Shag-Ewwww!

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I don’t see a lot of commercials, but since I have been glued to Olympic coverage from 7-11 pm for the last fortnight, I have seen my share of Old Navy dark wash denim and Chevy commercials. What I didn’t see coming was the most disturbing thing I have seen in a long time, the Ragu commercial. Yes, that’s right, as in pasta sauce. It was like a mirage. I almost wonder if I dreamed it, but it was quickly confirmed by the mix of horror and chagrin mirrored on Eric’s face. It must have been between 8-9 pm because my 10-year-old was subjected to it too.

If you didn’t catch it, count your lucky stars. Let me assure you, that’s not a bell that can be un-rung. Suffice it to say the storyline involves a boy walking in on his parent in a compromising moment and a family pasta dinner to make it all better. Tomato therapy, if you will.

First of all, there are story-line problems, the creep factor notwithstanding. The commercial clearly indicates that it is 8 o’clock and warns kids to knock. Then there is the tag line, “A long day of childhood calls for America’s favorite pasta sauce.” What kind of parents are feeding their kid dinner after 8 o’clock? (The kind who don’t lock the door, apparently.) The poor kid is stumbling around, racked by hunger, looking for his absent parents who are too busy addressing their own needs to provide for their offspring. True the kid didn’t look as though he’d ever missed a meal, but still, it doesn’t add up.

Secondly to make it all better, there is pasta? Who could really think about food after that?

Lastly, I really don’t know what the marketing team was going for here, but I’ll tell you what I got out of it. I can’t walk through the marinara section without associating their product with ejaculate. I’m just guessing that wasn’t part of the pitch.

#sosickofbeachvolleyball

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Now that the Olympics are nearly over and I can rest assured that my legions of followers and vast influence will not unduly influence athlete performance, inadvertently bias judges, or cause unintended mayhem, it’s time to award the much anticipated Olympic Snoots.

The Snooty scale recognizes best and most useless in various categories. Consulting the interactive periodic table of metals, I have selected Lithium to represent best (batteries and pharmaceuticals and 90% of the world’s Lithium supply is in Bolivia. Forget Krugerrands. My money is in Lithium). And of course, Bohrium to represent the most useless, mind-numbing and stupid of the 2 weeks because it has no known uses and the name just lends itself to the cause.

Category: Opening Ceremony

Lithium: Mr. Bean, clearly

Bohrium: Those weird face dresses that the country name bearers wore. I think that’s Meryl Streep’s likeness at the bottom right? Defies explanation.

Category: Sport-like

Lithium:  Kayaking

Even though it doesn’t qualify under my definition of sport, I was pleasantly surprised and entertained.

Bohrium: Beach Volleyball.

Enough already. Changing the format doesn’t qualify as a new sport. (I’m looking at you too, synchronized diving.) If it did, then we should move Dressage to the ice rink for a whole new angle to the sport (also not really a sport). It’s not even interesting to watch the first time around, and I have to sit through it again in a slow-mo replay of every point of the entire match, as I wait for the gymnastics and track and field. Outfits are stupid, and I don’t buy the argument that they have to wear the bikinis “to keep sand from going everywhere.” Hey! I know how to keep sand from going everywhere, put on some clothes and play real volleyball.

Category: Sport Rule

Lithium: Pole Vaulting

It appeals to my sense of expediency and snootiness that you can pass a jump until it’s at a height worthy of your attention.

Bohrium: Tie: Gymnastics & Table Tennis Ping Pong

But since it’s a tie, the gymnastics labyrinthine tiebreaker rules come into play and force a renaming to Ping Pong. Because that’s what it is, people. Ping pong has by far the dumbest rule, “you are allowed to towel off every 6 points in a match.” It’s just hard for me to get my head around sweating and requiring a knee wrap for Ping Pong.

Gymnastics deserves an honorable mention here for its bizzare tie-breaker rules, its limit on qualifications to 2 per country for the all-around and for the unseemly protest process involving a speed application and cash.

Category: Journalistic Hyperbole

Lithium: The Backstory

I admit, I love the backstory. I love the tales of hardscrabble youths overcoming abuse, neglect, poverty to live their dream. What’s even more amazing is those who have stared down adversity and risen to the top are invariably American!

Bohrium: Michael Phelps “Greatest Olympian”

Not greatest Olympian, but most decorated. I take issue with essentially the same 4 races played out in every possible permutation for a medal a pop. By that logic the decathlon winner should get 10 medals.

Category: Post-Win Commentary

Lithium: Cyclist Bradley Wiggins

“Well what a day, blind drunk at the minute and overwhelmed with all the messages. Thank you everyone it’s been emotional X.”

Also noteworthy, when asked if Missy Franklin was disappointed with her 4th place finish, she answered she thought that 4th place at the Olympics is pretty good and did we notice how stinking fast everyone is?

Bohrium: Every other athlete

We know you’ve “worked so hard,” “wanted this so much” and “it means the world to you.” Blah blah. That’s all assumed. Next time put some gold-medal effort into your victory speech.

All in all, an excellent show, London. Cheers!

Politically Unmotivated

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It just seems like my job as a human keeps getting harder. Everything I do or don’t do becomes a political statement. It seems like a lot of hard work to keep up with the politics of all of the companies I patronize. When did my waffle fry become a banner for any cause other than cholesterol lowering drugs?

Once politics, religion, and weird fetishes were kept private. Now you can make all sorts of assumptions about me based on my zip code, tax bracket, car, employer, and t-shirt color. I can’t leave the house without considering what message my lip gloss may be sending.

Do me a favor American CEO: keep politics unrelated to your product just that – unrelated to your product, exercise your right to free speech with your vote (or apparently all the money you want to throw after it), and leave the consumer out of it. And yes, I’d like fries with that.

Snooty Wear

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Yes, my own line of snooty t-shirts with a judgmental finger-waggling graphic, printed up to say…

1. “You are wearing workout clothes, and yet you must park in the fire lane because you can’t summon the energy to walk your ample backside across the parking lot? Irony. Look it up.”

2.“It’s customary to suspend your cell phone conversation long enough to say ‘thank you’ if I hold the door open for you.”

3. “I don’t appreciate your nose there.” This one is to wear around my dog.

4. “I know it’s French and all, but the ‘R’ in RSVP means to respond either yes or no.”

5. “If you insist on posting pictures of food you are about to eat on Facebook, you must also post the after pictures…post-colonic. Maybe then you’ll stop. For the love of all that’s holy, please stop.”

6. “If you are going to assert that America is the best country ever, you have to at least have visited another one.”

7. “My family values include judgment, derision, and unabashed mockery.”

8. “I really could have used the extra time waiting for you to turn in front of me with no turn signal to think up another clever t-shirt.”

9. “As a matter of fact I am inside, refusing to open the door for you to discuss my salvation. But it’s nice that you cared enough to stop by.”

10. “My mother told me not to talk to strangers, or people on airplanes, or people who are uninteresting.”

Angry gods

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I have angered the gods. Specifically:

1. The god of Unsolicited Email

I don’t know who sold my information recently, but I am not interested in last minute cruises, Pamper’s coupons, discount pharmaceuticals, or making a contribution to your lizard rehabilitation sanctuary.

2. The god of Discontinued Patterns

I am like a divining rod for dinnerware patterns about to fail and become exorbitantly expensive. Every pattern I registered for as a giddy bride-to-be with exquisite taste, collected half of as wedding gifts, and entombed in bubble-wrap was summarily discontinued.

I have exactly enough to serve a dinner party of 12, as long as no one wants to eat at the same time and is not thirsty.

Just this week, I scored 5 dinner plates on ebay. Feeling flush with success, I checked out my silver pattern, which is actually still in production. Not that it matters, at $100 a fork and $639 a place-setting (used – no monograms; I’d even change my initials if I could get a deal on the ones with monograms). I’m not even looking for things like the Bonbon Spoon or the Crab-claw Cracker. I just want the basics, you know, the things that Dixie handles. I might even go for $100 if Towle made a sterling “spork.”

On to my crystal. Waterford never discontinues a pattern. They simply “archive” it. For $200 I could special order an Irishman to blow me another footed iced beverage, delivered in 6-9 months. Blow me another, is right. If I have a party, exactly 7 of you can have champagne, 4 of you wine, and 4 of you water or iced tea, but not both.

3. The god of Lame Injuries

I smashed my pinkie into a countertop a month ago, and it still hurts. I decided to tape it to the finger next door in hopes that it will stop that awful snapping noise. And now I’m forced to explain that I just smashed my pinkie into a countertop.

Punch Drunk

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Hello! Did you miss me? I took a few weeks off, and apparently not one of my 23 fans noticed. I’m Gen X, validation is my crack. It’s not as though I didn’t find anything snoot-worthy in the intervening weeks. I was just waiting for one of you to beg me to honor you with a blog. Anyway…

As you might know, I thrive on pretention (by the way, “pretention” is not a word, but in the spirit of Stephen Colbert, I’m making it one for purposes of this post), but if there’s one thing I can’t abide it’s false pretention–disguising our basest instincts with dignity and flair… taking a slithering mass of yuck and wrapping a snoot Snuggie around it.

I was busy watching my snark-crush, Stephen Colbert, last week on TV. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I make an exception for the snarkily-gifted. Since it was real-time, I got a glimpse into the American psyche…the commercial.

Miller Lite has a new product with an ingenious delivery system, a punch top can. What is the purpose of an additional hole, you ask? Well, as the dainty pinky-finger-extended academics in sweater vests and Bruno Magli loafers featured in the commercial will tell you, it’s for a “smoother pour with less glug.”

Let me put on my false-snark detecting goggles and break that down for you. The extra hole lets the doughy Nascar fans, bedecked in flannel and steel toes, shotgun a beer with less air intake. Because if it’s one thing that turns off the Hooters girls, it’s not the queso caked on your shirt, your naughty Tinkerbell tattoo, or the black goo lodged under your fingernails…it’s your gassiness. Let’s be clear, you’re not pouring Miller Lite into anything other than your face as fast as possible. Note, in the ad, they never show the receptacle for the “smooth pour”. I think we can safely assume it’s not the Waterford Pilsner set.

I suppose it does, in the very least, illustrate a principle of physics and fluid dynamics. So let’s say you want to take full advantage of this engineering marvel and punch the top. How would you go about such a procedure? The ad goes on to show you a wide range of implements you can use to accomplish your “smooth pour” (read: imminent stupefied state): a house key, drumstick, fishing lure, screwdriver, and softball trophy (not making this up).

But why stop there now that you have tetanus…why not a prosthetic hook hand, a hooker’s stiletto, your field dressing kit, or that piece of copper that you’ve just stripped from an electrical wire? The possibilities are endless. It may unleash your creativity so much, you end up punching multiple holes and have a geyser of fermented goodness.

By the way, I had to look up what exactly is in a field dressing kit to make sure there was something that would puncture aluminum. All in the name of journalistic integrity, friends.

Here is what you get included in a field dressing/disposing of criminal evidence kit…elbow length plastic gloves, tarp and apron. Delightful. Siri can give you suggestions on where to dump the body. But she won’t punch a hole in your Miller Lite. She’ll berate you loudly in the presence of your friends, tell you to get clean up, buy a shirt with buttons, and give you directions to a store that carries nice imported German beers that start in a glass and end in a second glass. Prost!

Dressing on the Side

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The unthinkable happened on American Idol last night – a travesty, a lapse in judgment, a sin against humanity. America looked deep within and unleashed a horror of epic (and I do mean epic) proportions. Twice. I’m talking about the return of the catsuit.

There are certain wardrobe choices that are meant for occupational or functional use only: harem pants, chaps, the Speedo. These are choices that fit a very narrow set of the population; in this case, Eartha Kitt. Instead, I was assaulted by Fantasia and Chaka (Can I just refer to her as Chaka?) stuffed like Lazy-Boys into unforgiving spandex. There were more ridges and bumps than on the Michelin man.

While I’m at it, I have an issue with another form of dress: the school-sponsored theme-dress day. We have days to dress up as your favorite book character (I will just be interested to see how many kids ask to go as a character from Fifty Shades of Grey next year), camouflage day, pajama day, nerd day, rock star day, tacky tourist day, backwards day, crazy hair day, team spirit day, 80s day, drug free day, etc.  Clearly the work of the Hobby Lobby lobby. Just to make my life complete and give Pinterest another way to make me feel inadequate, I’d like to suggest a few more.

Hey kids, dress up as your favorite:

  1. Intestinal parasite
  2. Gosselin kid
  3. Deliverance character
  4. Punctuation mark
  5. Existential philosopher
  6. African dictator
  7. Element of the Periodic Table (My kid would be all over this one.Tungsten, baby)
  8. Tofu product
  9. Kazuo Ishiguro character
  10. Domestic militia member

I may have missed a calling: inventor of dress-up days and namer of nail polish colors.

 

Ah, Greek Out!

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I am sure you are riveted, just as I am, to the latest in the unfolding European Debt Crisis. Greece is in trouble. Greeks don’t want austerity, but they want a return to the Drachma even less. Germans aren’t keen on funding the Greeks’ early retirement, however. And the economy is foundering.

I think it’s time to think on a micro level–where everyone does his part to help out someone in need. Think of it as a Spaghetti Dinner fundraiser, except in this case it’s gyros. In order to help their economy, we need to boost exports. Let’s think of where the Greeks have a competitive advantage.

1. Ouzo. No that won’t work. It’s nasty. In fact, the Turks had to rename it, it was so awful. I suppose we could pay a small fee to ask them to stop making it. While we are on the subject of the Turks, I’m sure they would pay a hefty sum for the promise to leave Cyprus alone.

2. The Greek Alphabet. A surcharge on all fraternities, sororities, and math professors for overuse of the Greek Alphabet.

3. Islands, lots of them. Maybe each German citizen could get a timeshare in sunny Naxos in exchange for a bail-out.

4. Yogurt. Greek yogurt is delicious. I say we hand over the patent to whatever straining technology there is, and all Greek yogurt is now made in and exported from Greece.

5. Democracy. If every democratic nation could pitch in, say, 10 million dollars for the use of the system of government the Greeks invented, that would go a long way. Maybe there could be a sliding scale for how long you’ve been using it. America’s bill would be relatively cheap.

6. National treasures. Maybe instead of demanding London return pilfered antiquities, the Greeks could broker a deal to lease them. Admittedly they aren’t in much of a bargaining position here.

7. Grease. All royalties and rights to the movie and musical franchise. Just thinking out of the box here. Remember, shared sacrifice. I’m sure Stockard Channing would go for it.

8. Marathons. Judging by the number of 26.2 bumper stickers in my zip code alone, imagine what you could collect with a toll booth at every mile.

9. I remember from my honeymoon in Greece, that they have an abundance of cats. The market for cute cat YouTube videos has got to be able to be monetized somehow. Zuckerberg, get on that would you?

Hmmm. Other things Greece is famous for…

Celebrity cruise with Zach Galifianakis and Constantin Maroulis aboard a Greek cargo ship with captain Nia Vardalos and all the feta, baklava, and dolmades you can eat. Who’s in?

Mommy Bores

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I am so tired of “Mommy Wars”–thinly veiled attempts to demonstrate uber-female status and validate one’s worth at the expense of your sister down the street. It’s like some outmoded mating ritual. Wanted: male who values puffy ankles and ability to open stroller one-handed to share mini-van.

If you work, you’re heartless and non-nurturing; if you stay home, you’re unskilled and needy. If you don’t breastfeed, you’re denying your child all that is good and holy. If you do breastfeed one day past the socially-acceptable 1 year point, you are twisted and sentencing your child to a lifetime of therapy. And if you don’t have children, well, clearly you are sub-human.

Yawn. I count it among the small miracles in my life that my children are alive and functioning. I have been lectured on my choices from pain management during childbirth and not breastfeeding my (adopted) son to writing my children’s thank-you notes, and the proper application of sunscreen.

I see the sneers and hear the tsk-tsks at dinner as one child screams with hands over ears that he will not go to the bathroom–the flushing may be too loud, and the other cowers in the corner in mortal fear that the grapes on his brother’s plate might sprout legs and march like Hitler into Poland onto his plate. Or, as I see it, a typical Tuesday night.

The “experts” (almost always men) are fabulous about totaling our inadequacies, but women are far, far worse. No conversation on the playground is really looking for a viewpoint on pacifiers, it’s a size-up, plain and simple. And Facebook is a perfect platform for projecting your most ideal/unreal self and daring others to top it. It’s far more pernicious than airbrushing a swimsuit model.

Here’s my FB post in honor of Mother’s Day: I concede the Mommy War. I sometimes really suck as a mom and human being. I go full-out Tiger Mother at times on grades, art projects, and piano practice and at others can barely muster interest to proofread the book report. I hate Hobby Lobby with a white-hot intensity. My kids have been to McDonald’s. They have tasted the forbidden nectar of Sprite. They have been subjected to restaurant high chairs and have licked the Target shopping cart. They play video games, watch TV, and torpedo down the driveway on a skateboard head-first. I have passed off a cheese stick and stale tortilla as lunch. They don’t have scrapbooks chronicling their every bowel movement, and leprechauns don’t wreak havoc on St Patrick’s Day in the Milhizer house. I have clearly missed the mark for the ideal.

And yet, they live. And they are smart and funny despite it all. I even got a poem extolling my virtues and comparing  me to a beautiful turquoise Bluebonnet. Beat that, bi-yatch!

Book Snub

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I reserve extra snobbery for books. They take up a good portion of my evening, and I was a literature major; so I feel especially empowered to be judgmental. As if I needed license.

I’m in 2 book clubs and try to fit in my own selection too, so that’s a minimum of 3 books a month, 66% of which are not my choice. I pick them up anyway and read them. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. Other times, not. But love it or hate it, as long as it qualifies as something worth having a conversation over, I’m good.

Then there are those that pass as “books.” It’s really more like People magazine without pictures. Here’s a hint it’s not a real book…it’s trending on Yahoo searches, one or more characters is undead, or people are reading it on mass transit. If the masses are are interested, it probably doesn’t pass the snoot test. That’s the definition of snoot, people.

I am really fine if you want to read them on your own time and try to hunt for a plot or make extrapolations about how the author really meant to develop the character. I’m especially fine if you want to practice your editing skills by adding proper punctuation or correcting spelling mistakes. But please don’t attribute book-like qualities to it and purport to have a serious discussion about the deeper meaning. Just read it for fun and admit that it’s a time-killer between now and the sweet hereafter for you.

I recently read one that was banned from a Florida library for mature content. Oh, the outrage! I’m generally not for censorship, but I might have to make an exception in this case. I’m down with all kinds of questionable content. One of my favorite books of all time is Lolita. So it’s clearly not that. 

I would ban the “book” in question on the grounds that’s it abominably written, gratuitous, and insufferably tedious. On the other hand, banning the book from the library would only put $9.99 more in the hands of the “author” for each prospective “reader” and cost more trees their lives. Also, a good banning is usually an indicator of a really good book, and certainly part of any successful marketing plan. So, I’d hate to accord this one the air of any artistic merits or cultural insurgency on which to be banned. Sigh. Freedom wins by a hair. By all means, go forth and wallow in it.