Yesterday marked the first day of this year’s TV Turnoff Week, which runs April 21-27. If you weren’t aware of this, well, I didn’t know either until Monday night, and by then I’d already made plans to watch Gossip Girl and my DVR-ed recording of last week’s Battlestar Galactica. But I think that Tuesday, April 22, is a much better day to start TV Turnoff Week, because tonight is the premiere of a huge turn-off: A Shot at Love 2. So instead of tuning in to whatever disasters await Tila Tequila during her second quest for “true love,” here are a few suggestions for what you can do instead.
1. Go out to dinner with your girlfriend(s) and have some lively conversation. There are so many lesbian chefs these days that you can surely find a restaurant headed by one of them. If you’re in Miami Beach, stop by Tantra to taste the cuisine of executive chef Sandee Birdsong. If you’re in San Francisco, how about Elizabeth Falkner‘s newest restaurant, Orson? She was a guest judge on Top Chef last season and has been a contestant on Iron Chef, and she rocks some platinum blond hair. If you’re in Chicago, stop by Avec, where head chef (and recent Top Chef guest judge) Koren Grieveson presides. No, Grieveson hasn’t come out to us officially, but as Dorothy Snarker noted in her recap, she’s sports all the requisite lesbian paraphernalia; her Food & Wine profile notes that she was a soldier in the U.S. Army for nine years; and in this Time Out Chicago article she says that her place of inspiration is “My girl Frog’s studio. …
We bounce ideas off each other, but really, just working next to her keeps me inspired.” Hey, Koren: How about an interview with AfterEllen.com?
2. If you’re in Austin, Texas, you can go see out lesbian opera singer Beth Clayton in the title role of Bizet’s Carmen at the Austin Lyric Opera on April 24 and 26.
If you’re not in Austin, why not go to the opera in your neck of the woods? It’s a perfect excuse to get dressed up and people watch behind the protective cover of a pair of gilded opera glasses.
3. Read out author Charlotte Mendelson‘s When We Were Bad, which was just short-listed for the prestigious 2008 Orange Prize. As AfterEllen.com book reviewer Heather A. O’Neill wrote, “When We Were Bad is quite simply the kind of story – witty, sad, true – that you won’t want to end.”
4. Get your friends together and play a game – I’m talking about soccer or softball or tennis, not Rock Star. Take some inspiration from Mariana’s blog post yesterday about the formation of the Women’s Professional Soccer League, and put the sport in sporty dyke. Who doesn’t love some lesbianish team bonding?
We may be pop culture junkies here at AfterEllen.com, but I’m sure there are plenty of things we do that don’t involve the boob tube. What are some of your favorite non-TV-related activities?
