Ask Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I have never understood all the hype about the Oscars. Actors get paid tens of millions of dollars to do a good job, and I’m supposed to get emotional when someone says “nice work, here’s your golden statue?” Meanwhile, the guys and gals making the movies really happen get left on the TV broadcast’s cutting room floor. I know that there’s no biz like show biz, and I should expect no less from the entertainment industry. But maybe you can help me plot next year’s Oscars protest?

– Worst Picture

Dear Rotten Tomato,

Of all the things happening in the world, you want to protest ... the Academy Awards? I seriously want to set you straighter than Oscar’s posture. But I won’t because I have manners. For those, I have my mom to thank, and my dad, and my siblings, and Mrs. Humphries my elementary school teacher, and Coach Rodriguez from elementary school too, and all the teachers that believed in me when the agents never did, and all the women out there who never had a voice. This is for you!

– Playing you off, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

Half a dozen people I know are spontaneously on the same no-carb, no-sugar diet with one of those annoying names like “the Brennan Purge.” I’m all in favor of these folks taking charge of their health. But I really despise their need to talk about it all the live-long day. They sound like ascetics at best, martyrs at worst. So you can’t eat a tortilla or a potato. Guess what? That ain’t gonna kill you, much as I wish it would.

– Breadstickler

Dear Doughboy,

You forgot to ask me a question. So I’ll ask it for you: “How can I stop being such a soggy biscuit about other people’s life choices?” And the answer is simple: move someplace like North Korea/Carolina, where everyone is the same by law. That’ll butter your bread.

– Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I’ve lived in Durango long enough to know that there can be some olfactory challenges in this town. It used to be just a little BO, lingering weed smoke, or overuse of essential oils, but now, to my horror, it seems that cologne is making a resurgence! How can we spread the word that wearing that stuff just makes guys smell like date rapists from the 1980s?

– Scentsitive

Dear Pepe? Le Pew,

The worst part about cologne is when the dude awkward-hugs you and then you smell like him until you bathe. Amirite? As for spreading your word, I find that public disdain works really well to deflate the testosterone balloon. Point out, in unsoftened terms, that no consenting woman would put her mouth on a body that smells like THAT. If that’s too confrontational for you, then you could just count your blessings that of the 20 million pieces of cologne-related information your brain processes each second, you retain only 20-40 of them. You know. Give or take.

– Smell the glove, Rachel