Dear Captain Obvious: I’m a big time fashion consultant who left the high-energy fashion capital of New York City to work for a company in a town that, up until 1975, was mostly known for its large production of miscellaneous cheese. My friends all thought I was nuts. Now I’m beginning to wonder if they were right.  The problem is, the girl I’ve been hired to style doesn’t know squat about being a model. First of all she actually eats food, and even though she’s a size zero, eating real food will only make her fat. Secondly, she can’t strike a decent pose to save her life, oh, and don’t get me started on her boyfriend, who happens to be a senior executive at the company by the way… Big Time.
Dear Big Time: I cut your letter short—which went on for another soul-crushing three pages—because reprinting it here would have probably caused my readership to dip to seriously low levels. Speaking of low levels, I think you’re sinking to them. Seems to me your frustration at work is punishment befitting of someone who commits career suicide by leaving the Big Apple to come here, of all places, with the intent of making a mark in the fashion industry. That would be like me moving to North Korea and asking the citizens to write to me about their feelings. Can’t you picture it now? ‘Dear Captain Obvious, I don’t have enough to eat and the only thing I have to look forward to is the sweet release of death’. I’m sure Kim Jong-il would LOVE that. Listen, I love Genoa City as much as the next guy, but unless you want a career making lipsticks and boiling perfumes on the Bunsen Burner, this ain’t the town for you.
Dear Captain Obvious: I’m writing this from my bedroom as my mother and stepfather have a romantic dinner downstairs totally oblivious to the fact that I exist-AGAIN. The fact that mom hasn’t even come up to ask me if I’m okay leads me to conclude that she thinks I’m having a sleepover at my best friend’s house. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve sat here, night after night, shooting hoops on my bedroom basketball court, playing with my dog Fisher or just designing and sewing super hero costumes on my Singer® Quantum 9940, while my mother and stepfather forget that I’m even alive. I’d run away again if I knew it would get their attention, but they never realize I’m gone until my dad calls to tells them I’m over at his house. What’s a kid to do to get some love? Invisible.
Dear Invisible: I’m an advice columnist not a miracle worker. If things are really that bad, why don’t you move in with your father?
Dear Captain Obvious: I’m the head of a major investment banking firm on Wall Street. A few weeks ago a very promising, if not pompous turd of an associate, resigned to take a position at a huge multi-conglomerate in the mid-west. I told him he was making a huge mistake. He replied that in a year he would be back to be my boss and turn me into a human foot stool so that he might rest his feet after his climb to the top. Needless to say I laughed so hard my assistant had to call my doctor to request a prescription for a muscle relaxer. Anyway, this douchebag has now resorted to calling me late at night, leaving messages on my machine, saying he doesn’t know why he cares, but he’s calling to see how I’m doing anyway. WTF?!
Dear WTF: Have you given any thought at all to changing your phone number? That is, if you really want the calls to stop, but that might make him start calling your job, then you’d have to change your company’s phone number. Uh oh, what if he starts calling your mother’s house? Guess you’ll have to change her number too, huh? Wow, I really don’t see a way out for you. Wait! I know. Go underground and live in a place where there are no phones, that way you can avoid being a man and telling your ex-douchebag that if he calls your house again, not only will you make him persona non grata in the financial industry but you’d go back to the hick town where he was born and burn down the childhood home he grew up in. It may sound harsh, but trust me, I know. Douchebags can get pretty brazen if you don’t establish boundaries early on in the relationship.
Dear Captain Obvious: I entered a contest for a cosmetics company a few months ago and was actually named a semi-finalist! I was thrilled. I had never won anything in my pathetic life so coming this close was the best thing that ever happened to me, especially since my life, up until now, has been fraught with woe. Besides myself, two other women were named semi-finalists. After the announcement was made I haven’t heard back from the company. I’ve been sitting in my hotel room waiting for the phone to ring, meanwhile, the buzz around town is that one of the semi-finalists is already doing photo shoots. What about me? Should I get a lawyer and sue? Stale Face.
Dear Stale: Sounds to me like a bit of favoritism is going on here. Why would a reputable cosmetics company run a campaign, pick finalists only to focus on one of them? The only conclusion I can draw is that the finalist they’re paying all that attention to must be boinking one of the higher-ups, that’s how it works in this town you, know; it’s not about who know but who you screw. When you were there did you notice anyone you might also screw to get some attention? I know it seems a little base, but unless you’re prepared to go back to being a nobody, I suggest you get with the program.
Dear Captain Obvious: The girl I’m having casual sex with has no moral compass. She’s needy, overdramatic, overbearing and has a penchant for lying, stealing, scheming, conniving and wearing ill-conceived outfits she thinks are fashionable but in reality are just fashion road kill. In a perfect world, I would drop the broad like a hot potato, but she is such a great lay. Recently I found out that she’s been lying to me about something that almost landed me in jail because I agreed to help her cover up a crime. I was mad at first, but all she had to do was rub up against me and I was putty in her hands. Please help me find a way to break free from her once and for all. Whipped.
Dear Whipped: Men have had a long standing history of letting the little boys that lives in their pants do the thinking. Wars are started over it, armies have been brought to their knees (pun intended) because of it, and all around chaos unfolds when we pursue the women that will undoubtedly be the ruin of us all. Don’t try to fight it, lad. It is your density.
Dear Captain Obvious: I’m in town visiting a dear friend of mine who just had a baby. Since my arrival I’ve gotten to know her father quite a bit. Last night after bumping into him at the gym we decided to get dinner and eat it back at his place. Even though this man is quite old, old enough to be my father as a matter of fact, there is something about him that I find incredibly alluring. It could be that I’m feeling this way because I’m particularly vulnerable right now, having only just ended a relationship with my two-timing boyfriend.  It feels so wrong and yet, when we are together, so right at the same time. He has this way of mumbling that I find positively endearing, and his puffy stomach makes me quiver with delight. I feel compelled to stay to see where this could go, but if I do I risk losing his daughter as a friend. Hot for Grandpa.
Dear Hot: I say go for it, what have you got to lose? Friends are overrated, your dignity on the other hand isn’t. But why am I telling you that? Gold diggers like you rarely have the integrity to grasp such a concept. Good luck with everything and be sure to write me in a year or two when you wake up and realize that Grandpa needs a diaper change, and you gave his nurse the weekend off.
Dear Captain Obvious: My father is impossible! Is it unreasonable to want to borrow money against my inheritance—which I won’t be coming into for another decade—to fund a magazine start-up? My dad is doing his damnedest to make sure that I fail at everything he doesn’t approve of. How can I be my own man when daddy won’t let me spend my endowment? It’s my money goddammit! I earned it by just being born.  What’s his problem? Had it up to here.
Dear Had It: If I were your father I would let you have the whole thing now, blow it on something you probably know nothing about and watch you spiral ever downward to a life of “pauperdomâ€. Then, when you’re finally ready to admit that father know best, I would give you a job pushing the mail cart in my company so that you really know what it’s like to eke out a living and survive hand-to-mouth. You want what’s coming to ya, boy? Then I suggest you get it yourself instead of bawling to your Pa.
Dear Captain Obvious: Thanks for your suggestion. I forgot to say in my first letter that I don’t want to move in with my dad because his house stinks. He lives next to the horse’s stables on my grandfather’s estate and every time I visit him I have to endure the smell of horse manure wafting in from my bedroom window; I keep a bucket by my bed to vomit in at night. Anyway, he and my stepmom don’t pay too much attention to me either, so it would be like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. (Sigh) guess I’ll just have to wait till I turn 27 in about four years or so and take out my frustrations on my parents then. Thanks anyway. Invisible.
originally published: Mar-15-2008
