“1 Girl 5 Gays in 20 Questions about Love and Sex.”

That sentence, which begins every episode, sums up the premise of the entire series and has become one of my absolute favorite shows. I stumbled on the show by accident after watching and obsessing over the deliciously guilty A-List on the Logo Channel. Initially a Canadian MTV show, some critics say it perpetuates the gay stereotypes of shallow promiscuity in the LGBT community. But to be frank, I see the show as brutally honest risqué, funny, sad, and touching all rolled into one. Sure, the show may shock outsiders but it successfully illustrates all different perspectives of gay men of every race and religion, and class. I’m very conversational and have found these questions to be great icebreakers for old and new friends. The guys are candid, relatable, and intimate. The second season started in early February and I anticipate every new groundbreaking episode. Thank you, Aliya Jasmine.

Here are two examples of the two types of questions: funny and risqué versus the touching and human.

I’ll admit it: I’ve never eaten Burmese food. I’m mundane whenever I go out to eat because I stick to Japanese, Italian, or even American hamburgers. But when I stumbled upon Burma Café, I could only describe it as a classy and petite restaurant with delicious dishes. My stomach can’t take too much spiciness, but it wasn’t a problem for any of my multiple visits. I’ve had the main pillars of Burmese food: Samusa soup, tea-leaf salad, garlic noodles, and catfish soup. The location is in Daly City and is described as a hidden treasure that practically screams 5-star ambiance. The closest and most authentic restaurant is in San Francisco so Burma Café is the perfect for the outskirts of San Francisco. With an art gallery for scenery and a great spot for large parties, Burma Café is shaping up rather nicely if you’re looking for a delightful Burmese meal.

I really like coffee. The morning ritual of brewing a cup, the smell that perks me up before I take a sip and, of course, the flavor all make it my favorite beverage aside from water (water’s delicious!). As a registered dietitian and a nutrition editor for EatingWell Magazine, I know that coffee is fine in moderation. It has lots of antioxidants and is low in calories if you don’t load it up with cream and sugar. Nonetheless, I always feel slightly guilty about drinking it—you know, in a “it’s so good, it must be bad” kind of way.

Which is why I’m always delighted to hear of new reasons that coffee is good for your health…and there are plenty! Over 18,000 studies on coffee have been published in the past few decades, revealing these benefits, many of which Joyce Hendley wrote about in the March/April issue of EatingWell Magazine:

1. It protects your heart: Moderate coffee drinkers (1 to 3 cups/day) have lower rates of stroke than noncoffee drinkers, an effect linked to coffee’s antioxidants. Coffee has more antioxidants per serving than blueberries, making it the biggest source of antioxidants in American diets. All those antioxidants may help suppress the damaging effect of inflammation on arteries. Immediately after drinking it, coffee raises your blood pressure and heart rate, but over the long term, it actually may lower blood pressure as coffee’s antioxidants activate nitric oxide, widening blood vessels.

2. It diverts diabetes: Those antioxidants (chlorogenic acid and quinides, specifically) play another role: boosting your cells’ sensitivity to insulin, which helps regulate blood sugar. In fact, people who drink 4 or more cups of coffee each day may have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to some studies. Other studies have shown that caffeine can blunt the insulin-sensitivity boost, so if you do drink several cups a day, try mixing in decaf occasionally.

3. Your liver loves it: OK, so the research here is limited, but it looks like the more coffee people drink, the lower their incidence of cirrhosis and other liver diseases. One analysis of nine studies found that every 2-cup increase in daily coffee intake reduced liver cancer risk by 43 percent. Again, it’s those antioxidants—chlorogenic and caffeic acids—and caffeine that might prevent liver inflammation and inhibit cancer cells.

4. It boosts your brain power: Drinking between 1 and 5 cups a day (admittedly a big range) may help reduce risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as Parkinson’s disease, studies suggest. Those antioxidants may ward off brain cell damage and help the neurotransmitters involved in cognitive function to work better.

5. It helps your headaches: And not just the withdrawal headaches caused by skipping your daily dose of caffeine! Studies show that 200 milligrams of caffeine—about the amount in 16 ounces of brewed coffee—provides relief from headaches, including migraines. Exactly how caffeine relieves headaches isn’t clear. But scientists do know that caffeine boosts the activity of brain cells, causing surrounding blood vessels to constrict. One theory is that this constriction helps to relieve the pressure that causes the pain, says Robert Shapiro, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurology and director of the Headache Clinic at the University of Vermont Medical School.

Now, that’s not to say that coffee doesn’t have any pitfalls—it does. Some people are super-sensitive to caffeine and get jittery or anxious after drinking coffee; habitual coffee drinkers usually develop a tolerance to caffeine that eliminates this problem (but they then need the caffeine to be alert and ward off withdrawal headaches). Coffee can also disturb sleep, especially as people age. Cutting some of the caffeine and drinking it earlier in the day can curb this effect. Lastly, unfiltered coffee (like that made with a French press) can raise LDL cholesterol, so use a filter for heart health.

But if you like coffee and you can tolerate it well, enjoy it…without the guilt.

‘Women in Refrigerators Syndrome’

The use of the death or injury of a female comic book character as a plot device in a story starring a male comic book character. It is also used to note the de-powerment or elimination of a female comic book character within a comic book universe.

The concept might be slightly skewered but I see this trend happening to the women of Marvel, preferably the first ladies to appear in comics. I thought the idea was obsolete considering these contemporary times and the feminist movement has progressed women to equality, but it subliminally hasn’t. First viewed as flighty women with “less than spectacular” powers during the kooky era of the 1960s with the most vanilla of names and the object of every man’s affection, these super heroines have risen as the strongest and most powerful of the bunch. They’re now regulated as missing in action, de-powered, or dead. Are they being replaced by more multi-faceted (daresay villainous or shady)characters like Emma Frost, Black Widow, Mary Jane, and Spiderwoman? Here are the main five women and their back history:

Jean Grey/Phoenix (first X-Man)

Her powers are telepathy and telekinesis. She could move mountains, change the anatomy of her molecules, and read the minds of every single person on Earth. But her gifts in the 1960s were reduced to moving a log so her teammates didn’t trip. When she was given god-like powers of the Phoenix force, her powers were limitless. Unfortunately, what do you do to a person who is near omnipotent? They’re unstoppable and hard to write for so Jean Grey has constantly died and resurrected and died again. Her death signaled a change for her husband, Cyclops, as a more aggressive leader as he shacks up with the former villain, Emma Frost. I’m all for change, but did it have to result with killing a key figure of the X-Men mythos?

Janet van Dyne/Wasp (first female Avengers)

Her personality was nothing more except to flirt and swoon over her teammates. But time and again, she’s proven her worth as a founding member of the Avengers with insect-like powers of shrinkage and fire energy blasts and probably the smartest and craftiest of the Avengers. But to mess with her history, writers made her a victim of domestic violence against Hank Pym just to make him more interesting. And to top it off, the Wasp hasn’t been used appropriately under Brian Michael Bendis’ pen. After a few cameo stints, he killed her off during the Secret Invasion because he really has no use for her. Why couldn’t they kill off Jessica Jones or Spiderwoman?

Gwen Stacy (Spiderman’s true love)

Gwen Stacy is probably the definitive example of women in refrigerators for the Marvel Universe. She was Spiderman’s true love; the woman Peter Parker would live happily ever after. But Spiderman’s world is filled with misery so she was used as collateral damage when the Green Goblin threw her off the bridge. Spiderman caught her, but might have snapped her neck too. Her death changed Spiderman to more adult-oriented stories. It haunts Spiderman and the rest of the comic book industry to this day.

Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (first female villain/second female Avengers)

A member of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, her powers was ambiguously explained as accidents happen when she points at things. But as an Avenger, we saw her rose as one the beloved staples of the team. Her powers were then defined as probability hex powers mixed with chaos magic. But in the years intervening, her history has been met with tragedy as she married an android and magically birthed twin only to be taken away from her. Now, she was known for altering reality with a single whim. It doesn’t help that she was the daughter of the mutant terrorist Magneto and that she completely destroyed the Avengers by killing a few teammates. To top it off, she reduced the mutant population to a mere 200 and vanished. She’s becoming one of the most powerful in the Marvel universe, but why did they have to make her unstable and insane?

Susan Storm/Invisible Woman (only female member of the Fantastic Four)

The first woman of Marvel, her powers of invisibility were given as merely escaping her enemies for her male teammates to do the dirty work. Damsel in Distress? Yeah. But as the years have passed, she’s become the most powerful member with limitless skills. Her submissive persona is gone as the feminist movement progressed her importance in comics, and I’m happy to hear that she wasn’t the member who would die in Fantastic Four. That was unfortunately, the Human Torch. Her case defies the formula, but if she was the Fantastic Four member to die, then my point would have been justified.

Sure, DC has always had the upper hand with television versions of Superman and Wonder Woman while Marvel has the Hulk, but the landscape has changed. This would have been unheard of in the 1980s/1990s when their only properties were Howard the Duck and the Punisher battling against the Batman and Superman franchises.

But with the final installment of the Batman series in the 1990s (Batman and Robin), the superhero genre died. Why? Superhero films were treated like kiddy cartoon fare: unsophisticated, childish, and bombastic. The resurrection of the genre wouldn’t have come if it weren’t for the realistic and gritty X-Men franchise or the angsty Spiderman series of the 2000s. It only becomes ironic that the X-Men series have gone full circle with this year’s prequel/reboot. Maybe the Marvel films are more successful because of writer Stan Lee’s formula back in the 1960s: Relatable superheroes that act human and make mistakes like everyone else.

So what are the future projects? Well the admittedly premature reboot of Spiderman and the massive uptake of the Avengers. But they’ll be tangling with DC’s big guns (yet again) with the final Batman film by Christopher Nolan and the second reboot of Superman by Zack Snyder.

Insiders have already predicted the demise of the genre because of the overload. Comic Book Writer Mark Miller stated: “I think it’s going to be difficult is once you’ve done that thing of putting all those characters in one film… you know, its like having Harry Potter, James Bond and Spiderman all in one movie. I think what’ll be difficult then is to try and top that because people want to see it get bigger,” he explains. “I anticipate things starting to slow down round about 2014 and 2015. I think that’s when it will really start to flat line a bit and we’re going to see our first failures.”

Sure there are flops like the first Hulk, Daredevil, Elektra, and Catwoman but I don’t see the downfall happening like it did with Batman and Robin. The reason being because their fan base keep these movies alive.

The New Superman and Catwoman?