Silly Heroes

When I was about oh, young, my mom the seamstress made me my coveted and much awaited Wonder Woman costume for Halloween.

Well, she almost did. She told me I couldn't wear the underpants as tight as that and go prancing around the neighborhood, because it would surely be cold. And I would have to wear a sweater, because she was not sending her young daughter out in anything that was strapless. I was under 10.

I was really disappointed. I had envisioned me, a little like a cross between "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Napoleon Dynamite" because I had me some ferocious buck teeth, lassoing people with my magic truth lasso and I had practiced dodging bullets with my silver bracelets.

So instead of being the Wonder Woman that I was inside, I was a shmaltzy cheerleader, which I had never wanted to be, but at least I was warm. And my costume kicked booty over the witches, all 3000 of them in our small neighborhood that Halloween.

Except for LH. When we arrived at her house to pick her up, she was a very big parka with the fuzzies and the hood and everything. She had little rosy cheeks.

"Lynn, what are you?"
"I'm Admiral Byrd!"
"Whozzat?"
"He discovered the South Pole,"
"Oooooh." K and I said in unison.

Poor Lynn. She was brutally made fun of all through school, particularly when she went goth in high school. But I digress.

Wonder Woman. I am glad they gave the little girls a few superheroes. Wonder Woman was beautiful and strong and she made people tell the truth! I can be the first two, but I will never be able to dodge bullets, fly around in a glass plane (which I always thought was very hokey, but I still believed) and make people tell the truth. Now that's a superpower.

I never thought much of the Bionic woman, until I met Anna. Anna worked at a large coffee retailer with me in the college years. She had a self confidence as a young person that I wished I could have manifested. Anna had grown up in South Africa, and she was always hip and stylin. She had the most phenom ugly shirt collection. I have been tempted many a time to start one of my own, but couldn't afford one in the early years, and now can't make myself do something so frivolous. Maybe I will do it if I have a midlife crisis, rather than buying a Maserati.

Anyway, Anna was pretty amazingly obsessed with the Bionic Woman. And she was a fount of Bionic wisdom. She knew every detail about Oscar, the Bionic Woman, her teaching and her amazing abilities. She made a fanzine about the Bionic Woman (because she was dating a Kinko's employee and so it was all free, except the amazing amount of time she poured into the stupid, er, interesting thing). I bought one. I read it too.

But Anna went a little far for me when she started getting tattoos of bionics on her arm and stomach and stuff. I started to wonder if she was dropping acid or something. Seemed like alot of the folk at that coffee retailer were kinda kooky like that.

Anyway, I grew in my knowledge and general awareness of the Bionic Woman through this Anna and so the Bionic Woman also make the list. She seems pretty cool, a teacher and all. After all, Lindsey Wagner did graduate from the high school where I been teaching, so she must be pretty alright!

So, readers, who is your favorite silly superhero?

sick, but not in a good way.

So my charges have taken to saying things that are really good or crazy or something, these things are "sick". Not all of them do it.

So I found something that was not really sick in a good way in reading an article on Salon.com.

Some of you might remember about how I wrote about the retail youth culture at the mall initiation that I had with my neice when we went shopping. Usually, to avoid feeling old I avoid stores that dress 13 year old girls like disco hussies. I avoid stores that hustle brands that are almost meaningless, but their mere presence on a shirt or cap gives that item a new improved "identity" that is desireable. (I go in more for the shirt without the identity and I give the shirt the identity because I am wearing it and I am so inherently cool. Ahem. Haha)

Anyway, I kinda spoke about Hollister. About how totally slimy the place felt to me. And then I read this article about the MAN behind these marketing gimmicks.

Mike Jeffries is just over 61, has OCD, way too much fake tan and blonde hair plus a WHOLE lotta plastic surgery to make himself look like the iconic image that he sells. He is a grandpa in ripped jeans, flipflops and a muscle polo, a walking advertisement for the "casual superiority" that his brand sells. Moodiness, cynicism are not allowed in his realm. Everyone is happy. Even if he does have to walk through the revolving door 2 times every day when he arrives and wear his lucky shoes when he reads the financials.

Stores, marketing that portrays the sort of superficial, "only valuable if enjoyable" type of valuable system is common enough. I suppose where it gets really nauseating is in selling this "image" to people who really don't know what BS it really is: young people. Some youth see it as the all sucking vacuum that it is, but others want this sort of vicarious credibility and coolness so badly that they BUY it, in more ways than one.

I remember walking into an Abercrombie in Seattle in like 93, and being so bored because all the store sold was like golf preppie clothes for old men. Fast forward 13 years and this place is smokin hot. But with what? Some day, maybe, being smart, well read, informed and realistic might be cool in America, but for now, it is much cooler to be a featherweight, because it is so much more "accessible". In other words, not too smart is cool in the A & F "persona".

Mike Jeffries, the 61-year-old CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, says "dude" a lot. He'll say, "What a cool idea, dude," or, when the jeans on a store's mannequin are too thin in the calves, "Let's make this dude look more like a dude," or, when I ask him why he dyes his hair blond, "Dude, I'm not an old fart who wears his jeans up at his shoulders."

This fall, on my second day at Abercrombie & Fitch's 300-acre headquarters in the Ohio woods, Jeffries -- sporting torn Abercrombie jeans, a blue Abercrombie muscle polo, and Abercrombie flip-flops -- stood behind me in the cafeteria line and said, "You're looking really A&F today, dude." (An enormous steel-clad barn with laminated wood accents, the cafeteria feels like an Olympic Village dining hall in the Swiss Alps.) I didn't have the heart to tell Jeffries that I was actually wearing American Eagle jeans. To Jeffries, the "A&F guy" is the best of what America has to offer: He's cool, he's beautiful, he's funny, he's masculine, he's optimistic, and he's certainly not "cynical" or "moody," two traits he finds wholly unattractive.

This is what teens clamber for. Girls bite their fingers at "dudes" in this garb and proclaim him "hot", regardless if he does talk like a boxer who has had a few too many blows to the head.

I know this isn't new, I know I am not "discovering" this. It just makes me irritable when the "desireable" is so consistently embarrassing, shallow, and dumbs down youth to paper doll status.

rant over.

Tired of that ladies bottom, before cellulite, after cellulite

Note to Yahoo!

I have been a faithful user of yahoo mail since 1997. That's ten years I have had the same email address. In the internet world, that is some crazy brand loyalty.

But lets just pretend for a nanosecond that you, upon your pile of vast wealth, care about me as your mail user, one lepton.

I hate the ads that are on my mail page. I have been looking at them for so long I have finally decided I hate them enough to leave both my yahoo mail accounts in the dust. I don't mind ads, because I understand that I am utilizing a free service, but the mortgage ads with the dancing idiots and the lady before cellulite, after cellulite, before after before after ...they have grown offensive, irritating and kinda gross to have this woman's bottom, a huge picture of it there, omnipresent, in my email box.

I hate the lady who is old, now young, now old, young etc, if only she bought this cream. If this poor hag had spent one year in an undergrad program she would know that most all these creams are basically glycerin that won't do anything anyway, but if she took care of her nutrition and habits, she wouldn't look so miserable and be so desperate to spend a crazy amount on some inert cream that will DO NOTHING FOR HER. Tell her to go eat a carrot for crums sake!

Bye Yahoo! With joy, with glee, with total satisfaction. You and your 800 septillion users won't miss me, let them look at that stupid ladies bum.

m. snippy

Hipness factor

Ugh already pleeeze.

Moms who lament this loss of "hipness" or long for their foregone "mosh pit" days or whatever. Ladies, when you grow up you will realize that you missed nothing in this "world of hip"while you raised your kid. Prioritize well. The world of "hip" is as vapid as a smell, as meaningful as a puddle and as important as a piece of spacejunk. Go buy some flippin Pumas already if you are "missing something". After all that is the American way, to BUY whatever we feel we need (then over time realize nothing we bought ever really made us happy, anyway)

Over and out

-miss snippy