In Beautiful Washington D.C., home of many important events in our fine nation’s history, including Plumcake’s birth! Details forthcoming! Who’s gonna be there?

Two more cities will be announced in the coming days! 

So, I’m sitting here at my favorite lounge drinking Tanqueray 10 and eating a brownie the size of my skull, reminiscing about childhood (must be the heady combo of booze and baked goods) and thinking about my love affair with chocolate.

Just like there is a vast difference between lovin’ and good lovin’, there is also a vast difference between chocolate and good chocolate and –not unlike the aforementioned good lovin’– it is readily available on the open market from the talented and enterprising French…if you’ve got the cash.

Case in point: this beyond delicious “luxury box” of French chocolates. My friends, this is the cocoa buttery equivalent of being trapped on a desert island with the entire heterosexual contingency of the Oxford AND Cambridge rowing teams (and really, two guys on a desert island ought to be plenty for anybody) and an endless supply of hypoallergenic baby oil.

The holiday pack from Zchocolat is possibly the most luxe take on the traditional box-o-chocolates I’ve ever had the good fortune to stumble across.

Check out their chocolate list here but beware…you’ll probably need a cigarette afterwards, or at least a shower.

The first city for the Manolo Big Girls Face to Face will be announced tomorrow!

If you want to cast a vote for your city, be sure to comment. If a city gets enough votes, we’ll try to work it in to this or subsequent tours.

Someone once said it’s better to give than it is to receive, and while I suppose that’s true in certain areas –social diseases and fruitcakes spring primarily to mind– I say, why pick? With that in mind, here is a list of Plumcake-approved presents for you and those fortunate enough to share your company. Stay tuned as I’ll be doing small, gift-o-the-day segments until the end of the year. Remember, it still counts as a gift if you buy it for yourself!

For the Rock and Roll Novice:
Five American rock albums that changed the face of pop as grudingly agreed upon by an iconic ‘zine publisher, a former editor of Spin and myself

1) Pet Sounds – The Beach Boys
2) Blood on the Tracks – Bob Dylan
3) The Ramones – The Ramones
4) Appetite for Destruction – Guns and Roses
5) Nevermind – Nirvana

For You:

The 1976 Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll
Psychotic Reactions and Carburator Dung – Lester Bangs (Plumcake’s literary hero)

For Your All-Nighter-Pulling College Friend:

Turkish Coffee Maker

For You:

Hamilton Beach Cappuccino Maker

For Your Favorite Fixer-Upper Fella(c’mon girls, we all have them):

Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion – Alan Flusser (see manolomen for details)

For You:

Valentino scarf in the designer’s signature red

For Your Hot Gay Boyfriend:

A pair of Viv Westwood sneakers

For You:

MORE Viv Westwood (these are the legendary “Prostitute Sex Shoes”)

Can you even STAND it?! I’m dying!

Come meet Plumcake in her natural environment (read: the bar of a posh hotel) and get to know other superfantastic big girls at the first Manolo for the Big Girls Face to Face! Have a little drinkypoo, a lot of fun and all the glamour (and gossip) you can handle.

City (or cities?!) and details will be released next week. Can one bar handle so much superfantasticness?

Are you dying? I am DYING!

Man, I miss ALL the excitement. It’s just like that time in seventh grade shop class (what? I could have taken shop. You don’t know.) I asked for a bathroom pass and when I came back Coach Bragg had cut his finger off with a band saw. Life is So Unfair.

So we’re talking about whether it’s right to bare arms, right? Good gravy. This is not a hard question. Whether you want olives or a twist in the morning’s first martini is a hard question. Whether it’s morally right to go home with guys for the sole purpose of harvesting their organs for someone you love is a hard question. If you like your arms and want to jam out with your hams out (I stole that line from somebody, but I don’t know who) then so be it. If you’d rather keep an air of mystery about them, well, cover those bad boys up and git along, little dogie.

Personally I find nothing so flattering on my figure as a three-quarter length sleeve so that’s what I wear, but if I yearned to go sleeveless and my burning desire to do so outweighed any competing urges then I’d get myself spaghetti-strapped up to high heaven and give everyone two free tickets to my own personal gun show. It might not be the most flattering but as much as I hate to say it; flattering isn’t everything and it’s dangerous to put too much value on what “other people” think.

Case in point: I just bought this pair of Marc Jacobs heels and my first thought when I saw them was “wow, those look like something you could stab Superman with. I love them.”

And I’ll tell you another thing, even though they are most definitely not to everyone’s taste, and possibly the people who Do Not Know the difference between a $600 Marc Jacobs heel and stripper shoes will say unkind things, I will look kick-you-in-the-teeth fantastic in those shoes. It’s about attitude, and if you feel as good in your tank top as I feel in my Superman-stabbing shoes, then who cares what other people say? In the immortal (although edited) words of Jack Black in High Fidelity. “F’ them, let ‘em riot.”

The sad truth is there will always be people who recoil in horror when confronted with “teh fatt” just like there will always be people whose idea of heaven is a Rush album, two cases of Cool Ranch Doritos and a bong made out of a watermelon. We cannot fight them; we can only hope they eventually set themselves on fire.

I won’t tell you what I paid for a very similar pair of Stewies this summer but my bank account went into full fetal position for a good two weeks. I guess it does pay to shop on the off-season.

Supplies are extremely limited so hop on it and pick up a pair of these 4″ cuties (yet somehow they are wearable, how does he DO that?) tuck them away and then brag to your friends about how little you paid!