"fortune hunter!"

Heidi Montag is the 23-year-old reality television celebrity who went from sweet and natural Colorado girl to botched and butchered Los Angeles pop star ... all in a matter of minutes. She recently underwent 10 different plastic surgery procedures in a day, saying that she wanted to become the "perfect" version of herself.

She's always indicated signs of derangement: she married a sociopathic mimbo-creeper, Spencer Pratt, and the two of them were baptized in the jungle by a born-again Christian minister (a.k.a. the youngest Baldwin brother) on public television. After they were absolved of their sinful hard-partying lifestyle, Spencer and Heidi (a.k.a. "Speidi") decided to make a series of music videos featuring Heidi's enlarged breasts on the beach. Well, now her lips (and cheeks, and eyebrow arches, and butt) will be bigger too. And her thighs (and ears, and nose, and chin, and neck) will be smaller.

She might be a talentless celebrity past the brink of sanity, but in a culture saturated by image obsession and body perfectionism, Heidi Montag might also be a dreadful alarm call for a future lived in plastic.

Francis Bacon Paintings

Pierrot Le Fou is a garishly sumptuous New Wave French film featuring the studly Jean-Paul Belmondo, as Pierrot, and the angel-faced Anna Karina, as Marianne. Pierrot begins in the throngs of a boring bourgeois party and quickly skips out on his wealthy Italian wife to sleep with the gamine babysitter, Marianne. But her apartment is a crime scene of smuggled weapons and ambiguously bloodied Algerian gangsters.

So Pierrot and Marianne make a chaotic game of road-tripping it to the French Riviera, to escape the terrorists and live as outlaws in the pleasure of their youthful good looks. But life on the beach soon turns to ennui: after Pierrot made the mimbo-wanker move of dropping his real life for fantastic escapedes with princess in flight Marianne, he becomes just another one of those emotionally unavailable men and takes to reading philosophy books and writing diary entries. Not even the vivid pop art colors and Mediterranean journey to nowhere can save this tragic couple.

"You're a wicked girl."

Personal ads are always intriguing sources of entertainment. Some desperate men living in Paris have posted ads in the local bilingual magazine, and their cultural confusion is only exceeded by the vagueness of their romantic expectations:

"Single, 6 feet, sportsman, Architect-innovator, screenwriter; I'm looking for a bilingual woman: French, English, single pour séjours Hollywood (screenplays/contracts) et plus." He describes himself as "an innovator," as though it is a legitimate profession, and I am still unclear as to what "séjours Hollywood" denote. He attempts to alleviate any creepiness from the ad by using the French expression "et plus" instead of the utterly unwholesome English version, "and more ..."

Another fellow claims to be a "45-year-old CEO" who is good with all nationalities of women, although he speaks "abominable" English. He is looking to meet a young girl for "an installation project" in London from December. It is hard to discern if he is seeking a co-creator for a performance art piece, a flatmate, or a lover. Perhaps it's all of the above. Regardless, these two seem like classic mimbos en route to creeper-town.

A Zeus Complex

When living abroad, one frequently experiences lost in translation moments, especially in the world of dating. My friend is living in Moscow and recently received the following lovely bouquet of text messages from various disgruntled Eastern-European mimbo-creepers:

1. "Hey! How r u? I m planning to go to outside..club or sth..do u wanna join or do u wanna listen all night ur roommate's peeing..:) :p"

2. "U take1 minute to see some 1, 1day to know some 1, but, I take whole life to get 1 like u."

3. "hi, i needn't anything from u, you are a cheater, i haven't any problems with girls..u are not angel as u showed us.."

which was soon followed by:
4. "CHEATER"

Sur La Terrasse

Just as I was thinking all about tiny Smart Cars in France and large SUVs in the states, I met a couple of typically American men at an Italian restaurant in Paris. They were admiring a Smart Car in the street and proclaiming vague statements of delight like, "The more I stay here, the more I come to love this place," as though Paris were a quaint summer camp on the coast of Maine.

When I talked to these ambiguously Texan gentlemen, I discovered that they were truly men of the world. They were airplane pilots. When I asked them where they lived, one responded, "I'm living in Guam actually." And when I asked him what that's like, he responded, "It's hot." They were delighted by "how healthy everyone is in Paris, and how everyone walks everywhere." More deep thoughts from our neighborhood airline pilots. Talk about mimbo material.

They hesitantly accepted to try the spacious driver's seat of my friend's Smart Car, but I have a feeling they will be happy to return to their Jeep Grand Cherokees.

Lunar Man

While attempting to recover from jet-lag, I went out dancing in one of those little Parisian "boîtes" where scruffy-looking "art" and film people drink strawberry champagne cocktails in red glasses. I met a typical French boy who was 27 and still living at home with his parents. It seems he is making a career out of getting drunk. When asked what he "does for work," he replied, "I play golf, but I'm injured right now." He was definitely mimbo material.

I told him about the differences between mimbos, wankers, and pimps, and he asked me what I thought of him. I replied, "You are too young to be a pimp. Since you are French, you are automatically part-mimbo." He was determined to become a pimp, but it turns out that after I left the club, he scoffed to his friends about my dance moves and friendly personality: "She is so American."

So in the end he is my first French Wanker of the Week. And I reported to my friend, "If I had been in Manhattan and met a 27-year-old golf-playing gimp who lives with his Mummy, I would have crossed the room immediately to go dance alone "like an American," whatever that means.

Midnight Kielbasa

Summertime comes and people resort to meeting strangers on the street and agreeing to go on first dates with them. Unfortunately, the lighting at night on said streets often obscures the person's true mimbo factor, and a man who at first appears to resemble Jude Law in fact resembles something a bit closer to Jack the Ripper.

Gauche things to do to a girl on a first date:

1. Inviting her to your parents' house. Especially if you are over thirty-five.

2. When she arrives, offering her a beer at the kitchen counter.

3. Leaving "the game" on in the background so you can glance at the score.

4. Intermittently catching flies with your bare hands.

5. Talking about how you're "between careers" and recently underwent vocational testing to discover your "true calling."

6. Telling stories about doing shrooms.

7. Giving her a tour of all the make-out spots in your parents' house and neglecting to turn on any lights.

Final Cut

A man I know pretends to be a hotel mogul, or at least the child of a hotel mogul, but more often than not, he strikes me as a compulsive liar. He pays exorbitant amounts of money for my friends to flounce about the hot spots of lower Manhattan and at every venue the management gives him the royal treatment. So we listen and nod when he rambles on about buying an island off the coast of Cuba and jetting off to Prague for a mid-week party trip.

This fellow wears his wealth on his sleeve, if that could be considered a viable turn of phrase, and he is no stranger to the Manhattan alpha-male penchant for calling girls repeatedly, even when those girls never answer. Some would deem this approach to be irritatingly idiotic—a classic mimbo move. But, I recently discovered that this mysterious hotelier is actually married ... so the fact that he hammer-calls multiple girls under age 23 on a daily basis makes me think that he is nothing but a wanker—a determined wanker with speed dial numbers in the hundreds.

Rolling Pastry Cutters

The classic Hollywood theme of the magical makeover is ever present in Sydney Pollack's oh-so-'90s version of Sabrina. A sojourn in Paris transforms Sabrina from an awkward "ugly duckling" wallflower to a radiant vision of femininity. Her lifetime crush (played by Greg Kinnear) is a shallow trust fund baby and a quintessential mimbo: blondish, boyish, and easily distracted from the task at hand. In true mimbo form, he sits down and cuts his ass on a pair of champagne flutes that he had intended to use in seducing Sabrina (aka not his fiancée)—talk about quick karmic disaster.

The older brother (played by Harrison Ford) is an endearingly geeky pimp who does all the billion dollar deals for the family company. In the end, I have decided that Harrison Ford circa the early-90s is my ideal dreamboat. His preppy-pimp-boy-scout virility in Working Girl and Sabrina could make end Princess in Flight stop running.

Big Subtle Macadamia Nut

Let's just say for the sake of argument that my friend was dating a boy named Dick Inwood. He was a prince with a roving eye and without vertebrae. He was fond of nights out in Shanghai, girls who wear Uggs, SKEX, and the law—not necessarily in that order. Dick Inwood makes the Wanker of the Week award, because after months of smothering his girlfriend in possessive love, one night he drank too much, had a fatal indiscretion, and promptly broke up with her. Did I mention that Dick Inwood pulled this mimbo move not once but twice? The second break-up took place via Skype, so he gets an extra special Wanker of the Week Gold Star Award for his creative use of technology.

Moral of the story: once a wanker, twice a wanker. Let's just hope that my friend doesn't go crawling back to Dick Inwood after he makes his inevitable puppy-dog plea for sympathy over the fact that he can't hold his liquor without falling for some random girl's line.

Taffy Pull

A thunderstorm and a marathon of David Lynch's surreal-sinister TV series, Twin Peaks, devolved into an afternoon receiving wisdom from a psychic named Stacey in the Leather District. When a Parisian pop start receives a tarot card reading at the start of Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7, she learns that she is going to die of cancer. My psychic told me that I have a sickness, but she also told me that she could "cure me with crystals and candles and medications, and whatever was necessary...in 9 days...for 300 dollars." Sounds like a deal to me.

Or maybe I should just use the money towards a summer getaway discount. The options on the website include "big cities," "romance," and "sunny spots." Stacey-the-psychic also asked me if I wanted to know the age of my death.

What would you do if you knew how many years you had left to live? Healing crystals, big cities, romance, or sunny spots? Or maybe just watch more Twin Peaks. Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Cooper is pretty hot—sort of a pimp-prince-mimbo fusion.

Oh No! I am lost again!

In Woody Allen's early-90s divorce epic, Scenes from a Mall, Allen plays a sell-out lawyer who deals sneakers to sports teams. He breaks the news of his multiple infidelities to his wife—on their 16th wedding anniversary—in a shopping mall—over frozen yogurt. In short, he is in true Wanker of the Week form. Bette Midler plays the wife, a sell-out celebrity shrink who recently published a book promoting 'the joys of marriage in an age of divorce.'

After outbursts of panic and violence regarding the division of assets, a series of margaritas brings the couple back together. But then the wife confesses that she too had an affair. The derogatory Los Angeles stereotypes abound: malls, Mexican drinks, sushi, frozen yogurt, Woody Allen's Mimbo-ish ponytail, and the way that, in the end, material goods (in the form of trendy and hideously 1990s outfits) bring the feuding husband and wife back together.

Today at the kiosks in the mall a salesman of vaguely Middle Eastern descent asked my mother, "Excuse me, ma'am...but where did you purchase your eyes?" It was the pick-up line of creeper-dead-sea-hand-cream-salesmen if I ever heard one.

Disengagement

I hosted a reunion fête for my oldest friends in the world—the ones who used to accompany me as a twelve-year-old girl dressed in drag parading around the local video store on Friday nights banging on tambourines to attract awkward attention. Our nostalgic slumber party was upgraded from our middle school days of Toll House cookies and prank phone calls, by prosecco and a trip to a typically Boston, typically preppy bar.

But in the end, we still stayed up until 5 am, watching a VHS tape of our 8th grade musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (quite possibly the tranniest musical of all time). I guess the only difference was that this time we did not pee in our pants from laughing too much. And this time we had a lot more to say about our various experiences with mimbos and wankers. When my mother asked, "Do any of you girls have someone special in your life?" my friend responded, "Well, I have a boyfriend, but he's not that special."

Exquisite Landscaping

I passed by a gaggle of local New Haven high school kids processing from their hotel prom into limos and yellow school buses. They were en route to the 'after-party,' whatever that can entail at age 17 and in shiny synthetic visions in satin reminiscent of Olympic figure skating, TV ballroom dancing, and bridesmaids circa 1990.

Amidst the hormonal hair-sprayed girls, and their delinquent soon-to-be wanker-mimbo escorts, there was one boy who stood out from the crowd, mostly because he was not wearing a shirt, but also because he was wearing a white tuxedo vest and gold tie. I congratulated him for the flamboyant gaucheness of his outfit and even snagged a few photos of the all-in-white-semi-nude exhibitionism. Of course, he was very obliging and more than comfortable in front of the camera. His confidence gives me hope for the future of embracing homosexuality in America's public school system.

A Man Named Gerald

"Spring Fling." Such telling words? During the sultry early-summer day I contemplated the issue of virginity. If you are a girl about to graduate from university, and you have not had that first 'struggle between the sheets' with a mimbo, wanker, pimp, or ever-elusive prince, then should you keep waiting? Should you hold out for the ideal romantic scenario to emerge? Or should you merely turn to a guy friend, or the local man at the wine shop, and move from virginity to...well, post-virginity?

"To lose one's virginity" has always struck me as a problematic expression. What is lost? For me, the only thing that was lost when I lost my virginity was the battery on my boyfriend's parents' Volvo. There is an irrational sense that this event is a "rite of passage." But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes a Bat Mitzvah is just an awkward thirteen-year-old girl receiving too many over-priced Tiffany heart tag necklaces. And sometimes even Volvos run out of batteries.

Kindred.

I was recently lurking in a corner of Manhattan with a friend from good old New England. In boarding school we played squash together and both wrote the type of short stories typical of teenage girls (that is to say: involving a sexual awakening, an intrigue with a male teacher, an allusion to masochistic behavior, and/or a distressing incident with the mother character). Now I am still churning out those "lost girl" stories, and she is living the post-college life in Manhattan. Unfortunately, due to the current hiring freeze, she is also getting a taste for the unemployed life. As a delightful, creative, well-educated girl, who just so happens to look like a Ralph Lauren model, one would think that the sin city would be obsessed by her...

So she braved the waters of waitressing, at one of those painfully hip downtown cafés that serves strong espressos and food that is vaguely Moroccan, in a Cuban diner-inspired interior, to an artist/celeb clientele. And that's how she met her very first NYC Wanker of the Week. So there she was: the down-to-earth New England girl turned struggling waitress on a first date with Hollywood pretty boy Matt Dillon.

He was a mimbo-wanker combination, with an almost embarrassing penchant for dirty talk. She was fired from the hip downtown café job. The more experienced waitress-slash-models were vicious towards her. Maybe they were just jealous that Matt Dillon asked her out instead of them. Incidentally, I met him once at an over-priced vegan restaurant on the Upper East Side. He was wearing a puffy orange parka and oversized (women's?) sunglasses. I vaguely recall that he tried to pick me up. And so it goes.

"bold in print"

The tradition of love letter writing is dead and gone. Or maybe the inundation of new forms of technological contact is giving the love letter its renaissance. A dashing Argentinean artist has been sending me long, flourishing, and lyrical poem-letter-odes, ever since I met him on my last evening in Buenos Aires. It's mischievous, to say the least. But it is lovely to see people using Facebook for reasons other than to "Poke" each other.

"Poking"—in case you are unfamiliar with the term—is an unfortunately named function on the ever-expanding social networking website, Facebook. "Poking" symbolizes a regression to the kindergarten boy-girl antics of: "I kinda like you, but girls have germs, so I'm just going to poke you instead." Alternatively, poking is a way for wankers and mimbos in their twenties (and below and beyond) to flirt with girls, or to laugh at the fact that they just "poked" someone. Which brings me to my last point:

Gauche things to do to someone you hope to date:

1. Poking them on Facebook.

2. Poking them, literally. Wait. This whole discussion just became too euphemistic, even for my taste.

Fuzzy Bunny Poodle Pumpkin

Easter Sunday is gloomy. Especially all the eggs everywhere. It reminds me of theories on the evolution of human sexuality, and the way that a woman's finite reserve of eggs can mark her behaviors in love and marriage. It's the old story: given that men seem to have an endless supply of sperm, each of their mates does not symbolize a tremendous investment in the grand scheme of their reproductive banking. For women, it is a different story. And that story might even last nine months long.

Or maybe the whole evolution and human sexuality connection is archaic. We have cell phones, Twitter, and Match.com nowadays. Nature does not even factor into it. A woman's apparently innate 'selectiveness' is so confused that she will not just date one, but two, Wanker of the Week. And a mimbo as well. And maybe even a pimp, just to round out the experience. Moral of this Easter Sunday story: men and women are doomed—eggs, no eggs, long-term love, short-term affair, internet dating, happenstance rendezvous, old flame, new email love letter correspondent. Take a deep breath and maybe a walk in the woods.

You & Me Solo

On the cover of today's Yale Daily News there is a photo of a beaming young couple, two Yale seniors (both Catholics and on the crew team) who are engaged to be married upon graduation. It all began when they met on the steps of the New Haven post office, and they sealed the deal (not literally I'm sure, since they are devout Catholics) when he proposed to her last year on those very steps. What a whirlwind tale of tidy romance.

Marriage before the age of 23 is uncommon these days, and the figures are dropping in recent years: apparently only about 25 percent of women and 16 percent of men choose this path of an early yoke and bypass the lovely exploratory period of the 20s dating scene. The Yale Daily News reported that less than 40 percent of young marriages end in divorce, which is less than the overall 50 percent divorce rate.

My guess is that it's all a matter of luck. Destiny could have it that you meet the man, or woman, of your dreams while studying for final exams, under the harsh fluorescent glow of the library reading room, at age 19. For some women, their destiny seems to be meeting a series of mixed characters until the right one comes in, maybe late in life. And then, oops, that one wasn't the right one either—just a regular old mimbo/wanker conglomerate.

"Well that didn't go as planned.."

I could never fully trust someone who doesn't love Woody Allen films. I have experimented with giving certain people the benefit of the doubt, but in the end, I just find Woody Allen's movies to be so pee-in-your-pants funny that I become dreadfully uncomfortable by anyone who cannot appreciate at least two of the notable gems (Manhattan, Love & Death, Annie Hall, and my new favorite, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, to name a few). I was recently on a first date with someone when they told me that they found Vicky Cristina to be "prosaic, full of stereotypes, disappointing in terms of the advertised lesbian sex scene, and not very funny."

This fellow was neither the desired level of pimp nor the charmingly flawed mimbo, but his comment about Woody Allen put me off the experience like the site of day-old fish in a restaurant in the Mexico City airport. He will have to do something unexpected to redeem himself from this offense—like confess to his love of the original Brideshead Revisited BBC series with Jeremy Irons, but then, the fellow would probably be gay, and that wouldn't improve matters either.

On a different note—one of unquestioningly good faith: it is the last day of February.