Bunny Karen Drennan/Facebook

A group of former Playboy Bunnies will gather tonight for a bunny-reunion of sorts and they’re looking for ladies who donned the suit, the ears and puffy tail at the Dallas Playboy Club from 1977-1981. Former bunny Karen Criswell Drennan has rounded up 60 former bunnies and she has set up a Facebook page, Former Playboy Bunnies of Dallas. Drennan recently came back from the National Playboy Bunny Reunion in Chicago and AARP magazine covered the event. Most bunnies–they are not synonymous with Playmates who pose nude; bunnies were cocktail waitresses at Playboy clubs across the country–are an average age of 60 said Drennan.  Earlier this week, a small group of bunnies sat down with Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow who just about busted out of his pants at Sambuca he writes in today’s column, “Thirty years ago it would have been a sexual fantasy come true – lunch with a clutch of Playboy Bunnies, I mean.” Back in the day, “We really were like celebrities,” Carolann Roberts, 53, who still has her vintage purple bunny costume, told Blow. ”Like Superman or Wonder Woman, you went into the dressing room as a normal person, but when you put on that costume and stepped out, you were transformed,” wrote freelance writer and former bunny Deborah Voorhees in a column last year. Though the clubs have long since closed (the Dallas club was on the second floor of an office building at Yale Boulevard and North Central Expressway (now SMU))  and the bunny dip ain’t as easy as it used to be, Drennan wants to get former Dallas bunnies together for a hutch reunion. Former bunnies and floor staff who worked the Dallas club are invited to tonight’s reunion. No posers, please. You may have to do a dip to get in. And bring your costumes! For more information, email karen@drennan.com.

Has Title IX got it backward? Last week, a district judge ruled that Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., could not cut its volleyball program in favor of competitive cheerleading. U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill said cheerleading is, “too underdeveloped and disorganized” and that “competitive cheer may, some time in the future, qualify as a sport under Title IX,” but as it stands now, cheerleading doesn’t qualify.” A similar case is being heard at Delaware State University where a gender equality lawsuit has been filed to try and stop the school from cutting the equestrian team in favor of competitive cheerleading. So is cheerleading a sport protected under Title IX or glorified glee club that’s only found a competitive field among uber competitive parents and coaches who’ve made what used to be ra-ra-sis-boom-bah into weeks long summer camps and boot camp like, cut throat competition? Or does it depend on the school? In 2009, Florida International University cut its cheerleading and band program but kept its dance program.

An Augusta State University graduate student in the counseling program has sued the university claiming their “remediation” plan exposing her to the gay community violates her civil rights. According to CNN, Jennifer Keeton has expressed her Christian views on homosexuality both inside and outside the classroom and ASU has promised to expel her if she doesn’t complete sensitivity training that includes increased written and organizational skills to help her become a, ”multiculturally competent counselor, particularly in regard to working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning populations,” reports CNN. Keeton is being backed by the Alliance Defense Fund and says, “I want to stay in the school counseling program, [but] I can’t honestly complete the remediation program knowing I would have to alter by beliefs. I’m not willing to — and I know I can’t — change my biblical views.” The Alliance Defense Fund says her free speech is being violated. But correct me if I’m wrong, I though a counseling session was an opportunity to vent your concerns with a licensed professional not someone who feels the need to tell you their beliefs and their opinion and refuses to acknowledge your concerns based on their moral issues. For its part, the univeristy also said in a statement a, ”professional counselor’s job is to help clients clarify their current feelings and behaviors and to help them reach the goals that they have determined for themselves, not to dictate what those goals should be, what morals they should possess, or what values they should adopt.” Amen! I think Ms. Keeton is confused. Counseling is not the ministry. If she has such strongly held moral beliefs that homosesuality can’t even be spoken to her in a clinical setting, then she needs to hop on over to the theology program where her specific skill set is needed. No one is asking her to stop being a Chrisitian. They’re asking her to start listening and being a counselor. Isn’t that what Jesus would do?

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Update: An AnnaFermanova.com web site has been set up to help off set legal costs.
I knew North Texas had a Russian spy too. Anna Femanova is under house arrest at her parents’ home in Plano after authorities at JFK International Airport, “found a Raptor night vision weapons sight and two advanced rifle sights stuffed in a pair of UGG boots,” The Dallas Morning News reports. Femanova, a Latvian ex-patriate who studied cosmetology in North Texas, lives with her husband in Moscow. And she doesn’t like being dubbed ”America’s new sexy Russian spy” according to reports.  “She is quite sexy, you could say, but she is not a spy,” Fermanova’s Addison-based attorney, Scott Palmer, told The News. The equipment she carried out of the United States into Russia require a license which Fermanova didn’t have. The serial numbers on the items were also blacked out. She says the night vision equipment was for a friend who is a hunting enthusiast. Palmer told CBS 11 they “hunt bears at night” and it’s expensive to buy high tech hunting equipment in Russia. OK. Not only are the new generation of Russian spies kind of lame, they’re not even good spies anymore. Hiding scopes in a pair of UGGs and living in the burbs of New York and Seattle and now Collin County.  Is this all some sort of mass PR campaign for Salt? Because that I could buy into that. Aren’t we over the Cold War with Russia? Didn’t that end like a decade ago? Maybe someone needs to tell the Russians we’ve moved on to another area of the world. The good times or spying and espionage are over. These wannabees may be rogue agents but the next time you smuggle in night vision equipment to Moscow you may not want to hide them in a pair of boots that go through an x-ray machine, Anna. (But I have a feeling this kid is a victim of bad timing and poor choices and the media really wants to play up that “sexy” image.) Jeez. Come on Russia! Step up your game a little. It’s not even fun anymore. And does every good looking girl going into Russia have to be a spy? Why aren’t they just calling her a hot smuggler? Or a young woman who made some really bad choices and is paying the consequences for multiple misconceptions.

Jan Schill, 31, a photographer whose work often includes families and children, took out an ad in a local newspaper and created a web site donotvoteformydad.com in an effort to sink her father’s campaign for District 21 judge in Oklahoma. The quarter page ad reads, “John Mantooth is not a good father, not a good grandfather, and in my opinion…he would not be a good judge!” John Mantooth says he’s disappointed in his daughter’s behavior but apparently there’s been bad blood between father and daughter since Mantooth divorced Schill’s mother in 1981.  Jan’s husband, Andrew Schill, previously worked for Mantooth’s opponent, Greg Dixon, who says he wants no connection with the Schills or the ill thought ad. Ms. Schill, who doesn’t even live in Okla., anymore said she was pretty sure her dad would be pissed about the ad and web site, ”We just felt like it would be bad if he were to become a judge,” Schill said in a telephone interview from her home in Durango, Colo., according to the Associated Press  “I assumed that he would not appreciate it, but he’s made so many people mad, I’m just another mark on his board of people’s he’s had a beef with.” With family like this, who needs enemies?

Credit: AP Photo/Andrew and Jan Schill

Jan Schill needs a big spoonful of grow up! What kind of a daughter takes out an ad and creates a web site denouncing her father? I don’t care what kind of issues she had at the divorce, daughter’s don’t do that! It’s tacky. It’s petty and it shows how immature and childish she is. She sounds like a bratty toddler that just can’t get over the divorce and needs one hell of a spanking. Jan may despise her father for not being there, for those “worm-ridden Chocolates” he gave her at Christmas, for not being the good man she thinks he should have been, but none of us know the actual relationship the two have. We just know she’s upset with her daddy. And it’s childish and it’s unfair (at 12 it’s understandable, at 31 it’s cause for a defamation law suit). And maybe that’s the only way Jan could think to hurt her father. Congratulations, Jan! You won. How does it feel to be a bad daughter? What she did is just about the worst example of motherhood and she better hope her kids don’t get mad and call their nearest newspaper for a little revenge. For his part, I hope Mr. Mantooth takes the higher road and drives out to Colorado to confront his daughter and to apologize for any bad feelings she still carries. I hope he tells his daughter he loves her. That he’s sorry for not being there and leaves her to think about what she did and why she did it and what it will mean when she looks back at her actions 10 years later. Anger at your father is understandable. But when you lose him, if he passes away, or simply cuts you out of his life all together, when your kids ask about grandpa, Jan, you may regret what you did.

The thing about great women is that they’re great and then they fade away and we slowly start to forget about them. One woman we shouldn’t forget is Joni Eareckson Tada who became a quadriplegic after a diving accident in 1967. She’s also one of the longest living quadriplegics on record. I read her autobiography Joni as a little girl and it was the first time I thought of paralyzed people in a different way, in a human way. Like most little kids, wheelchairs and equipment and non-movement scared me. My aunt is also paralyzed and though I a grew up seeing her in a wheelchair and helping her through doors or upstairs, it wasn’t until I read Joni that I understood what paralyzed meant and how hard my aunt had to work through rehabilitation, through college, at work and as a mother with a disablity. Sometimes making a child used to paralysis doesn’t mean that they understand it. Even now I sometimes have to remind myself my aunt is disabled because I never realized the wheelchair attached to her bottom half was weird for some people. As a little kid, I saw it as an extension of her and never thought to ask, “What’s wrong?”  

But in her essay this month celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, Joni points out that there’s still a long way to go, ”While I could now roll my wheelchair into buildings with ease, I still had a hard time getting people to look me in the eye and see me as a person rather than a condition. Even today, 20 years later, my wheelchair still makes people uncomfortable. Why is that? For the most part, able-bodied, “healthy” people still fear disability. As a nation, we treat disabled people more equally and humanely than any country in the world. However, most Americans, when they encounter a disabled person, first think of themselves, “I hope that never happens to me.” Joni remains an outspoken advocate for people with disabilities, a Christian and a woman whose open struggle and honesty has helped inspire millions. And she’s a reminder to us all that ramps and electric doors don’t always change how we see the people who roll through them.

We’re all sold on Isaiah Mustafa aka the Old Spice Guy but just how effective has the highly successful ad campaign been for Old Spice? You’d be surprised says Advertising Age, “Mr. Mustafa and Wieden & Kennedy are clearly selling some body wash, but they may not be responsible for the bulk of Old Spice’s sales gain this year.” Old Spice sales have jumped a whopping 106 percent but they still don’t control the largest part of the men’s body wash market. Nivea, Gillette and Dove body wash also saw substantial gains through direct mail coupons and buy-one-get-one free offers. And there’s now a Dove man, “because ladies love Dove and I love the ladies.”  In my own household, Old Spice body wash is not purchased as my husband views the “hottie” with suspicion and refuses to smell like him. As highly successful as the advertising campaign is (and it’s a very successful advertising campaign that’s inspired a cult following of viewers on You Tube) the greatest benefit to all women is that men’s body wash sales are up period! If there’s a war over “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”, I’m pulling for anything other than body odor.

The Client List first aired last week and was one of Lifetime television networks highest rated made-for-TV dramas. Inspired by a true story, it featured the plight of fictional suburban mom Samantha Horton (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt) who becomes a prostitute to help save her family from financial ruin. But the woman who inspired the film is somewhat subject to debate. [Spoiler alert] In the movie, Horton, a former beauty queen, joins a group of women at the Kind Touch Health Spa who service their small Texas town’s most upstanding citizens. The ladies don’t love the job, but, “it sure beats the hell out of waitressing,” they joke. Horton swears she’ll quit when she has enough money to help her family but is busted by police and encouraged to give up “the list” of clients she and her counterparts serviced. They come up with 69 names, get a 30 day jail sentence and Horton later ends up giving the cheated on housewives lessons–she uses a banana prop–on how to please their husbands. I’m glossing over the good Lifetime drama bits–a loser husband, bitchy, uptight women in a highly hypocritical Christian community, and an overbearing mother played by Cybill Shepherd.

But at least one blogger is sure Horton’s character is none other than Cynthia Martinez, the University Park single mom/masseur who was arrested on prostitution charges during a police sting. “Both the fictional Horton and the real Martinez lived and plied their trade in Texas. Both also tried to hide their prostitution activity by calling it “massage.” And both put their kids first,” writes Ad Lynn at Babble, a parenting blog. The Odessa American disagrees and claims–and others agree–the inspiration is none other than Crystal Ann Burchett, a homecoming queen turned prostitute who in 2004 helped bring down 68 former clients in one of the state’s largest prostitution stings in Odessa. Crystal and her counterparts were “not run-of-the-mill whores” author Katy Vine explain in her 2005 Texas Monthly profile of Burchett, they were wholesome girls. Hewitt’s production company later bought the rights to the Texas Monthly article. “The people involved have moved on and recovered. It’s time for the issue to go away and go to a new chapter in Odessa,” Mayor Larry Melton told the Odessa American. Hewitt didn’t say one way or another but emphasized the overarching themes the film hits on. It highlights the role women are often faced with in a tough economy, ”It’s a job they can do,” said Hewitt in an ET online interview. ”It’s where the world is right now.” The film certainly rings of Odessa down to the too thick twang and the massage parlor setting is not exclusive to Martinez who has continued to deny she is a prostitute and blames her neighbors for trying to force her out of the area. If you missed The Client List, the movie will air again and you can watch it online. But the prostitute/mom inspiration behind the film seems to lean heavily in Odessa’s favor. Congratulations…I guess. Though I’m sure Lifetime will find a way to tell Martinez’s story too.

I’m caught in a bad romance with writing and will be spending this weekend at the Mayborn Nonfiction Writer’s Conference in Grapevine. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing and talking about writing and meeting with writers but when I found out Lady Gaga was in town and playing on the very weekend of the conference I’d already committed to attend (and paid $$$ for) I was so bummed. I officially hate you people who got tickets and the chance to wear pleather and caution tape. This year’s Mayborn theme is “A Way Out of the Wilderness” and the keynote speaker is memoirist Mary Karr. And, yes, ticketsare still available. But as I put on my best Poker Face and talk about themes and narrative arcs and leads and metaphors and shmooze with the local North Texas writing community and the special guests at this year’s Mayborn, there’s a little part of me that will be humming “Alejandro” with a wistful glitter eye. Rock on Gaga! Wish I could be there! But I’m happy to talk writing this weekend and if you haven’t gone to a conference yet, try it this year. It’s fun (still not as cool as Gaga) but worth it. Have a great one, ya’ll!

Yesterday, I came home and saw a guy trying to figure out how to use his key to get into the apartment complex. He kept trying to use a key not the buzz pad and I sat in my car for awhile hoping he’d put down the Jason’s Deli bag and realize there isn’t a key-hole to the gate. It got too hot in the car to wait anymore so I buzzed him through and out of nowhere he strikes up a conversation. “Hey, thanks!” he said. “My name’s Austin. Do you live here?” Yes, I replied. “What are you doing this afternoon?” he asked. “Do you want to go for a dip?” in the pool.  I was a little surprised and taken off guard and quickly told him I was working. “All afternoon?” he said. Yes, I replied. “Well, I’ll be at the pool,” he invited. And I just smiled and turned down my hallway with a grin. I realized later that the laptop computer I was carrying disguised my wedding rings. And I didn’t want to be awkward and tell him, “Um, no, I’m married,” when he invited me for a dip.  But it was one of those nice married lady experiences that we wives live for. Because on the days, like yesterday, when you don’t feel your hottest and maybe didn’t wash you hair but did wear a tight shirt, and someone other than your husband says something saucy and inviting to you it’s a nice ego boost. I’m married and I miss flirting with someone other than my mechanic for a discount on an oil change. Thank you, Austin. You’re not my type and I don’t do poolsides with guys I meet at the gate, but I appreciate the flirtation and go-getter attitude. And proudly rubbed it in my husband’s face last night and posted it on Facebook and reminded my husband *lick finger* sizzle, I still got it! And he needs to remember that.