Teeny Manolo

This contest totally blows!

From the Flickr stream of RandomDude,
a great shot of the bubble flashmob in Vancouver a couple of years back.

I have a confession to make: there is a soft spot in my heart for the loopy comedy stylings of Ben Stiller, and it’s not just because he smiled at me once in Waterfront Station.

Although some.

One of his finest creations is the fabulously moronic Derek(Dayre-ique?) Zoolander, and one of the best bits of that movie was the hilariously appalling infomercial with which Mugatu brainwashed him. “Governments are interfering with the age-old right of children to work as they please! Now…Kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia!”

Oops! Uh, “Spoiler Alert!” Still, at least I didn’t tell you about the Duchovny surprise, so that’s good.

In any case and in the same vein, here is a lovely news presentation from The Onion, celebrating the new Gap For Kids, By Kids collection!

Gap Unveils New ‘For Kids By Kids’ Clothing Line

In last week’s poll, I asked “how old is too old for a man to father a child?”  The largest vote-getter was anything over fifty.  Thirty percent said over sixty.  There were also some very interesting and heartfelt comments, and I continally marvel at our readers’ eloquence and honesty. But what else should I expect from the superfantastic fans of the Manolosphere?

Buttering up aside, this weekend I was thinking about all the stuff there is for kids. And I’m not necessarily talking about things to buy, although there certainly is that. Malls have play areas, there are gyms especially for kids, seemingly billions of different camps and classes, DVD players built into cars, and practically every restaurant has a kid’s menu.

I don’t remember any of that growing up.

Seriously, this company should forget about advertising on blogs and just start stuffing their brochures in Oscar and Grammy goodie bags. Thanks to the ever-informative Dr. Boli for this.

There, I said it.

You know, this week started badly, is worsening rapidly, and at this rate I really don’t know if I’ll be able to face Friday without smelling salts. Tell me: Do they make overproof Earl Grey? I’ll have a double.

One doesn’t want to natter on about the Good Old Days before one was born (too much) because they were oppressive and hypocritical and full of ugly, synthetic garments and hostility towards the people who supply the toys for our Happy Meals and our mail order babies.

But.

One is reminded, one is, of the time Mister Walt Disney went to former Mousekateer Annette Funicello and asked her to keep her bellybutton covered during her upcoming beach movie, for the sake of the reputation of the Mickey Mouse Club. Well, she did and they gave her three sequels anyway and as far as we know she’s sitting on a beanbag full of cash, drinking whiskey sours her cabana boy mixed and emailing Perez Hilton corny jokes from the verandah of a swanky retirement villa in Santa Barbara. And good for her.

My, how things have changed. First Miley Cyrus, now this:

From Slate:

After reading of the Cyrus flap, I e-mailed my photo to Disney… How did the company square its position on the Liebowitz photo with its risqué billboard in China?…

Foster said he didn’t know which ad agency prepared the ad, how old the model was, or where the photo shoot took place. But he was sure it was the work of a Disney licensee: Shanghai Zhenxin Garments Co. Ltd… He assured me the billboard would be removed immediately…

It may be a small world, after all, but not everyone shares Burbank’s mores, and you can’t be too careful protecting your brand: You never know when a Chinese licensee, or an American glossy, will deviate from the Disney way.

So to speak.

My dear friends, you’ve no idea how brutal this world can be to an artistic soul. One by one, it eats them alive. Raymond Chandler. Dashiell Hammett. Dorothy Parker. Damon Runyan. Anita Loos. Ernest Hemingway.Mother Goose.

Yes, for is there any soul as fragile and artistic as that of a child’s storyteller? And yet as each tender Easy Reader, picture book, or pop-up manuscript is born, it is ruthlessly wrenched from its creator’s loving embrace and cast upon the heaving black waters of the heartless book market, there to sink or swim as its now-helpless progenitor can only clutch pearls or fedora and gape, wreathed in cigarette smoke and sheer terror (and then write about it on the Oprah forums). Oh! The Humanity!

Here, thanks to Kids in the Hall, perhaps the greatest sketch comedy troupe in history, is archival footage of one such writer’s brutal struggle through the long, dark, teddy bear’s picnic of the soul.

I was going to use their Teddy Bear’s Picnic skit, but that’s too dark even for me.

Sigh. I didn’t really want to go here. I really didn’t. But…

Who exactly are we trying to kid?

All these people who are screeching in outrage at the photo above of a “naked” Miley Cyrus need to step back for a second and take a deep Zen breath. And unfortunately, it seems I must disagree with my esteemed colleague on this issue.

I happen to live in an area that is not only hot, but not too far away from the beach.

Compared to half the girls parading around the area, Miley is looking pretty freaking demure.

A year or two ago it was de rigeur  for teen girls to wear tight crop tees with micro minis, which as a combo happen to show quite a bit of flesh. I mean, go take a look at one of the dresses from Juicy Couture’s current line. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you. Now ask yourself, what is the huge difference? And then tell me, because I’d really like to know.

Is it the sheet? Is it the tousled hair? Is there an uncomfortable whiff of something post-coital about the picture?

Because I don’t remember quite this type of outcry when young Jamie Lynn Spears announced her pregnancy, and she obviously didn’t just hint around at the whole sex thing.

Why are we so surprised that young people are embracing the provocative and sexual?

I mean, we are the country of Brazilians for young girls, of plastic surgery for teens, of flaunting everything we’ve got.  The media role models of these girls are the likes of Paris “Skank” Hilton and Lindsay “Drunk” Lohan.  They see Britney flashing her hoo-ha practically every month, naked photos of Vanessa Hudgens,  and I don’t think they give it much thought.

I’m not saying that it’s a good thing, but there it is.

Frankly, I’m shocked that anyone else is shocked.

And if you truly think this picture is trash-tastic, then I advise you to never go onto MySpace.

*Hat tip to superfantastic reader Seana for alerting me to the SFGate article!

Now, there are just some people in this world that, when something bad happens to them, everyone laughs and says, Well, dude totally had it coming. Or my personal favorite: Many people are like slinkies - not really good for anything, but you can’t help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs. And so it is with the designers and producers of this perky set of celebratory Passover finger puppets.

Can you see the teensy problem here?

Is that BUCKWHEAT? Oh, sure, it could make an award-winning book, but somehow I don’t think it was the Torah. So, if this toy is to be believed, the plagues are: boils, water turns to blood, frogs, flies, locusts, diseased livestock, a hail of fire (that’s the one that looks like Bozo the Clown), lice, death of the firstborn, and being a black guy.

From YouOnMyBlog, via Gawker:

How can you make plagues more distasteful?

I’d really thought Catholics had cornered the market on gruesome religious paraphernalia for children, but damn, this is good. I’m not sure it quite takes it to the level that my Martyrdom of the Saints coloring book that I had back in the day, but it’s quite the contender.

Robert Downey Jr could not be reached for comment.

What Would Black Jesus Do?

Yesterday my husband went grocery shopping.  He came home with approximately fifteen items.  The bill came out to over one hundred dollars, yet there was no filet mignon or fresh crab legs on the list.   More like apples, bananas, and whole wheat bagels. 

According to this lovely table from the Beareau of Labor Statistics, the year-over-year increase in inflation of food and beverage prices from March of last year to March of this year was a whopping 4.4 percent.  But as I stated above, I didn’t need that graph to tell me that the daily cost of living, from food to gasoline, has risen.

Here’s a little something to sustain the grownup in you through the umpteenth viewing of The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, or Insert-Kid-Fave-Disney-Flick.

Remember that tip to help nervous people relax and enjoy public speaking? The one where you’re supposed to imagine the audience in their underwear? Well, it works pretty well for Disney films, too, as you will see if you click onward. (more…)