Monday, November 24, 2008

Makeoverz? ur doin it wrong

As a working stiff, I don't ever actually get to watch the Today Show, and now I'm glad. One of my favorite things in the world (yes, I'm a complicated feminist being) is a good makeover. It's an imaginative act -- a new haircut, new clothes, a new look. And when done well has internal and external implications. Seize your personal power! Communicate who you are on the inside via your outsides? Wear clothes that fit, damnit!

Plus, if you do it right, you get to hang out with Stacey and Clinton or, dare I say it? Tim Gunn. (Cue angel choir.)

On the other hand, there's the aptly named "Ambush!" feature on the Today Show. In which they take beautiful women who might need a bit of a haircut -- and ugly them up with bad dye jobs and extreme pancake foundation. Cause you know what you want out of a makeover? A frosted, unflattering look that makes you look twenty years older than you are.

Judge for yourself, kids. I'm off to corral Nick Arrojo and Carmondy for an intervention.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Something about fish and a wooden cask of some sort?

Really? I mean, really? Bronx Mowgli?

Ashlee, Pete -- are you really trying to style yourself as the ersatz Posh and Becks? At least when they named their kid "Brooklyn," I could look away and pretend it was some foreign affectation (if by "foreign" you mean "ever so slightly extraterrestrial").

And it's a well-known fact that the hero of the Jungle Book is Baloo. To say nothing of how we might want to reconsider naming our children after characters in the works of imperialism's pithiest apologist. I'm sorry -- was Gunga Din taken?

And nothing says, "Hi, I'm a very minor celebrity!" like a fauxriginal name. You might as well get this kid a show on VH-1 right now. Maybe Flavor Flav can help you with a nickname or two.

This whole thing is so minor, in fact, I can't even call what I'm feeling "outrage". It's more "mild bemusement at a particularly sad grab for national attention." If it's attention you want, kids, name the kid Motor Oil Roosevelt HappyThoughts -- you know, something that has a surrealist art to it. If you're going mad, go big mad, you know what I'm sayin'?