gay, pro-choice, pro-pot  candidate GOP candidate Fred Karger’s name only rearrange into one anagram, while Rick Santorum’s moniker provides the most. And the raunchiest. Here are some of the choice and fitting combinations.

NEWT GINGRICH
Cringing Whet
Etch Grin Wing
Gent Rig Winch
Get Inch Wring
Grit Gin Wench
Retching Wing
Rich Gent Wing

FRED KARGER
Erg Dark Ref

RON PAUL
A Pol Run
Lunar Op
Oral Pun
Run A Lop

MITT ROMNEY:
I My Torment
Memory Tint
Metro Minty
Not My Merit
Remit My Ton
To Mr Enmity
Yo Mr Mitten

RICK SANTORUM
A Scrotum Rink
A Trick Mourns
Crank Tourism
Crank Out Rims
I Rank Scrotum
Iron Smut Rack
It Murks Acorn
Main Cork Rust
Manic Rusk Rot
Mr Sour Catkin
Muck A Torn Sir
O Karmic Turns
Oink Crams Rut
Or Irk Sanctum
Riots Can Murk
Rim Nuts Croak
Rum Snack Riot
Rut Minor Sack
Scat Ink Rumor
Scrota In Murk
Sir Coma Trunk
Smack Ruin Rot
Smirk Can Tour
Snout Rim Rack
Strain Or Muck
Taco Smirk Run
Tin Sack Rumor
Trucks A Minor
Uncorks A Trim

Jeff Foxworthy, best known for his

You might be a redneck

schtick and creating the game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” is bringing Americans another chance to test their ignorance on television with “The American Bible Challenge” which will pit teams of contestants representing

worthy faith-based organizations

against each other as they try to answers questions

designed to acknowledge and celebrate the Bible’s continuing importance in contemporary life and culture.

This descriptions raises more questions than it answers:

1) Who decides what are worthy faith-based organizations?
2) Will atheists and non-Christians be banned, even though they may have astounding Biblical knowledge?
3) What translation of the Bible will be used as the ultimate authority?
4) Will both Old and New Testament be used?
5) What about the Deuterocanonical texts which are accepted and included in their Bibles by Catholics, both Roman and Orthodox, but not by Protestants?
6) What about the Book of Mormon?
7) Will there be questions about Lot’s daughters, Noah’s sons, David and Bathsheba, how the serpent got around before God declared “upon thy belly shalt thou go” and other conundrums?
8) Did Jesus ride a dinosaur?
9) Who wrote the Bible?
10) And most importantly, will those who miss an answer be tossed into the fiery pit?

Considering that in the five years Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader has been on the air, only two people, Georgia Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate George Smoot, have answered the final question correctly, “The American Bible Challenge” has the potential to embarrass and humiliate so many self-righteous people.

As of late, Foxworthy has been palling around with Mitten$ Rmoney, joining him to campaign in Alabama and endorsing him on Twitter thusly:

Time for Republicans to unite behind Governor Romney, a great leader who can win the White House and rebuild our economy for all Americans.

Among the consulting producers on “The American Bible Challenge” is the non-profit Odyssey Networks which has a video exploring the theological divide between Mormons and Evangelicals, and raises a question that Foxworthy seems to be answering in the affirmative for his fans:

Is America ready for a Mormon President?

[HT: Washington Post]

In light of 17-year old Trayvon Martin’s shooting death at the hands of gun-toting Neighbor Watch captain and cop-wannabe George Zimmerman, Ben Stiller’s latest movie, Neighborhood Watch, which co-stars Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill as suburban dads who

form a neighborhood watch group to get time away from their families, only to discover a plot to destroy Earth

might not be be most tasteful trailer to be running in theaters right now. The film, written by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg from a story by Jared Stern and Shawn Levy, is due out July 27 from Twentieth Century Fox. Bad timing.

It was announced Monday that the FBI, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida will investigate the killing of Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed when gunned down by Zimmerman, as a hate crime. Zimmerman did not follow standard Neighborhood Watch guidelines, and 911 tapes showed Zimmerman ignored a dispatcher’s directive not to pursue Martin. The Sanford FL police department has come under fire for their botched handling of the case, including:

● Withholding a batch of telling 911 calls, including the one revealing Zimmerman’s possible racist remark.

● Sending a narcotics detective to the scene, instead of a homicide detective, as is typical for homicides.

● And failing to administer a drug and alcohol test to Zimmerman that night, which homicide investigator Rod Wheeler called a “fatal flaw in the investigation.”

Additionally the police did not contact Trayvon’s girlfriend who was on the phone with him at the time of his fatal encounter with Zimmerman.

New clever tune from a charming folk duo. The lyrics has words like

anal…jizz

and

Santorum

which may make this not safe for work.

Hot on the heels of their loss in New Hampshire, those dregs of America, the National Organization for Marriage, are steaming like frothy Santorum and calling for a nationwide boycott of Starbucks because:

Starbucks corporation issued a memorandum to all “US Partners” declaring that same-sex marriage “is aligned with Starbucks business practices” and “is core to who we are and what we value as a company.”

In addition to declaring its corporate-wide position in support of gay marriage, Starbucks also used its resources to participate in a legal case seeking to overturn a federal law declaring marriage as the union of one man and one woman….

This is why we must urge all consumers to “dump Starbucks,” as well as Seattle’s Best Coffee and Evolution Fresh juices, which are owned by Starbucks.

Oh gosh, far be it for me to suggest you forgo Hipster’s Porkpie Latte, Tattooed Mustache Mojo, Wallet Chain Wally’s or any other local coffeehouse that supports the artist community for your doppio fair trade, organic soy foamed, Clover brewed kopi luwak bean eye opener when you roll out of  your loft at 2pm–but we need to keep standing up to the narrow-minded, uptight, bigots who seek to control our minds and our bodies by telling us who and how we should love. And that means letting your local Starbucks manager and the corporate leadership know that you appreciate their stance by crossing their corporate threshold, ordering a cuppa and thanking the Starbuck’s baristas for their company’s all-American, open-minded stance. The same goes for any company that speaks up for marriage equality.

In many communities, Starbucks is the go-to coffee spot providing WiFi, snacks, a place to socialize, read and write, and the ever-important caffeine. And seriously, does NOM actually think that its own members will give up skinny frappuccinos or double caramel lattes?  Those NOM moms will be sneaking the Starby’s guiltily, making the mochas even more delicious for their sinfulness.

Make mine a double.

Texas governor Rick Perry’s Facebook page, tragically entitled Give Rick a Chance, is getting menstrual bombed, as dozens of women share their stories and ask his advice about PMS, birth control pills, hormone replacement and reproduction. Meanwhile, some supportive men have gotten in on the discussion.

Here are a few of the gems before his staff scrubs them. Feel free to join in before his staff blocks comments!

Mitten$ Rmoney and Rick “Frothy” Santorum’s Secret Service code names–which the candidates chose themselves–reflect a certain cockiness and focus on their manliness, and in Romney’s case, a slight Oedipal overreach around. Rmoney’s code name “Javelin,” hypothesizes GQ which first reported the top sekrit pseudonyms,

is a reference to the ’60s muscle car made by American Motors Corporation, the company once run by George Romney.

Mitten$’ dad George ran for President in 1968, despite being born on foreign soil. And of course, javelins are long sticks thrown in track competitions, so the phallic symbolism is rather clear.

Rick Santorum chose an even more multi-layered named, “Petrus,” Latin for Peter, and translating to rock. Along from its popular meaning throughout the English speaking world as a slang term for “penis,” “Peter” is, of course, Jesus’ sidekick, his second in command, the “rock” on which Jesus wanted to build his church.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Peter also famously denied Jesus three times, making him kind of a weasel, and proving that Jesus was psychic.

And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.

Choosing this nickname is pretty self-aggrandizing. Like, is Santorum saying he’s gonna be Peter as in Jesus’ best bud; and if elected, God help us all, build (his version) of Jesus’ church in America?

Ah, but there is a third even more secret meaning to Petrus: Château Pétrus is one of the world’s most expensive and lauded wines, hailing from a small estate in the Bordeaux region of France, with an average bottle price of $2,790, though prices for older bottles can easily rise to five figures.

So, elitist vintage? Jesus’ righthand dude deep in denial? Or just a dick?

Meanwhile, in response to “Game On,”–the execrably frothy Santorum singalong from teen sisters Camille and Haley Harris, who go by the name First Love Band — a 12-year old boy wrote this ditty and then directed the video himself:

They just want a little meat without the Bible.

Chk-fil-A: Closed on Sundays and strongly anti-LGBT