"With One Eye Open"

Polly's new book is available. Buy it here at Amazon.

"With One Eye Open" collects some of the humor pieces she has published over the years in such outlets as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Grin & Tonic. It's a zany and sweet grab-bag, full of funny ideas -- new designer dog breeds, an entire country that has optimized itself for your shopping pleasure -- as well as vivid characters, including a college girl who can't see why she shouldn't be allowed to create social networks instead of writing term papers, and a life coach who discovers a new sense of purpose when she begins giving seminars designed to help people shut the hell up.

Don't tell anyone we said this, but ... "With One Eye Open" may be a mere collection of short humor pieces, but it has more clever hooks, more engaging storylines, more incisive observations, and more convincing characters than a whole shelf-ful of literary novels. Don't tell anyone we said this either, but ... It belongs on the shelf next to collections by Woody Allen, Fran Lebowitz, Dave Barry, James Thurber and Dorothy Parker.

Mainly, of course, it's sweet and funny, and full of flights of zany invention. Thanks to designer John Reinhardt and photographer Erik Kragh, it also looks beautiful and feels good in the hand. It's cheery, it'll make you laugh, it's a perfect gift, and it has got a very friendly price ... What's not to love? Go to Amazon and buy your copy now.

And while you're there, check out Polly's snazzy new Author's Page too.

"Sex Scenes" at Kiss & Tell

"Sex Scenes" made an appearance at Abiola Abram's fabulous Kiss & Tell erotica series the other night, upstairs at the legendary downtown burlesque venue Madame X.

Jake Thomas -- who has been appearing in "Sex Scenes" for so long that he might well qualify as "Mr. Sex Scenes" by this point -- played the immortal pornographer-wannabe Nathan Moffitt; the talented and inventive Jillaine Gill gave her lovely all to the role of incarcerated high-school teacher Deborah Kibble. The audience laughed ... The temperature in the room rose a few degrees ... In other words, Jake and Jillaine put the story ("Detention") over just the way it deserves to be.

Abiola -- who made her own appearance in a "Sex Scenes" evening a few years ago -- is a force of nature. A hilarious, glamorous and lovable dynamo onstage, she's also a writer, an exceptional video host, and with Kiss & Tell she's now sponsoring and emceeing one of downtown's funnest -- and most diverse -- evenings. Drop by a Kiss & Tell evening and you'll be able to savor a very wide range of body types, sexual preferences, skin colors and performance styles. It's guaranteed to be a fun time, as well as a majorly dis-inhibiting experience.

Here's the lineup from the evening when we made our appearance:

That's Abiola with the pink ruffle. Look closely and you'll also spot a couple of other "Sex Scenes" veterans: Mo Beasley (suave and kneeling) and Shannon Lower (red hair, low-cut black shirt, great big smile), who were there to contribute a hot and beautiful poetry-and-movement duet.

You can't say that "Sex Scenes" hasn't spun off a lot of creative partnerships!

Go here for further info about Abiola.

The Sex -Tape Thing

It's a celebrity sextape! No, it's just some friends having fun! In the nude.

There's a celebrity sex-tape angle in "Sex Scenes." Is the celebrity sex-tape the defining artistic form of our age?

Alexa Linkage

• Alexa recalls some of her piercings.
• "My father always told me to do something I love," Danielle writes, explaining why she became an escort. Alexa runs that website too.
• Alexa also turned up this history of the courtesan. If you haven't guessed: The smart, feisty, and amazingly forthright Alexa -- who is working as an escort while making her way through grad school -- is one of our favorite sex bloggers.

We're in Jakubowski's "Best Erotica"!

We're thrilled to learn that one of our Sex Scenes stories "Detention" was selected for Maxim Jakubowski's next Mammoth Book of Best Erotica #9 which will be out in January 2010.

"Detention" is about a young man who visits one of his high school teachers, who's in jail for having had sex with a student. What does he really want from her? And what does she really want from him?

I won't give too much away, but I will volunteer that the story is beautifully, sexily, and hilariously performed on our audio by Jake Thomas and Marisa Landow.