If you haven�t noticed, this summer has been kind of crap for me. I know�the cryptic notes don�t really fill you in on anything at all, but it�s better that way. Believe me. Things in the romance department have been highly out of order. Try punching the old time clock of love for 3 years steady and then finding you�re out on your can, scrambling to make ends meet. The other part of the problem is that I can�t seem to get it together with some damn friends who live in this zip code. Nothing seems to be gelling, and being a social animal, this upsets me.

When desperation sets in, I hang out with my sister. My leettle sister. I like her and all, but she is not my ideal companion. I�m downtown, she�s suburbia; I�m thrift store, she�s boutique; I prefer the pre-req hipster brew in a can, she loves her cheesewater martinis; I�m a flailing social disaster; she�s living with her boyfriend, practically affianced, and hangs out with the same crowd she has since college. On the latter point, we�re even-steven in many respects. But outside of strange family jokes and a shared glossary of words that are misused in a way only we understand, we have little common ground. Enter the four ladies of �Sex and the City.�

Alright, alright. Shut up. It�s risky, admitting this in a public forum, but what the hell? Look, it is an absurd show. I know it and more importantly, it seems to know it. 30 minutes of gratuitous flashes of skin�the ladies� own as well as that of the many sad cows who died for their fantabulous shoe and handbag collections. 30 minutes of the perpetual lunch, the continuous cocktail hour, and much, much silly girl-talk. The character development is piss poor. I like to think of the show as actually just about a one lady� a potentially real, or at least conceivably real, person�a composite of the disturbingly one-dimensional personalities each of the four main characters presents. There�s the quirky one (Carrie), the slutty one (Samantha), the prissy one (Charlotte), and the smart one (Miranda). They all, in one form or fashion, live glamorous, exciting lives that center around dating and mating in the haute society hotspots of Manhattan. Sometimes the show tackles the big issues like socio-economic class barriers in the Hamptons and cross-cultural relationships (Can the waspy-jewish combo find true love?), but the plot structure never varies. It is as firm as their toned little bods: meet men, fuck men, talk about them over brunch. It is gloriously simple, scintillatingly mindless, and utterly fascinating to me.

I am too cheap to pay for cable; my sister has it. There is little else that we might share without fighting over other than a half hour of TV watching. At some point in the not too distant past, I stumbled into her Sunday night ritual of watching this show with her girlfriends. It was like entering the Twatlite Zone. I�ve read my Steinem, Paglia, the typical feminist cannon. I am a socially conscious, progressive type gal. I have been told I have some girlish traits, e.g. a yen for shoes that I don�t really �need� & baby-talking the puss into a stupor (sowwy), but otherwise my double-x�s are pretty laid back. My mom was not big on the whole �pretty girl� routine and I have yet to ever press a make-up brush to my porcelain complexion (oh, I am sometimes a little vain�my other nod to girly tendencies). Home-cut hair and hand-me-downs from big brother helped seal my tomboyish fate. My sister has the same mother, but somehow she popped out of ye olde home environs with a strikingly different take on things. Go figure. The nature/nurture debate rages on.

Regardless, it has been primarily sis�s influence that has helped me explore the femme side of things. Case in point: Sunday�s at nine, her living room is frothing over with estrogen, airy and frivolous, like the foam that tops off the Skim Mocha Latte�s she and her pals are so fond of. (Yah!) The live-in, per strict stereotypical guidelines, retreats to somewhere manly, and the pow-wow clusters around the campfire of the modern age, the bright center of communication and communion: the television set. True, my sister and her friends watch the show. It is actually on. But more than that, they utilize the script as the springboard for their own conversations. Being a humorless nerd, I actually got pissy the first time I witnessed this. �Do you mind?� I would snark at them, �I can�t hear the dialogue.� Only to be met with an �Anyway�whatever� and lots of eye-rolls and more talking. Now, I realize this is the best part of the show. When someone compares her man to the loser face-licker guy on the show that Charlotte is dating, it is a lot more entertaining than the standard bitch-fest. Small revelations come out of confessions spurred by Samantha�s risqu� behavior. Plus, there is the never ending fashion commentary to be made.

In any case, it is only a half-hour. But it can be transforming. Somehow, the soothing wash of girly banter coming from the idiot box and those around me seeps into my psyche. I�ve just had a relaxing soak in the proverbial bubble bath of the mind. Calgon, take me away! At times, it is invigorating, like a fruit-scented body scrub. Sometimes, I can go over there feeling pretty down at the mouth. But, a couple of minutes later, I�m yukking it up with some ladies, watching the gals on the boob tube playing dress-up in clothes I could never afford and treating men just like I�ve always suspected one should�like buses. Don�t worry if you miss one, another will always come along. I tell you, sometimes it�s enough to take me from feeling fatalistic to fabulously femme fatale. Not bad for 30 minutes of pure schlock.