Author Archives: Molly

Katy Perry’s Halftime Show: Best And Worst Dressed

Posted in Entertainment, Outfit Girl by

What did YOU wear for the Superbowl? Me, I wore the heavy cloak of disappointment. Disappointment in the game itself, one of those ones where I was just rooting against the team that I wanted to lose most. Disappointment in that one Nationwide commercial, which only came in second on my list of Most Depressing Superbowl Moments because one year my grandfather died during the game.  Disappointment in social media, where I assume the #LikeABoy hashtag was started by the same bros who thought up #ALLlivesMatter. But you know what? Not disappointment in the halftime show, really. It was good. Like any proper Katy Perry spectacle, the performance was full of over-the-top, fun costumes. Here are the best and worst.

Best Dressed

Katy Perry in the The More You Know symbol

Remember when you’d hear that “bing biiing bing BIIING” chime at the end of one of those PSAs when you were younger, and realize that that your favorite NBC stars had tricked you into learning something? Well, you probably had the same feeling seeing this symbol. Oh, shoot, there was a lesson in all of this?

A Human in This Cranky Ball Costume

“Hi Nana, it’s Stephanie! I got the job! I’m dancing with Katy Perry at the Superbowl!”

“The bucktoothed, downtrodden beach ball with the blue tights.”

“Nana? NANA?”

[These maybe should be on the “worst” list, but I’m just so happy that this was on my TV last night and my internet this morning.]

The Athenians, Probably in This Trojan Lion

While watching this entrance, I imagined that at some point the lion would open up and members of my favorite NFL team would spill out, taking over the game so that I could watch players I actually liked.

Missy Elliott in One Of Those Outfits She Wears

When Missy appeared on stage, even though the show was going well already, it felt like she … well … put her thing down, flipped it, and reversed it. The show was ON. And I’m so glad that she wore one of her classic Missy Elliott jumpsuits, along with a ball cap and hoop earrings. If I tried to wear her outfit, I’d look like I was in my jammies. But Missy looked like the rapper we all know, love, and really, really missed. How good does she look?!

By the way, I’m choosing to believe that one of her dancers was that girl from the Miss Elliott videos of the mid-2000s.

Lenny Kravitz in His Face And Body

This outfit also felt like a time-warp to 2004, but in  a less positive way. But I do not care, because Lenny Kravitz was also sporting his face and body, which are both very nice.

Katy Perry in A Bathing Suit That Looks Like A Beach Ball From A Little Golden Book

Runner-up: The dancers in shark suits, because I had to wear a giant plush costume for work one summer and I appreciate their obvious discomfort for the sake of entertainment.

Katy Perry’s Microphone in A Wii Safety Strap

So she didn’t get too worked up and throw her microphone through the new TV.

Worst Dressed

A Dancer’s Hopes And Dreams in These Tree Costumes

There’s a certain silly joy in playing a dancing beach ball or a clapping shark, but playing a tree is just not a career highlight. The surfboarts were pretty bad too.

Katy Perry In Yule Log Screencaps

You have a Hunger Games budget, your flame dress shouldn’t look like a child’s drawing or a cheap fake fire place.

Those human chess pieces in my nightmares.

I can’t even parse out why, but the moment I saw these costumes my reaction was “I hate this.” It just seemed creepy. They also remind me of really sharp lego that you would step on when it’s dark. I don’t know. Just not a fan. Maybe it’s the pointy shoes?

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Things I’m Willing To Believe About Tom Brady

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If you’ve come here looking for actual facts about Tom Brady, keep looking. I have to make up Tom Brady in my mind, based on the 2 or 3 actual things I know about him and the way his face is. I have to do this because I’m not a huge fan of football in general (Dillon Panthers/Lions aside), and the Patriots in particular. Still, as Brady prepares for his sixth Super Bowl appearance on Sunday, it’s time to talk Tom Brady.

As you know, I have baseless concepts of certain celebrities. I am willing to believe that Ben Affleck is a Boston bro-mensch, and I am willing to believe that Leonardo DiCaprio is a totally rad 90s teen armed with a Nerf Super-Soaker and a bottle of Sunny D. As for Tom Brady? I am willing to believe that he’s apple-cheeked and squeaky clean, even though I realize that most professional athletes aren’t that way. Basically, I picture the 2015, adult man version of an impish little boy from the 1950s. Which means I’m willing to believe the following:

  • Tom Brady’s childhood photos are being used as the mold for the first male American Girl doll.
  • His face is also the inspiration for the little boy on a can of organic oatmeal sold somewhere clean and wholesome. Like Finland.

    I mean I think this is a WPA ad but you get the gist.

  • When you ask Tom Brady how he takes his coffee, he answers “oh, just some raw sugar and milk that comes in a glass bottle. That I get delivered. From a farm.”

 

  • Just kidding he doesn’t consume “hard drinks.”

 

  • While we’re on morning foods, whenever Tom Brady eats cereal he plates it like one of those “well-balanced breakfast”s of 90s TV ads, complete with fruit, orange juice, eggs and toast.
  • Tom Brady does puzzles for fun.

 

  • And play dominoes.

 

  • Tom Brady literally laughs out loud at Peanuts comics

    This part breaks his heart every time.

  • In the corner of Brady’s bedroom, there’s a basket of socks. They’re waiting to go back to his mother to darn.

 

  • On the whole, he really stores a LOT of his stuff in baskets.

    Like puppies.

 

  • Speaking of which, sometimes he bikes to the grocery store and returns with a baguette and a bouquet of flowers in his bicycle basket, like somebody buying groceries in the “after” segment of a Cymbalta commercial.

 

  • How does Tom Brady warm up his throwing arm? Why, playing fetch with shelter dogs, of course.  And they’re all somehow, like, beagles and golden retrievers.

    He didn’t even KNOW this dog. It just gravitated toward him.

  • When he tries to go to bed early before a big game, sometimes his wife catches him reading chapter books under the covers with a flashlight.

 

  • If you’re a lady walking somewhere with Tom Brady, he WILL walk on the curb side.

 

  • Tom loves meeting up with really old guys, like super old, and just talking about their lives.

 

  • You might have thought it was unusual – though not necessarily bad – that Tom Brady’s daughter is named Vivian Lake. But it’s because, in Tom’s words, “I named the most beautiful girl in the world after the most beautiful place in the world.” Lake Vivian was the pond at Brady’s beloved summer camp.

 

  • That was after he was shot down for wanting to “name the most beautiful girl in the world after the most beautiful girl in the world” – not his wife Giselle Bundchen, but his sixth-grade crush, Stacey Marie.

 

  • Tom Brady rides children’s scooters while wearing a newsboy cap.

 

  •  I’m willing to believe that because it’s true:
  •  On the off season, Brady likes to have a “Sunday evening wind-down.” Which involves brownie sundaes and reruns of Little House on the Hallmark Channel.

 

  • And the only time – the ONLY time – that he has used the word “bitch” was in reference to Nellie Olsen.

 

  • The only Rated R movies Tom Brady is interested in are Westerns.

 

  • You know how nobody throws pizza parties any more? Well, Tom Brady throws Pizza Parties. And the two-liters are always ice cold.

    BELIEVE IT.

  • Remember how once in a great, great while your elementary school would have a “surprise pizza party?” Every couple weeks Brady funds one of those (anonymously, of course).

 

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Hogwarts Goes Hollywood: Harry Potter Actors As Disney Characters

Posted in Entertainment by

Disney and Harry Potter, the entertainment franchises that brought magic to our childhood (and, um, teens and 20s), are now at one. Emma Watson – Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies – will be playing Belle in a live-action version of Beauty And The Beast! Belle was always my favorite Disney princess because she liked books. I had the redhead solidarity thing with Ariel, but even at age five I was like “Ariel, girl, get a grip. You look desperate.” But I digress. The Harry Potter movies were full of amazing actors, and the Disney movies have a bunch of awesome characters. Emma Watson as Belle is a good start, but I think we could make this a regular thing:

Alfie Enoch as Prince Eric, The Little Mermaid

Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid needs to be so dreamy that a mermaid –  whose greatest joy is singing  – gives her voice to a sea-witch so that she can get legs and like… hang out with him silently in a rowboat. Sounds like an awesome date. See what I mean about Ariel? Anyway, when I think “Hogwarts Dreamboat,” I think Alfie Enoch.

Rupert Grint as John Smith, Pocahontas

Ron Weasley had a lot of strong points, but he was sort of a borderline bro sometimes. The Disney version of that is John Smith in Pocahontas. He’s an imperialist dumb-dumb, but he’s so dopey that you can’t really hate him. There’s that spark of goodness in Ron, too, so we know that Rupert could balance the character’s likability with his more annoying traits.

Tom Felton as Hans, Frozen

Oh, Draco. You loved to hate him. For the character to work, the actor had to convey enough smoothness so that you believe that all of his teachers don’t absolutely hate him. Likewise, Hans has to SEEM like a nice guy to enough people that you don’t spend the whole movie going “uh, this jerk.” Just as it takes a smart actor to play a dumb person, it takes a nice actor to play a mean person. I think Felton’s up to the task.

Evanna Lynch as Rapunzel, Tangled

Luna Lovegood is one of my favorite Harry Potter characters. In both the books and the movies, she’s got a few screws loose but she’s not a one-note joke of a person. She has real feelings and, even though she’s a bit of a whackadoo, she’s smart and brave. Disney-wise, this is Rapunzel from Tangled. She’s not a floaty, sweet gal like Snow White or Cinderella – she’s a weirdo who hangs out with a chameleon. Both characters aren’t socially … you know, off …. by accident – they both had childhoods that meant they couldn’t quite fit in.

Alan Rickman as Scar, The Lion King

I get that Alan Rickman is a human person, not a lion. But otherwise, he’s proven that he can play a creepy avuncular villain. (Or, not villain, but admit it, for a while you really thought so!) They could just use those weird costumes from the Broadway musical or whatever.

Whomping Willow as Grandmother Willow, Pocahontas

Stunt casting? Eh, maybe, but who else are they going to get?

Jessie Cave as Those Triplets Who Were All Up On Gaston, Beauty And The Beast

Lavender Brown WAS the Hogwarts version of those hussies who were Gaston fangirls. I know there’s only one of her but they have to make a humanoid monster and dancing cups, I’m sure they can turn one person into three people.

Julie Walters as Mrs. Potts, Beauty And The Beast

Molly Weasley IS Mrs. Potts.

Hogsmeade as Belle’s Quaint Village, Beauty And The Beast

Hogsmeade, UK and Poor Provincial Town, France clearly had the same city planners.

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The Buffalo Weather vs. The Washington Megans: NFL Teams, Renamed

Posted in Miscellany by

By 2017, the Washington Redskins had exhausted all excuses for their team name. “It’s not about PEOPLE, it’s about SKINS.” “Some potatoes have red skin and they’re not offended.” “When you think about it, it’s just a color plus a body part. If we were called the Purple Hairs or the Grey Jowls, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.”

But they were having that discussion, and everyone was sick of it. The Redskins threw a Hail Mary pass – not on the field, they are not good in 2017 – but in the court… of public discourse. “We’ll change our name if everybody changes their names.”

To their surprise, the rest of the NFL was on board. It was a chance to sell merch, and some of the other teams realized that even if their names weren’t offensive yet, they would be sooner or later. On the first Sunday of the regular season, 2018, the Washington Megans squared off against the Buffalo Weather. And the Cleveland Oranges against the Kansas City Chefs.

Here’s how some of those new names came to be:

The Baltimore Ravens are now The Baltimore Hop-Frogs

The fact that the original team name was a literary reference – To Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, of course –  was so badass that the Ravens organization was loathe to change it. But why not look further into the Poe canon and find a work that’s even spookier than The Raven? Enter The Hop-Frog, a short story about a court jester who convinces a group of royals to dress as monkeys then sets them alight, burning them to death.

The Raven, in contrast, was just a bird talking some shit.

The Buffalo Bills are now The Buffalo Weather

The same question plagued the Bills organization for years. What even is a BILL? When a quick survey of the naming committee revealed that nobody – not one person – had met a menacing Bill, they knew they had to come up with something that would strike fear in their opponents.

Then they hit on it. What could be more terrifying, more dangerous, more unpredictable than the Buffalo Weather?

The Cincinnati Bengals are now The Cincinnati Parisiens

Did you know that in the 1800s they used to call Cincinnati “The Paris Of America?” Think about it for a sec. Calling anything the something of somewhere always sounds like it’s either almost an insult or almost a compliment. But Cincinnati – sick of being considered basically the city version of a mom haircut – decided to aim high. With their new team name, Cinci reclaimed its connection to the proud – some would say TOO proud, snooty even – city of Paris.

The Cleveland Browns are now The Cleveland Oranges

Nobody in the Browns organization knew why a team choosing to name itself after a color – already an iffy concept – would also chose to name itself after the WORST color: brown, the color of poop and dirt. However, they were unwilling to repaint the entire stadium and redesign all of their merchandise. So Cleveland chose to keep the same team colors – orange and brown – but named itself after the one that isn’t the disappointment of the color wheel.

The Dallas Cowboys are now The Dallas East Dillon Lions

Dallas put its team name to popular vote, and the people got what they wanted: a team named after the greatest football players in Texas history. The Dallas Tami Taylors lost by a close margin, because Tami Taylor is the truest embodiment of the phrase “don’t mess with Texas.”

The Houston Texans are now The Houston Austins

Look. Texas knows that outsiders’ favorite part of Texas is Austin. It’s not stupid. It also knows that Austin is never going to get its act together to organize a football team. Lord knows it tried. They had meetings and practices and everything, and the result was a mural, a community garden, and a podcast. So, the Texans organization went for the next-best thing, and named the Houston team after the team all of the non-Texans wish existed.

The Indianapolis Colts are now The Indianapolis Adult Horses

Have you ever seen a colt? Cute as hell, but all wobbly on its spindly little legs. Not exactly the name for a football powerhouse. The Colts naming committee wanted to convey an animal with a little bit more power, strength, and maturity. Bam. The Indianapolis Adult Horses.

The Minnesota Vikings are now The Minnesota Ikeas

The Vikings team name was a tribute to Minnesota’s proud Scandinavian heritage. Even more than the Vikings, which Nordic export can confound a grown man into a blubbering mess of tears? IKEA FURNITURE. The new mascot is a confusing diagram on legs –  picture the Bill from Schoolhouse Rock – named the Ikea Directions.

The Kansas City Chiefs are now The Kansas City Chefs

The new Chiefs owner, who is not good at spelling, in fact terrible at spelling, hated dealing with the “i before e” thing in Chiefs. Behind his back, his staff had taken to calling the team the Kansas City Chefs after his most frequent misspelling. As a joke, they all voted for this as the new name… and it won.

Unfortunately, the owner tends to spell it “shefs” now.

The New York Giants are now The New York New Jerseys

The team plays in New Jersey. Everyone knows that this is weird. The organization is just acknowledging it.

The New England Patriots are now The Boston Safety Schools

It seemed awfully ridiculous that most other teams belong to a single city – hell, New York has TWO – yet the Patriots are supposed to represent an entire region. The committee did away with that and just named them for the nearest major metro area. Then, okay, what’s to love about Boston? A lot! Some of the best colleges in the country are in Boston, and so are some of the very good colleges everyone applies to in case they don’t get into those.  Boston may be home to more beloved safety schools than any other city in the country, and it should be proud.

Besides, knocking Harvard down a peg seemed like a pretty Boston thing to do.

The Philadelphia Eagles are now The Philadelphia Iggles

The Eagles organization looked to other Philadelphia teams for inspiration, but got sidetracked discussing the Phillies mascot, the Philly Phanatic. “What’s with this thing where the Phillies have to spell EVERYTHING with a ‘PH?’ It’s annoying. Just spell it like you say it!,” Todd said. It’s not important who Todd is, but this guy is always named Todd.

“Spell it like you say it…” Keith repeated. Freaking Keith.

“Spell it like you say it…” said Don. I’m pretty sure there would be a Don.

And the Philadelphia Iggles were born.

The New York Jets are now The New York Giants

With the Giants renamed to reflect the fact that these guys for real play in New Jersey, the Giants’ name was up for grabs. The Jets knew that a Giant is actually pretty cool, with potential for an awesome mascot and logo that the original Giants never really took advantage of. So they snatched up that name and became the New York Giants.

It’s very confusing and everybody hates it.

The Oakland Raiders are now The Oakland Haircuts

Sometimes, a team knows that it is in the most shining moment in its history. The Chicago Bulls knew it when Jordan was playing, and the Yankees knew it with Babe Ruth. The hybrid bowl cut-mullet sported by Raiders owner Mark Davis? Yeah, the organization’s never going to see another one like that:So, the Oakland Haircuts it is.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are now The Pittsburgh Best Buy Reebok Dairy Queens

They got sort of carried away with the corporate sponsors.

The Seattle Seahawks are now The Seattle Fleece

What’s a Seattle stalwart that forges through bitter winds, driving rain and winter chill? Like, I GUESS their football team, but mostly zip-up fleeces. Guaranteed, if you walk through the streets of Seattle you will see 1000 North Face zip-ups for every one seahawk. And that’s a conservative estimate.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are now The Tampa Bay Nanas

The Buccaneers had spreadsheets and whiteboards all blank and ready. The committee met to discuss what everyone’s favorite things about Tampa were. But really, all anyone likes about Tampa is their Nana who lives there in the winter.

The Washington Redskins are now The Washington Megans

The Redskins had the most at stake in the Great NFL Name Change. All eyes were on them to choose a name that was, at the very least, not racist. After hours of debate, a quiet and exceptionally average-looking committee member spoke up. Like, almost aggressively average, if that makes sense.

“Before I was born, my parents had a lot of trouble coming up with a name. They, too, were afraid of offending someone. See, they couldn’t pick a name from either side of the family, because the other side would get hurt feelings. They couldn’t use a name any of their friends had used on their kids, because that would be stealing. My dad didn’t want anything too fancy, but my mom didn’t want anything too cutesy. By the time they went to the hospital, they still didn’t have a name. But once I was born, my father took one look at my little face, eyes opening to the world for the first time, and said ‘I don’t know. Fucking… Megan?’ The point is, sometimes you just have to pick something.”

But the rest of the committee had already stopped listening to her by the end, and they sort of missed the point. “Fucking… Megan? Eh, good enough.”

And that’s how the Washington Megans got their name.

Just Say YES: 80s & 90s Kids’ Shows That Made Drugs Look Fun

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First things first: we would never tell children to do drugs. Children’s programs do it for us. Or did, anyway. Back when the front line of the War On Drugs was manned by a white lady named Nancy, kids’ shows told the youth of the nation to “just say no.” The problem: the drugs looked awesome. Was it because the show runners didn’t know what drugs looked like? Or were they just trying to show kids how hard it could be to resist peer pressure? Because I guarantee if these cartoons showed gross needles, or weed being smoked out of a dank Coke can, fewer kids would have wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Instead, the drugs looked awesome:

Punky Brewster

Punky’s got lessons. Don’t go all the way inside of a refrigerator. Your family is who loves you, not who abandons you in a supermarket. Someday, you’ll get a bra. And don’t do drugs, even though drugs look like the best candy in the world.

A group of girls invite Punky and Cherie into their clique, but only if they do drugs. I repeat: the girls invited Punky and Cherie to hang out in an amazing technicolor dream fort, and offered them free drugs. I’m not surprised that Punks did the right thing, I’m just confused why those girls wanted to be friends with her that hard.

Cartoon All Stars To The Rescue

This was an all-out failure of concept. When a young boy starts drinking beer and smoking dope ( I think they say “dope,” and I’m never 100% clear on what drug that’s supposed to be), his kid sis and a team of Cartoon All Stars gang up to teach him that there’s a better way.

That’s right, kids. If you do drugs, all your favorite cartoon characters will come over to hang.

In a way, though, this was the harshest punishment of all, because can you imagine being on drugs and then trying to deal with the fact that you were rolling with Alf, the Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield, the Muppet Babies – the freaking Muppet Babies – and the Ninja Turtles? While we’re at it, Ninja Turtles: the CONSTANT PIZZA? The slow, drawled out speech? Sitting around all day in a basement with your bros? Oh, come on.

Dinosaurs

I’ve seen episodes of Weeds that were less pro-drug than this. Earl and Robbie, the boy dinosaur who’s Dinosaurs’ answer to Eddie Winslow, find a plant that makes them all chill and happy, but then the next day all they can find is seeds and stems. So I guess the lesson here is that they should have had more drugs on hand. Anyway, the whole family turns amotivational and at the end, Robbie delivers an anti-drug speech. Or is it an anti-anti drug episode speech? “When one show does an anti-drug episode, other shows feel pressured to do one, too. […] [P]ut a stop to preachy sitcom endings like this one.” In sum, the writers room of Dinosaurs probably smelled like that one kid in your nighttime sociology class who always wore a Central American poncho.

Saved By The Bell

We all know and love the “I’m so excited.. I’m so scared!” scene, but it’s easy to forget how appealing that episode made drugs look to all those Type A kids out there. Like, if I do “caffeine pills,” I too can get tons of shit done? That sounds amazing. I think we can all assume that “caffeine pills” is a Saturday morning T.V. euphemism for speed or a less depressing version of meth.

Then, there was Johnny Dakota. He was a teen star who showed up to make an anti-drug P.S.A. with the kids of Bayside. The gang goes to a party at his place and learns that he does drugs himself. So, Johnny Dakota went back to his lifestyle of drug-fueled house parties and the Bayside kids went back to hanging out with their principal. Real good job there, Saved By The Bell.

Fresh Prince

Was speed really THAT big an issue for highly-motivated teenagers in the 90s? Like Spano, Carlton is a clean-cut honor roll type who falls prey to amphetamines. He gets the pills from Will, who is using them to keep up with his go-go lifestyle, and Carlton takes them thinking that they’re vitamins. I am now realizing that I took Sudafed to pull an all-nighter in law school a few times, and that I probably learned that little trick from 90s kids’ shows. I graduated Magna Cum Laude and I owe it all to what I know realize were drugs. These were either some hardcore amphetamines or Carlton had a pre-existing condition, because he got hospitalized HARD.

Captain Planet

This episode features something that I was led to believe would happen a lot more than it does: a stranger forcing me to take drugs for no real reason. Do you remember that? They’d teach you how to “just say no” if someone offers you drugs, and then your whole DARE class would get sidetracked talking about “well, what if someone MAKES you take drugs?” And not for any reason other than that they want you to be a person who is on drugs. I remember when Traci and I were in Greece, we met this weird girl on the train who told us to be careful in Athens because people would put drugs in our food. “Oh, like… for reasons?” we wondered. Nah. She said just like weed or mild hallucinogens, and I don’t know why they would waste their hard-earned drugs on people who didn’t even want them.

But I digress. Some dude puts drugs in Lenkas food not to do anything to her, but just so that she becomes a person who is on drugs. She’s pretty miserable when she’s off drugs, but when she’s on them it looks like a blast!

Now, as someone who’s blessed to share her name with a popular club drug, I’m in a unique position to critique drug names. The one in Captain Planet is called Bliss. That’s a stupid drug name.

Jem

A girl we’ve never seen before is offered drugs, and before you know it her guitar skills are through the roof! Eventually she starts experiencing side effects or something, but this will go down as the anti-drug episode that taught us kids that if you hate practicing clarinet for band, there’s probably a drug for that.

 

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I Have A Fitbit. Life Is Different Now. I’M Different Now.

Posted in GSOY (Gratuitous Story of Yourself) by

The holidays can be super frustrating if you haven’t had any major changes in your life status. It happens to everyone. Whether you’re single, or you’re dating and haven’t gotten engaged – or you’re engaged and haven’t gotten married, or married or haven’t had a baby, or had a baby but haven’t had another baby … whatever it is, you probably had those well-meaning friends and relatives look at you with a frozen smile and pointedly ask “what’s new with you?” You know what they’re asking, but for me, the most honest and accurate response would be something along the lines of Kelly Kapoor’s answer:

This year, the biggest change in my life status has been a Fitbit. It’s like having a baby. Hear me out. It alters the way you go about your daily business, and you have so much to say about it, but unless you’re talking to someone else who has one, you assume they either can’t really understand or don’t really care. When someone would say “so, what’s new with you?” with that doofy grin, what I really wanted to say was “I have a Fitbit now! And…” And here are all the things that would come after that “and,” if I were being completely honest:

Sleep isn’t just sleep. If you asked me before Fitbit, I’d have told you that I probably got a solid 8 hours of sleep a night. Now I can tell you that I’m restless 16 times a night, like this:

But do you ever forget to tell your Fitbit that you’ve woken up? That’s the worst, because it still tracks your steps, but you’re also forced to confront those broad swaths of cobalt blue that mean you’re so motionless that your Fitbit thinks you’re asleep:

I woke up at the first pink line. Yikes.

Sometimes the FitBit thinks you’ve tapped it to track sleep, but you’ve actually pushed a shopping cart over bumpy grocery store tile, or played Rondo A Capriccio on the piano – both happened to me just this week. If you don’t notice it right away, you’ll be amazed by how often the Fitbit thinks you’re sleeping when you’re just being lazy.

And those nights when I charge it while I sleep? It’s like a slumber party in fourth grade – all I want to do is stay up late because I can.

It’s always a minor crisis when that sucker’s battery runs out. I now understand, by way of analogy, what depression must be like. I don’t say that to make light of people who have it. I just mean that when it’s charging I find myself thinking “why should I even move? Why get up? If I go for a walk or if I stay in this chair, it’s all the same – what’s the point?”

You know it’s bad when you consider buying a backup Fitbit so you’re never without a battery.

One part of the Fitbit lifestyle I can’t get behind is the calorie tracking. I’m pretty short and lightweight, and the estimated calories per day for me are almost laughably low. Even when I lift weights and walk 20,000 steps, the calories burned never get anywhere near the 2,000 neighborhood. If you’re active, short and thin, please understand that it might make you crazy.

I sort of wish there was a setting where you could tell the FitBit that you’re sick, and it would reward you for doing nothing. Or when it’s really cold out, it automatically would adjust how much it expected you to do. During the fall I was logging 15 – 20,000 steps a day without even thinking about it, but that gets a lot harder to do when your hands turn blue and red within minutes of going outside. I just had a few days of 30 degree (F) weather (what a treat!) and I was like a kid on the first sunny day in spring, so when I say I quit when it’s cold, I mean really cold.

Sing it Debbie.

I find myself making unnecessary trips during the day, like walking from my seventh floor office to the second floor bathrooms, or buying my coffee from the farther-away coffee shop. Neither of us here would consider ourselves athletic people. We’re just not very team sports-y. But I look at my daily steps and realize that I’m at least an active person. I’m pretty much always moving. Our most recent blog meeting found Traci pacing around a kitchen table to meet her step goal. This didn’t seem weird to me, and besides, we’ve both been reading about how sitting will kill you and it has us a little nervous.

You start to discover how many things you can do while pacing. For instance, this post you’re reading? I wrote the first draft on my phone while bouncing on the balls of my feet. If someone had passed by my window, I like to think that I could have pointed to the rubbery band on my wrist (something I NEVER would have worn before Fitbit) and they would have nodded knowingly. If you have one, you just get it. If you don’t have one, don’t worry, when you ask what’s new with me I probably won’t tell you all of this.

 

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Children Were Gods And Bitches Got Dysentery: Oregon Trail, For Those Too Young To Remember

Posted in Entertainment, GSOY (Gratuitous Story of Yourself) by

When was the last time you went to a magic lantern show? Or a melodrama? And liked it? Some forms of entertainment don’t hold up over time. Imagine a curly-mustached Victorian fop trying to convince you that no, seriously pantomimes are riveting. That’s how it feels explaining Oregon Trail to people who were too young to live it firsthand. But now that Oregon Trail is available to play online, there are going to be a lot of folks in the 23-and-under* crowd trying to understand the fuss – so I’ll make an effort.

The Life And Times Of ’80s and ’90s Kids

I call this costume ‘Annie Hall Of Green Gables.’

I’ve mentioned this before, but there was this weird trend in the early-mid 90s that nobody ever talks about. It’s not leggings or crop tops, which if anything are over-represented in 90s nostalgia. No, it was this thing where it was sort of normal for a child to be into the 1800s. A new version of Little Women came out, those American Girl books were everywhere, and moms watched Dr. Quinn. The Indian In The Cupboard was surprisingly popular. Craft books taught you how to make yarn dolls like Laura Ingalls. We were standing on the cusp of the digital age, playing with doll-sized butter churns.

In addition to old-timey pursuits like microwaving popcorn right on the cob just like they did in Colonial Williamsburg, us early millennials were the first generation to use computers as soon as we started school. Well, they were less like computers and more like giant graphing calculators. The screens were all-black with green or orange lettering and simple line graphics. A big part of every computer class was booting up your computer – not because it was exciting, but because it took ten minutes. Those of us who were lucky had Nintendo at home, and later, maybe a Sega system. Still, computer games were new and exciting and required “floppy disks.” There weren’t many choices, but kids and lazy substitute teachers alike loved Oregon Trail. Adults appreciated that it was educational – in that it provided a one-sided view of Manifest Destiny, I suppose. And kids loved it, because it represented a world …

Where Children Were Gods

I once read that youngest children are drawn to animals because they enjoy having someone that they could be the boss of. As a youngest child, I’d argue that we just liked being around living things that couldn’t pick on us, but I digress. Sometimes a kid does like being in charge of things. Every game of Oregon Trail was a tiny, horrifying example of what would happen if kids ruled the world – like a virtual Lord Of The Flies.

You would think that the goal of any game would be to win it. That discounts just how cruel and terrible children can be. Sometimes, you’d play just to see how disastrous you could make the lives of the characters. Here’s how:

  •  You were allowed to name the wagon party. That meant that the most common names in Oregon Trail character history were probably Poop, Butt, Jesus and (Sibling’s Name) Sucks.
  • You’d become a dreadful taskmaster, especially if the game handed you a low-income profession. The harshest sentence? Grueling pace and meager rations. That’s also the title of my future memoirs. And with that burden, it’s no wonder that…
  • Bitches got dysentery. And bitches who get dysentery get buried under a solitary rock along the roadside before we continue on our journey. Sorry, Butt.
  • “I tried to ford the river and my f***ing oxen died.” That was one of the biggest Facebook groups of the 2004-2006 era, and a universal experience during Oregon Trail’s heyday. When you got to the river you could hire a local to ferry it across, caulk the wagon, or sort of just hurl yourself headlong into the river. That’s how I remember it anyway. And I always found myself thinking, shouldn’t we have figured this out before we got to the damn river?
  • We killed the American Buffalo. When you’d go hunting, those slow-ass buffalo mosied across the screen, leaving you ample time to shoot them. You’d kill every buffalo that ambled by. Then, you’d be informed that you could only bring 100 pounds of meat into your wagon and had to leave all that buffalo carrion to fester in the prairie sun. We knew that would happen. We just wanted to hear the hollow thud when they died. Children are sick. Someone, please make a horror movie in which all of the events of the Westward Expansion – including the near-extinction of the buffalo – were under the control of 7-year-old Kimberly in Miss Smith’s computer class in 1992.

Ain’t No Party Like An Oregon Trail Party Cuz An Oregon Trail Party Proffers a Tombstone Generator When You Die From Pooping Too Much

On one hand, children were pioneer overlords in Oregon Trail – but on the other, the cruel hand of fate was always at play. It was like the game of Life, but instead of teaching children that you may fritter your life away in middle-management at a bank, it taught you that sometimes you do your best and thieves still steal all of your oxen in your sleep. Even if you played the game the “right way,” giving your settlers proper Oregon Trail names like Rebecca and Amos and setting a pace that would get you to Oregon before winter without killing you from exhaustion (before it was the trendiest cause of celebrity hospitalization), there were no guarantees that you’d arrive in the promised land. The dream of the 1850’s was alive in Portland – but would you be alive to see it? Here are some ways you could die:

  • Measles
  • Snakebite
  • Broken limbs
  • Drowning
  • Cholera
  • Exhaustion
  • Typhoid
  • Failing to save your progress at the end of a class period.

Godspeed, 90s kids. You have a 40-minute computer class ahead of you, and your teacher has laryngitis. During that time you may reach the promised land, and you may die from drinking river water. And even if you live, PoopfaceJesus may not. Oh, cruel world.

*This probably varies depending on how outdated your school’s computer game library was.While later versions of Oregon Trail came out on CD-ROM, I think that after the early-mid 90s, there were more games to chose from and Oregon Trail was no longer the only, um, ox on the prairie? So to speak.

Neiman Marcus Fantasy Gifts: Santa’s Got A Brand New Douchebag

Posted in Miscellany by

There is one joy that money can never buy: the pure delight of making fun of rich people. And there is no better time to mock the wealthy than Christmas – turning the season of giving into the season of taking (the mickey). When the affluent want to give an elaborate gift, but don’t want to actually arrange the present themselves, they turn to the year’s Neiman Marcus Fantasy Gifts. But let nothing you dismay – we have low-budget alternatives to all of them.

Tanqueray No. Ten Imperial Shaker

Cost: $35,000.00

No, it’s not an amusement park swing ride for 7-up bottles. I thought so, too. It’s a Tanqueray shaker, complete with a year’s supply of Tanqueray and a mixology class. So, essentially a Rube Goldberg invention that turns a rich asshole into a rich, drunk asshole.

Alternative: A case of Crystal Palace gin ($100.00, your local college-adjacent liquor store), a shaker ($20.00, eBay), The Joy of Mixology ($20.00, Target)

Vanity Fair Academy Awards Experience

Cost: $425,000.00

This is like famous person fantasy camp. It includes two nights at the Beverly Hills Hotel, dinner at the Chateau Marmont (Lindsay Lohan optional?), pampering (such a gross word), a dress and some borrowed jewelry and getting your hair did, access to the Vanity Fair party, and a crushing, sobering return to reality the next day.

Alternative: a Groupon for a local spa, a gift card to some sort of place that sells dresses, and your personal stash of back issues of US Weekly.

The House Of Creed Bespoke Fragrance Journey

Cost: $475,000.00

Whenever someone starts describing something as a “journey,” I tune out. You can say that you’re losing weight, but tell me that you’re “on a weight loss journey” and I’ll picture you with a compass and maybe a Saint Bernard, getting Sacajawea’ed through a Planet Fitness. So, what’s a “fragrance journey?” It’s a straight-up trip to Paris, with three nights in a five-star hotel, meals, a jaunt to the countryside, and a consult with a perfumier to make your “signature scent.”

Alternative: some essential oils (Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s/ any decent grocery store), a glass bottle (basically wherever).

100th Anniversary Neiman Marcus Limited-Edition Maserati Ghibli S Q4

Cost: $95,000.00

The copy for this gift reads like a how-to guide for being an insufferable douche. For instance: “Pulling out onto the road, you notice surrounding cars slow as you cruise down the street. Ubiquitous German luxury sedans become mere traffic in your presence—catching a glimpse of a Maserati is still a treat.” And also: “swiveled heads and open mouths accompany your arrival. Was it the aria emanating from the Bowers & Wilkins stereo or the symphony coming from the tailpipe that created the audience? Either way, one thing is certain: Everyone loves an Italian accent.”

The person who finds that braggadocio appealing is also, frankly, the last person I’d want to buy a gift for.

Alternative: A lump of coal. Do they make Italian coal? Then that.

Custom Locket and Trip with Monica Rich Kosann

Cost: $100,000.00

First, you go to Germany (airfare not included). Then, “you’ll join forces with jewelry designer and photographer Monica Rich Kosann at the workshop of Constantin Wild (whose family has been in the gem business since 1847) on a quest to find—and design—the perfect locket. Together you’ll select a stone and collaborate on your creation. The final version, and a hand-painted rendering of your piece, will then make the journey to your home soon after. In the meantime, you are welcome to visit Kosann in New York City, where she’ll photograph you and your family for the very portrait that will be kept and prized in your locket.”

This gift combines my least-favorite things: group work and appearing in photographs. Also, what’s the point of a locket unless your long-lost relative has the other half of it somewhere? Does Neiman Marcus sell that?

Alternative: One of those lockets where you put in the stuff you want and it floats around like a necklace-snowglobe. Starting at like 30 bucks. Google “make your own locket.” You’re welcome.

Ultimate Mardi Gras Experience for Six Couples

Cost: $125,000.00

Who the heck knows SIX couples? That they’d want to travel with?

Alternative: some beads (Party City, $2.00), some booze (however much you think it will take), some regret (the next day, free).

His & Hers Vilebrequin Quadski

Cost: $50,000.00 (each)

I’m a little confused here. These are billed as a “his and hers gift,” which is sort of unnecessarily heteronormative. I mean, if stereotypes are to be believed, lesbians love outdoor adventures. Although the Very Straight Man pictured seems pretty into it too. But the catch is, the quadskis are 50K each. Do you have to buy two of them, then? What if you know a single person who would like to traverse land and sea on his very own prat-mobile? WHAT THEN?

Alternative: a pool float, an ATV from Craigslist.

The Slot Mods USA Ultimate Slot Car Raceway

Cost: $300,000.00

It’s a scale model of a racetrack. And it costs more than most houses.

Alternative: A train set.

Preston Bailey Peacock Floral Sculptures

Cost: $25,000-$65,000

Do you have more money than you know what to do with, and an affinity for Edward Scissorhands? Here ya go, it’s a topiary that looks like a peacock.

Alternative: An Edible Arrangement. It’s also a plant cut into the shape of another thing, but you can eat it.

Leontine Linens Home Trousseau

Cost: $55,000.00

  The Neiman Marcus copy reads: “Most are perfectly content to live with lovely store-bought linens. But for those who envision slumbering among the finest custom cottons and dressing their tables with signature flair, the Leontine Linens Home Trousseau is a dream come true.”

Are you one of those garbage people who uses blankets from a store? Why not just cover yourself with day-old newspaper and a used pizza box, you living trash heap? Included in this gift are a series of phone interviews to determine what kind of linens you need. So not only do you have to pay $55,000.00, you have to talk on the phone. Also, you know what you could buy for 55K instead of a “home trousseau?” A home. A solid down payment on one, anyway.

Alternative: some sheets and blanket from a store. I just got a new blanket from Target. It was on sale. 17 bucks; warm as hell.

Subscription Boxes That Should Probably Exist

Posted in Lists, Miscellany by

Subscription boxes are the way to go if you’re a lazy or indecisive gift-giver. Instead of picking one gift – that the person may or may not like – you pick a theme or service they’ll be into, and let someone else handle the specifics. If they don’t like what comes in their box one month, it’s not on you – and they get something else next month, anyway. But it’s not as easy a gift as you might think, because there are about 49,000 different subscription box companies right now. Still, I thought of a few that – to my knowledge – don’t exist yet. But they should.

Nostalgly

Every month, recipients get a box full of items sure to spark nostalgia. Here’s how it works: you give the company your gender and date of birth. That’s it. Let’s say you’re a lady born in 1986, because hey, that seems like a good year to be born in. One month you’d get a 1995 box. It would have pogs, a copy of Disney Adventures magazine, maybe a Deep Blue Something single. One month would be the Year 2000 box, and your 1986-er would get Y2K glasses, a set of butterfly clips, perhaps a stretchy tattoo choker. But someone who was born in 1995 (and is thus old enough to order things with a credit card, sorry ’86 babies) would get an entirely different box for the year 2000, because they were 5 then: a miniature Bratz doll and a Junie B. Jones book, for instance.

Nobody steal this one, because if I had the start-up capital I would totally do this.

Googlify

This one takes a bit of trust with your most personal of personal information – your Google history. You’d give the company access to your Google search history for the month (already accessing your Google search history: every company on the internet, probably, so what’s there to lose?). They will stock your box with personally-selected treasures relating to the stuff you’re obviously obsessed with, even if you’ve been keeping it between you and Google. Did you fall down a Google hole looking at unsolved cold cases? Voila – a bunch of true crime books!  Or maybe you’ve been sucked into the crafty mommy blogger vortex. You’d receive a twee apron and some craft supplies.

Blogsie

After either listing your favorite blogs (aww, you shouldn’t have!) or filling out a profile of what sort of things you’re into, every month you get a bound, printed collection of the best posts so that you can read them on paper like a civilized human from yesteryear. Face it, blog content is better than magazines half the time anyway. So, sort of like Rookie Yearbook, but from a bunch of different sites and not imbued with the magic of Tavi. I understand that all of this content is free online, but the whole crux of subscription boxes is curating and delivering items to subscribers and marking up the price. Oh, and giving it a stupid, cutesy name with a suffix like -ly or -ity or -sy.

Pupsididoo

What’s better than owning a dog? Borrowing a puppy! They’d obviously have to do some sort of a background check on you. Then every month, you get a new puppy fitting your household needs! This would be a tie-in with a pet fostering organization, and it’s win-win: they get people to foster their pups, you get to play with a tiny dog for a month, no strings attached. Of course, if you and the puppy become best friends forever, there’s an option to make the dog part of your forever family at the end of the month.

Shame-ity

Do you have trouble looking your cashier in the eye when you’re buying anything a little … you know, personal? Well we live in the internet age, and you don’t have to! It works like this. If you have any chronic embarrassing shopping needs, you can say that in your profile. Maybe you need to buy stool softener or pregnancy tests every month. It’s none of my business. You can have them shipped right to you! If you don’t have anything particular in mind, you can have an assortment of potentially embarrassing purchases shipped to you every month so that you never have to run out to the store at the last minute for lice shampoo or industrial-strength deodorant.

Pinteristapinterest

Hooked on Pinterest? Give this company access to your boards, and every month you’ll get the materials to make a few of the projects that you – let’s be honest – otherwise would have pinned then left to languish. You can even request items relating to specific boards if you need someone to light a fire under your butt to create a Pinterest-perfect wedding or nursery.

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Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2014: Things That Made Me Say WTF

Posted in Entertainment, Live Blogs, Outfit Girl by

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole year since I was made, let’s be honest, entirely perplexed and 100% jealous by the 2013 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. But here we are again, with another night of impossibly attractive people, whimsical angel wings, bizarre segment concepts, and Taylor Swift. If the VS folks just aired the same show every year, how long do you think it would even take us to notice? Still, I managed to find a whole new set of things to make me say WTF this year.

Segment 1 : Screensavers

I don’t know, I think the theme is fancy screensavers. Or seizures. They’re just projecting flashy patterns on an LCD scrim.

As of three minutes in, I can’t be sure how many ladies have walked because they all look identical. Is this some sort of VS Fashion Show/ Orphan Black crossover? Because that, I would watch.

There’s one with brown hair, and they make her wear wings that are actually enormous puffed sleeves, like she’s the Anne Shirley of this joint.

All of these ladies have serious Leonardo DiCaprio’s Girlfriend hair.

Behind The Scenes #1

Models look pretty on airplanes. That’s the Truth I Didn’t Want To Face of the day.

Models on a plane.

Me on a plane.

Segment 2: Dreamgirls with Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift is performing in a nightgown from an Anne Rice story. It’s Blank Space, that song about lonely Starbucks lovers.
A model walks down the runway wearing wings made of trees from the Lorax. Or models of amoebas.
T.Swizzle serenades each one of the Walking Girls, like the emcee of this children’s beauty pageant in a documentary I once saw. And like the pageant children, the walking girls pretend to like it.

Karlie gets what appears to be rattan fly wings instead of angel wings. They make the girls who don’t get wings wear filmy capes. Do NOT piss off the guy who hands out the wings.

Behind the Scenes #2

I missed a minute and came in for a lady (some sort of layman?) calling the models “curvy and voluptuous”. Those words are as cringe-y as “moist” and “nosh.”

We learn about the “fantasy bra,” which is basically like if Rose Dewitt Bukater had a bra.

Segment 3: Exotic Traveler featuring Ed Sheeran

Sheeran isn’t singing that one song about the cold prostitute. But he is dressed like Ron Weasley at a Christmas Ball.

“Exotic traveler” means they’re dressed like porny Madame Alexander dolls. We have a gal in a Native American headdress, a chilly bullfighter, then a lot of neon shit that’s supposed to be … Brazil maybe?

One broad (Kelly Gale?) has a plastic printed skirt that looks like she’s representing whatever part of the world Delia*s (RIP) is from.

Does Ed Sheeran have a tattoo of sunglasses on his forearm?

I think one model (Daniela Braga) is representing Fraggle Rock.

Behind the Scenes #3

A model (Candice? Behati?) compares reaching the end of the runway to scoring a touchdown. Fitting, because I compare watching the VS Fashion Show to the Superbowl. You’re watching genetically gifted people do what they’re made for, but you still sit back and armchair quarterback it anyway.

Ariana Grande wants to “spank a booty;” I continue to not get it about booties.

I missed about a minute of commercial time when I could have been brushing my teeth and letting my dog out, because I didn’t realize that this hour-long commercial had gone to commercial.

Segment 4: University Of Pink featuring Ariana Grande

“Bigger fan to de-arm this… and if your rhythm is needy ga ha harm me holla holla holla baby”: What I hear in Ariana Grande’s lyrics. Girl, ENUNCIATE.

Putting her next to 6-foot models really highlights that Ariana Grande is awfully Ariana Pequeña.

Ariana Grande is wearing a Lisa Frank skirt.

My B.A. isn’t from the University of Pink, but at my college there were a lot more hoodies and uggs.

Oh. There are backup dancers dressed like an early 2000s Missy Elliot. Which works, because everything Grande sings sounds like the lyrics that came after “put that thing down, flip it and reverse it.”

Behind The Scenes #4

Doutzen tells us that it takes a year to make the wings. Damn. Monica Something, the layman who was talking before, talks up the wings as well.

Segment 5: Fairy Tale featuring Hozier

I love Hozier but this is a weird combo, right? The setup is very Hansel and Gretel, Black Forest-y. Hozier is just kind of there, singing soulfully, and the models walk past him without making eye contact like he’s a busker and their train is coming.

Monica Whatever was right, though. These wings are gorgeous.

Behind The Scenes # 5

Russell James is an Australian photographer who is “like a monkey on the set” and “likes to push us a little bit,” but in a pranky George Clooney way, not in a skummy Terry Richardson way.

He has photographed an entire book of the angels – titled Angels – which would make the perfect Christmas gift for the lady in your life who really needs her self-esteem knocked down a peg or two.

Behind The Scenes #6

Karlie Kloss discusses her love of ballet, because in case you forgot, she’s lovelier than you. She dances (beautifully, of course) with a guy in a Puffy Shirt.

Segment 6: Taylor Swift, Redux

Swiftie is sort of like the Mama (Chicago) or Mama Rose (Gypsy) of this segment.

There are like 10 times more models than I saw during the entire show so far.

Too many models. I’m gonna go do squats and crunches for the next forever, bye.

Doutzen Kroes looks like Denise Richards, if Denise Richards were about to cry.

Do the do full face transplants if you aren’t’ technically disfigured? Asking for a friend.

Finale

It honestly looks like this is the most fun these models have all year, since this sort of goofiness isn’t allowed on any other runway, ever.

There are so many balloons, it’s like the telethon episode of Full House.

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