Caturdays With Dr. Leslie

This is one part of a video series I made for Big Heart Pet Brands. I wrote this script, helped plan the look and feel, oversaw the editing, recorded a never-aired theme song, and got scratched when handling the star. 

Loose Lips: FanFiction Parodies of Great (And Terrible) Literature

My Frankenstein fan fiction was published in this book. It's sensual, read at your own risk. 

Available for purchase here.

If Friends Was Set in SF →

Originally published in The Bold Italic

A good portion of my friends spent New Year’s Day cozily hungover and binge watching Friends, which recently made its Netflix debut. To be fair we all needed some relief after the pre Christmas Black Mirror binge (that poor pig!) but rewatching Friends has given me some new perspective. Living in SF means many of us can identify with the whole “your job’s a joke you’re broke” bit, but what would it be like if the show took place in this city rather than New York?

All six friends would live in the same apartment

There’d be two bedrooms, one converted living room, and three additional housemates that weren’t really Friends, per se, and were more like Acquaintances.

Phoebe would rule the Haight St. buskers

Bonus: there would be several actual smelly cats at each performance. She’d write a follow up song entitled “Dog with a Leash Made Out of Rope.” This episode would feature special guest Margaret Cho.

Chandler and Joey could finally resolve their sexual tension

They’d pivot into a lovely apartment in the Castro and wear their matching man bracelets without shame. Could they be more adorable?

Ross’s ex wife would still be a lesbian

But he’d be less fucking obtuse about it.

Monica would work in a food truck

This episode would be called “The One With the Bacon Wrapped Kimchi.”

They’d still creep on Ugly Naked Guy across the air shaft

But either a) his name would be changed to Ugly Naked Guy and His Friend With The Dog Mask and The Whip or b) someone would get in trouble for “slut shaming” him.

The coffee shop would be called Golden Gate Perk

And would likely have a Laundromat in the back where you could also buy weed.

Rachel would get more shit for ignoring her baby the whole last season

She would be encouraged to buy a fashionable sling or invest in an Urban Sitter or out of work state college grad to watch the kid for her.

In lieu of a public fountain the gang would have to put their living room set somewhere else

Maybe cram it into a parklet *clap clap clap*

Joey would still be a struggling actor

After years of trying out indie improv groups or Fisherman’s Wharf dinner theater he’d eventually get fed up and move to LA, as so many of our Friends before us have.

It wouldn’t be a big deal that Chandler saw Rachel’s boobs

He’d already have seen them on Halloween, and during the Pride Parade, Bay to Breakers, and Burning Man Decompression.

The Prom Video would be on YouTube

Ross’s secret would be accidentally revealed when Monica unknowingly shared it on Throwback Thursday.

My Husband Wants To See Other Women - Should I Let Him Out Of This Wicker Cage? →

Originally published in Reductress

My husband Rodney and I have been happily married for a little over seven years so you can imagine the shock I felt when he asked if we could open our relationship so he could see other women. And by “asked” I mean he slipped a small handwritten note through the bars of the charming wicker cage I’ve kept him in since our wedding day

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Truth be told, I have my reservations about opening up our marriage. My first fear is, of course, losing him to another relationship, and the second is losing him to the world at large, which he has not had free access to in several years.

When Rodney expressed his interest in other women, I felt sadness that our romance had waned. I also felt confusion as to how he had found a pen and writing paper since I only allow a daily serving of chicken bones and potato skins to slip through the cage’s feeding hole.

I guess I should have seen something like this coming—I’d always heard about the seven-year itch. But before now I just thought that itch was just caused by his naked body constantly chafing against the hard wicker restraints I’d so carefully crafted in anticipation of our union! How could I have been so blind?

I tried to discuss the matter with Rodney during his monthly recreation period. “Rodney, when we got married we said for better or for worst,” I said as he ran around as he always does, trying to climb the walls of the oubliette. I told him I feel like I’m putting in more effort here than he gives me credit for, to which he responded “LET ME OUT OF HERE, YOU WITCH!” You know, how it is. It’s so hard to get through to men.

The more I thought of it the more I realized that, as much as it pained me, it might do our marriage good to open things up a little. If you love something, set it free, right?

So after a long talk (I cried a little, Rodney said “NO! NO! RELEASE ME, PLEASE!”), we decided that my husband is free to see other women as long as I have gone out, captured them and placed them in an adjacent wicker cage. I explained to my hubby that it may take a little while to get used to this arrangement, and some time to venture to a nearby village and find a lady to capture, but what it’s that kind of attentive care that makes love…love!

5 Women in Tech Who Deserve a Movie More Than Steve Jobs

Originally published on Brit.co September 2015 

Michael Fassbender is a good actor (and a gorgeous human) BUT another Steve Jobs movie?! Steve Jobs is an innovator we respect and certainly look up to (we would def die without our iPhones) but we’re ready for a flick that celebrates and details one of the many women in tech who have made blockbuster-worthy contributions as well. Movie makers, if you’re reading, here are our picks for women who deserve their own biopic.

1. Hedy Lamarr: Hedy was a foxy AF actress from Austria who was a bonafide movie star who macked on hotties like Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable. Cool and all, but Hedy also helped invent a transistor system that helped soldiers send secret messages during WWII. This transistor invention was hugely influential in forming the kinds of mobile phones we have today. (Photo via Hedy Lamarr)

2. Ada Lovelace: Ada had an impressive resume that included being the daughter of super sexy poet Lord Byron, being a freaking sweet duchess and working as a baller mathematician. She collabed with inventor Charles Babbage on the world’s first computing machine. Her contributions to that invention eventually lead to the technology that gave us the modern computer. (Photo via Biography.com)

3. Evelyn Boyd Granville: EBG is wicked smart and was one of the first black women to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. She teamed up with NASA and created a computer software that helped send some of the first satellites into space. She went on to have crazy prestigious positions at IBM and later became a professor of math and science. The notorious EBG is still alive today so she could easily consult on this movie if/when it gets made. (Photo via Engineeringhistory.tumblr.com)

4. Sister Mary Kenneth Keller: Um, guys, did you know the first women ever to get a Ph.D. in computer science was a freaking nun? Sister Mary Kenneth Keller was a nun who was all “this God stuff is fun but what about computers?” back in the ’60s. MKK eventually created her own computer language that made it easier for people who weren’t scientists and mathematicians to write code (which is probably why she’s looking smug as hell in that pic). (Photo via Mental Floss)

5. Admiral Grace Hopper: Grace was a professor at Vassar before joining the Navy at the start of WWII. While in the military Grace not only achieved the rank of Admiral she also helped invent the first compiler of computer languages. She is also responsible for coining the phrase “debugging” which she came up with one day when a moth flew into a computing machine and broke it. Also if you say you’ve seen a cuter or more bada** picture than this one I will call you a liar to your FACE. (Photo via Wikipedia)

Stop Asking Women If They're Pregnant

Originally published in The Bold italic

The first time it happened it was no big deal.

I was standing at the bus stop with two little kids I sometimes squire around town. The older of the two, who was seven, put a hand on my tummy, patted it reassuringly and said, “There’s a baby in there!”

I cracked up, wrote it off as kids saying the darndest things, and assured her that the only thing in my belly was a super burrito and all the fruit snacks I’d eaten from her lunch box. We laughed and moved on.

The second and third times were weirder. A coworker asked if my “pregnancy” was the reason I was quitting my job. A woman who asked the same thing raised her eyebrows suggestively when I said I wasn’t and remarked, “Well, maybe you are but you don’t know it!”

I’m going to spoil the rest of this story for you. I’m not pregnant. At no point during this story (or please god, my life, until I can get my shit together) am I ever pregnant. This isn’t one of those stories where everyone in the world knows I’m pregnant but me, and in the end I have a baby in the toilet at a Denny’s.

I would like to read an article like that, but I’m not writing one.

I stared at myself naked in the bathroom mirror the night of my coworker’s question. I did look a little different than normal. I’ve never been rail thin but my stomach is usually flat. I saw that there was a little pootch there. It was unusual but I shrugged it off. I was newly in love, which meant I was living in a hedonistic haze of weekends lying in bed with his and hers Jack’s Munchie Meals from Jack in the Box. I could see I had put on a little extra but I was getting loved up on the reg by a man who made me feel like a fucking Botticelli painting. I resolved to eat a salad for lunch and forget the pregnant thing.

Mostly I would demur and respond to these people’s (all total strangers) questions with a polite, “Nope, just fat!” or “Yes, we’re naming it Bud Lite Strawberita.” But the thing is, I felt more embarrassed by these questions than they felt asking them.

“

But then it happened again.

And again.

Mostly I would demur and respond to these people’s (all total strangers) questions with a polite, “Nope, just fat!” or “Yes, we’re naming it Bud Lite Strawberita,” and people would laugh. But the thing is, I felt more embarrassed by these questions than they felt asking them. One day I got fed up, and by fed up I mean drunk.

My boyfriend and I were participating in our favorite couples sport, taking shots and drinking beer at a local bar. I had just downed my shot when a drunken girl hobbled over to us. “Excuse me,” she slurred, “ but my friend over there wants to know why a pregnant girl is taking shots at a bar.” I swiveled my head around. A pregnant woman taking shots at a bar? That’s the kind of freak show I’d love to see live! Then I realized what was happening. She was talking about me. I was the freak show. A sort of drunken calm came over me and I leaned forward and said, “Well, tell your friend that he’s buying our next round because I am not pregnant and both of you are huge assholes.”

Her face went red, though maybe that was more because of the vodka than because of a social faux pas, but she meekly returned a minute later with beers for us.

Good for you, Sanchez, I thought to myself as I fell asleep that night, you stood up for yourself.

The victory was fleeting.

Then one day it happened, one really bad day, the kind of day where you’re at a Muni stop and the tracker can’t decide if the next bus is in three minutes or 43. A woman engrossed in a phone conversation was walking toward me. I backed up slightly so she’d have room to pass. As she walked in front of me she said a quick “thanks” and then doubled back, interrupted her phone conversation, pointed at me, and said, “Oh girl, are you pregnant?”

“Fucking no!” I said. As soon as the words left my mouth I wanted to apologize for being rude. But then I remembered, I may have a potty mouth, but at least I don’t go out of my way to tell a stranger they’re fat.

She apologized and I answered that it was OK. “But that’s really kind of rude, don’t you think?” I added. She stammered something in reply and then shuffled off into the night. I bet you could power a smart car with the force of the confusion from the person on the other line.

I get that for a large portion of the population being pregnant is an exciting thing. And I get that when you want to see something good, you end up seeing it even when it’s not really there. Hell, I’m the girl who walks up to everyone with a star tattoo and asks, “Oh my god, is that a Vonnegut asshole?” Except in these scenarios I’m assuming someone has really good taste in literature (even though that’s never what their tattoos are about) and not that they’re carrying another person in their body.

I sat down on the Muni bench after my interaction with the woman on the phone and cried.

I cried because apparently everyone thought I was fat. I cried because I was maybe a little fat. I cried because I never in my life wanted to be the girl who would cry about being fat.

Realize that when you ask someone if they’re pregnant, you’re not saying, “Wow, you’re glowing” or “Someone’s getting fucked on the daily.” You’re saying, “ It looks like there’s another person inside of your belly.”

Something had to give.

These incessant queries go beyond people’s curiosity about fertility. They’re another way of co-opting women’s bodies, in the same vein as telling women on the street to smile. Asking if a woman is with child is saying, “I’m a stranger but you owe me an explanation about your body.” And that’s not OK.

“

And I’ll take responsibility here. I was eating like crap. Contrary to the sage, spring-break wisdom of my friend Kelly, calories do count even when you’re in love, or on your period, or in love on your period, and hungover.

My Munchie Meals had to go. When I went out I started having only one really good beer instead of several cheap and icky ones. I packed my own lunches (inventing a truly bitching chicken salad in the process) and started walking everywhere. I felt better, healthier, and my food baby bump was receding a little bit every day. I was striding through the Mission wanting to treat myself to a you’re-not-pregnant burrito when a man catcalled me. “Ay, mamí!” He whistled as I passed, then when I ignored him he hissed, “Embarazada.” I don’t know how many of you took Spanish in 10th grade, but embarazadameans “pregnant” in Español.Que coño?!

So even when I do my part and eat like a normal person and not like a stoned teenage boy with a tapeworm, people still ask if I’m pregnant!

Look, I’m never going to be perfectly skinny (as you might have seen on Wednesday). I can do my best to be healthy but I’ll always have a body type similar to a lusty tavern wench. And I love my body and will do my best to love it at any size. Everyone else who isn’t me? Mind your own business. Bump or no bump, never ask if I’m pregnant.

These incessant queries go beyond people’s curiosity about fertility. They’re another way of co-opting women’s bodies, in the same vein as telling women on the street to smile. Asking if a woman is with child is saying, “I’m a stranger but you owe me an explanation about your body.” And that’s not OK.

So everyone, stop asking me if I’m pregnant! Stop asking any woman, ever! It’s appropriate to ask a woman that question only if she is actually crowning, and even then you should open with, “Did you get a haircut or something, Jill? You look different!”

If someone is pregnant and wants you to know about it, they’ll fucking tell you. Have you ever heard someone stoked about being pregnant who shut up about it? No! And more power to those women, smug though they may be.

You can, however, ask if I’d like a taco. The answer to that will always be yes.

Intel AI +ZIVA Dynamics Canvas Ad

The best part about writing copy for Intel is that they work across many verticals, so you never seem to write the same thing twice. This canvas ad was a way to highlight their collaboration with VFX house ZIVA Dynamics. 

LEGO Education Infographics

LEGO Education is a branch of LEGO Group that focuses on bringing STEM education to the classroom via hands-on tools. For their back-to-school global campaign 2018 I researched and wrote the copy for these infographics which highlight the importance of teaching STEM to all grades. 

Milk Bone Social

This is an Instagram carousel I made for Milk Bone to advertise their new Brushing Chews and drive traffic to their new site , The Noseprint.