Black Lamb

Nyet, nein, non, no!

April 1st, 2007

BY LANE BROWNING

It’s celibacy, not chastity.

Just a peeve of mine; I don’t use “celibate” to mean “doing without sex.” I use it to mean “forgoing marriage” or “unmarried,” and celibacy is embedded in my hemoglobin. I never “got” the whole marriage thing.

Chastity is quite another animal. Chastity sucks.

But where was I….

OK, here: I was compatibly unmarried to the same person for a very long time. A very very very long time. Throughout our history, we got the same tedious roster of questions, and I always delivered the same responses:

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Posted by: The Editors
Category: Browning, All Marriage Issue | Link to this Entry

Wet is beautiful

September 1st, 2003

BY LANE BROWNING

I watch it every time it’s on TV. Every time. Every single time. The water. The grunge. The laconic, scowling protagonist. The long, dreary silences. THE WATER! It was nominated for a Raspberry Award as 1997’s worst film of the year (Showgirls won; pole dancing beat out water ballet) and was the subject of international ridicule, sometimes touted as “the most awful movie in history.” (Excuse me, but that distinction, indisputably, goes to Disney’s Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend.) It stars an actor for whom I have not a scintilla of respect. But it’s one of my favorite films.

Waterworld.

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Posted by: The Editors
Category: Browning, All Movie Issue, Movies | Link to this Entry

I hate books

June 1st, 2003

BY LANE BROWNING

When I was about nine I fell in love with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I was a solitary kid, and books were a seductive escape. I used to sit under a flowering bush in my family’s side yard, soggy peanut butter sandwich in hand, smelly little terrier snuffling by my side, just reading. Lewis Carroll’s imaginative scenarios about the little girl down the rabbit hole spoke directly to my rebel heart, and I memorized long passages and fancied myself a modern-day Alice: she was so crisp, so witty, so practical and peppy. She made sparkling observations, and her world was speckled with talking animals! A dream book, a book to carry with me everywhere.

Then I found out that the Rev. Dodgson was a pedophile. He converted his obsession with Alice Liddell into something sanitized and mainstream when all he really wanted was to photograph her in her underwear.

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Posted by: The Editors
Category: Books and Authors, Browning, All Book Issue | Link to this Entry

Anatomy of a box

June 1st, 2003

BY LANE BROWNING

Dear Don't Ask,

A question about tipping in the personal services area. It was my understanding that if the owner of the beauty salon provided the service, tipping was not necessary, but if an employee provided it, then tip. But these days the provider is often independent and just pays for space. If so, is a tip, in addition to a $30 haircut fee, standard operating procedure?

Let’s establish first that tipping has always been an elective practice.

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Posted by: The Editors
Category: Browning | Link to this Entry

Author profile

December 1st, 2002

Lane Browning is an essayist, writing coach, business owner, advocate, inveterate (not invertebrate) researcher, reporter, quotidian comic, interviewer, editor, satirist, counselor, activist, and jock. A nationally syndicated Willamette Week columnist for six years, she has also published in The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune, The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan, OMNI, and California Today. She has taught for the Oregon Writers Workshop and Mountain Writers Center. She regularly delivers public readings in the Portland area. She contributed a Black Lamb column called Don’t Ask and now participates on a freelance basis.

Posted by: The Editors
Category: Browning | Link to this Entry