On Advice

I’m a big fan of advice columns. I love reading them. Does anyone have any on-line advice columns to recommend? I suspect there’s a gem or two or three out there I’m not familiar with.

There are three I read regularly: Dear Prudence at slate.com, Cary Tennis at salon.com and Dan Savage at villagevoice.com.

How many letters to advice columnists are fakes? It must be a big thrill to get your fake letter published and treated seriously, if you’re the kind of person who’s into that.

Last week, Prudence got a letter from a woman worried that her younger husband (who was in fact only one year younger than her (than she?)) looks much too young for her now that he’d gotten a new hairpiece. LOL! Prudence wisely pointed out that, a) he’s not really a younger man; and b) if he’s wearing a hairpiece he’s looks ridiculous and not young. I’m trying to understand the mind of a woman who thinks her husband’s wig can look that good. Love is blind.

Cary Tennis’s columns cover every subject under the sun, but, in his answers, he seems to spend an inordinate amount of energy fretting about the passage of time, his life and his own mortality. I can’t imagine why I can relate to that.

Dan Savage is usually funny and informative. Where else could I have learned that cuckolding is (apparently) really, really popular these days. This is disturbing. If the contemporary male gets a thrill out of knowing his wife is sleeping with someone else, I’d say we’ve got to do something to fix the contemporary male. Bring back jousting. Bare-knuckles boxing. No Marques of Queensbury rules. Fight Club. Whatever.