Sartorialism

Dear people of the world:

Tights are not pants. Leggings are not pants. Leggings that you bought 25 years ago the LAST time they were in fashion, so they're all threadbare and see-through, and you're wearing over white granny panties are DEFINITELY not pants. They make you look like you are wearing a diaper.

Shirts are not dresses. Even if you wear them with leggings or tights (see above). Dresses must be long enough to cover your buttcheeks. If I can see the cheek fold when you are walking in front of me, it is NOT a dress. The only acceptable time people can wear shirts that short as dresses is when they are babies in diapers.

Pick one animal print to wear at a time. Zebra, leopard, and snake may look great in a Noah's Ark painting or at the zoo, but they do NOT look good all being worn at the same time on your person.

5-inch stiletto red beadazzled plastic stripper shoes are perhaps not the best choice of footwear when it's less than 20 degrees F outside and you're walking through an icy parking lot.

Sagged, skintight emo pants make you look like you have a load in your pants. There are no exceptions to this rule for men or women. A correlary: Skinny jeans should not be worn by men. They look good on SOME girls/women, but not many, and they do not look good on men, period.

And what the hell is up with that hairstyle that's bleached blond on the top and black or very dark brown underneath?

Fantasy vs. Reality: Urban Gardening Edition

It's a cool, blustery September day. I am walking down the street, in a neighborhood once full of drugs but now clean, and I am starving. I have nothing to eat, no way to obtain food, and it has been days since a fraction of a calorie has passed my lips.

But hark! What is it I see before me? Some good samaritan, some right kind soul, has lovingly planted and tended a garden of edibles. On such a dreary day, it's difficult to see whether any fruits on the tomato plants are ripe, so I think I'll rifle through the greenery until I find something that looks close to edible. Aha! A tomato that looks sort of reddish! And I know, because nobody in their right mind would plant a garden next to the sidewalk unless they intended passers-by to take the produce grown, that this tomato is for me.

I take one bite. It is somewhat unripe. Sour fills my mouth, and I decide it isn't right for me to eat the entire thing myself. I gently place it on the ground on the other side of the front yard, allowing other people dying of starvation to partake.


* * * * * *

What actually happened:

Our garden is in our front yard next to the sidewalk, a space of about four feet by three feet in which we grow three tomato plants, a jalapeno, 2 bell peppers, and lots of herbs and marigolds. It's the only space in the entire yard that gets enough sun to allow anything to ripen. I pick our tomatoes when they are half-ripe and bring them inside, because otherwise people steal them. I had been waiting in anticipation of this tomato for several days, because it was larger than the others and looked like, when ripe, it was going to be really good. I thought about picking the tomato on Sunday, but decided to pick it when I got home on Monday because the day was grey and the tomato was mostly hidden by leaves; I didn't think anyone would notice it to steal it.

I was wrong.

And to add insult to injury, not only did someone pick it, they took one bite and left it there for me to find.

That's what you get for stealing someone else's half-ripe tomato, asshole.

Oh! And I've been growing a bell pepper plant in a pot in the backyard in the one spot that gets a few hours of sun a day - on an old table. The plant had put out one fruit, that ever-so-slowly got larger, and I encouraged it when I walked by every day to grow bigger and make more peppers. It had just started to turn when we left to run an errand on Saturday and I noticed it was gone. Two feet away on the ground, it lay, nibbled in places, and I knew it was those bastard squirrels. Why a squirrel would want to steal an unripe red bell pepper, I'll never know, but I waited two damn MONTHS for that pepper. And it abandoned the thing after a few tentative tastes. Effing squirrels.

Christmas TV shows kind of make me feel like a little kid

While I'm a little annoyed that they played it before it's even December, I just got more than my fair share of enjoyment out of the Charlie Brown Christmas special. This year I got to see bits and pieces of both the Halloween and Thanksgiving specials as well. I'm not entirely sure why this makes me so happy, but it really does.

I also look forward to How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the animated one with Tony the Tiger singing the Grinch song), the Rankin-Bass specials (Rudoph, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, Frosty the Snowman etc.) and, of course, Ralphie shooting his eye out. Not having cable, there are definitely years where I don't get to see these things. However, I take the opportunity whenever possible. I've still got fond childhood memories of all of these Christmas TV shows and I kind of wonder what adults have been thinking the last 20 years, because I can't think of any good Christmas TV shows/movies that have come out since my childhood. The live-action Grinch movie (the Jim Carrey one) is OK (I know Dan will rend his garments with rage when even reading the name of the thing), and there are a few movies I associate with Christmas (like A Series of Unfortunate Events), but I can't really think of any good TV specials or whatnot. Everything I've seen has been entirely too schmaltzy (and I haven't seen Elf or Bad Santa). Kids these days, they're missing out.

I'm not a huge fan of most Christmas music, but I own a copy of Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack and it goes into regular rotation during the month of December. When the special is on TV, I get up and dance in my living room while the kids dance to "Linus and Lucy" and I totally dance just like they do. I don't care who is watching.

Max and Laura won, and I have nobody with whom to discuss it!

Yes. I admit it.

I did watch (some of) the uber-cheesy reality show "Grease: You're the one that we want!", a show modeled after one from the UK in which the lead roles of Sandy and Danny for the Broadway revival of "Grease" were chosen by the American people over the last several months. The show played on Sunday nights, and so it wasn't always convenient to watch, but when I had an opportunity I did tune in to see who auditioned, who was good, who was bad, and who was really creepy. I liken my interest in this show to that of my interest in "So you Think You Can Dance," one of my summer obsessions for the last couple of years. I love dance and musical theater, so it stands to reason that I'd be interested in a show that highlights talented people, plus I have fond childhood memories of the movie "Grease," since it was the first movie we ever recorded off the TV when we got our first VCR in 1986. I watched that damn thing over and over; I know all the lyrics to all the songs (except the few that were cut for time/schedule, like the one Rizzo sings), and my mom had the soundtrack record album that I loved to play. (Aside: kids these days probably don't understand the reference "like a broken record," do they? Nobody except DJs and music uber-geeks play records anymore).

I love watching talented people perform. I love going to the theater, the ballet, or even hearing someone I know sing and play guitar. This show, despite it's over-the-top cheez factor, was a way for me to get my "talented amateur makes good" fix while waiting for SYTYCD. I watched the first "real" show, with all six potential Dannys and Sandys (seven of each, if you cout the stunt they pulled, but those two were appropriately booted that first week), and I held my nose and tried not to notice the filler and double-hosted ridiculousness. Dannys ranged from being called "Hot Danny" to "Slacker Danny" and Sandys from "Baby Sandy" to "Religious Sandy" because obviously the audience needed to be told what to think about each of the contestants in the first show. I think I saw parts of 2 or 3 other shows, and the ones I didn't see got recapped brililantly by the forum members of Television Without Pity. This was a wonderful way for me to get filled in on the goings-on without having to actually TRY to see the show.

The last show was on this past Sunday night, and I'd seen the previous one as well, whcn it went from 3 vying for each role to 2. The final two of each were quite different - Austin, the professional, who looked nothing like a Danny and desperately tried to come off as cool and heterosexual, and Max, the somewhat funny-looking guy who came alive each time he performed, and exuded Danny-ness from the first show, were the final two Danny candidates, and I'd picked Max to win from the beginning. The Sandy finalists were the best of the group, but neither of them were particularly notable - the one I liked better won, despite being a brunette, but she never really convinced me she'll be Sandy. Honestly, though, the character of Sandy is an ingenue, rather than a real character like Rizzo, and you just have to sing well, look pretty, and go from naive to sexy over the course of the show. Not too difficult. Anyhow, I was really on the edge of my seat when they announced who would play Danny, though I knew from reading the TWoP boards that the vast majority of them were Max fans like me.

Immediately after the show was over, I was happy and excited and wanted to find out what other people were saying about the results. But the TWoP boards weren't working. Nor were they working on Monday or (thus far) today. I simly can't go any longer without sharing with SOMEONE how I felt about the stupid show, how glad I was that Max won, even though I'll never see him perform the role of Danny. So there you go. I'd save you all from having to read about it, just as I refrained from blogging about SYTYCD and I mostly refrain from blogging about ANTM, but it appears as though you're my only hope.