Valentine's Day -- the cynical perspective.

Let the other morons feed each other candy out of heart-shaped boxes while wearing silk undies and quoting Elizabeth Barrett Browning -- you and I remember all the shitty, lonely and/or humiliating Feb 14ths that have come and gone in these, our decidedly non-Hallmarkian real lives.

Whether you're truly an anti-romantic or just having a bad day, the good news is that you don't have to sulk and scowl in your filthy apartment this year. Leave your heroin-addict significant other at home (but hide your ATM card) and come out to Cafe Du Nord, where, "pumped on sex-hormones and black coffee, drunk with the horny mating rituals of the urban damned," Lydia Lunch, Cara Bruce, Thomas Roche and Blag Dahlia will tell it like it is.

As the devil-dressed-as-Cupid on your other shoulder says: "Sex ain't pretty, and neither are you."

-- Jan Richman (undated)