for 4 April 2001. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Actually Polly, I actively encourage smart, funny women to abuse me. I find it very rewarding to have bad moods taken out on me. Perverse, I know, but a useful sort of perversion, given how angry smart women tend to be.

And who'd want to hang out with dumb chicks?

And as for NMH, while it is an elite prep school, it does have one of the best financial aid programs of any school in its class. It also draws about 30% of its student body from overseas, making for a fascinating social scene. But you've probably heard all that from that pompous ass who blew you off. That guy must have been on crack. Elite crack.

Ciao

Ben Schwabe
<bschwabe@MIT.EDU>

Oh, he wasn't pompous. You underestimate me, thinking I'd go out with some pompous ass. I like the faux-humble, ultimately distant types much better.

Funny you should ask "Who'd want to hang out with dumb chicks?" because I distinctly recall discussing this with an exboyfriend. We had recently broken up, and we were speaking with a younger guy, who was saying that he was dating this woman who was very smart and cool, but "a total psycho." This was before I understood that a wide range of utterly innocuous behavior often falls under the definition "psycho" as defined by vaguely frat-ish men. Anyway, I explained to this guy (perhaps with a wee bit of self-loathing misogynist traces picked up from my years as a frat-boy wanna-be) that all smart women are somewhat psycho, because when you grow up smart, and a woman, in America these days, it makes you more than a little neurotic (I said this with perhaps a wee bit of feminist anger picked up from my years as an angry feminist, an era that hasn't quite come to a close yet). I can't explain why this happens, and certainly smart men have their own set of El Guapos to deal with. At any rate, my exboyfriend chimed in by casting a firm vote for the dumber, less crazy varieties of women in the world. And then he married one of them, and had three beautiful darling little children.

I, on the other hand, went on to alienated scores of men who had previously believed that a smart woman would be "great to date" and "much more fun when it comes time for Trivial Pursuit." Well, I'm emotionally unstable, and I'm terrible at Trivial Pursuit. So, each relationship ended more quickly than the last, but at least, for a short while, they admired my agile mind. The better to control you with, my dear.

Fuck, maybe I'm just stupid and crazy and there's no real excuse for any of it.

Oh, the crack. The elite crack. How could I forget?

Abusively,

Polly

In the latest issue, (the one with the Sopranos on the cover) the weasels at Newsweek have appropriated your recurring x-y axis graph doohicky. They plot TV shows along a "dumb" to "smart" x-axis and a "daring — safe" Y-axis. FWIW, they equate "dumb and daring" with MTV Undressed and "safe and smart" with the West Wing. Just thought you should know. You're nobody in this business until somebody else is stealing from you.

John K
<jknapp@oacpc.com>

When the weasels start stealing your ideas, that's when you know you're ready for the big time. I'd better get my manager and my publicist on the phone, pronto, 'cause this means I'm gonna break wide, real quick-like, baby!

Unsafe and stupid,

Polly

i occasionally read your little virtual rag despite my tendency to become annoyed with the we-know-all-and-the-rest-of-you-are-fucked attitude. but your recent guide to avoiding Bad, Evil American Movie Entertainment, while