Rollin' with the Homies

I just saw this advertisement during early-evening programing for this product.

Yes, L'Oréal Paris has developed the most ingenious device to make absolutely certain your makeup doesn't smudge, smear, or streak!



But wait, doesn't this device sound a little familiar? Oh yes, here it is.



That's right, ladies. Just as you apply an even coat of paint to match your new living room, so can you now apply makeup to your face. Why stop there? Why not spackle over your pores? Sand down the acne? Don't forget the layer of primer before you finish it all with two coats of a durable acrylic latex matte. You'll never have to buy makeup remover again!

For The Person Who Has Everything...

This holiday season, why don't you treat your favorite friend to a Snuggie... for DOGS?



Yes, that's right, for the four-legged friend-of-a-friend who needs to keep his chest warm and his paws free, the Snuggie for Dogs is the perfect invention.

Except for the following problems:
~Dogs can sit, stand, or lie down, just as humans can, but humans do not go about dorsal-upward in two of these situations; the Snuggie for Dogs would *fall forward off the dog's back* if it were lying down or walking around!
~More importantly, dogs, unlike humans, have no reason to "keep their paws free," because they have no opposable thumbs: they do not need to hold a book, telephone, remote control, or any number of other activities that humans are pictured as enjoying from the confines of their backwards-sweater-blanket.

I've never particularly thought the Snuggie was a useful invention. This leaves aside the problems that arise when you consider that the Slanket came first, or that you might resemble alternately a lazy monk or a hoodless Klansman in your ridiculous blanket-gear of choice.

But this? I'm sorry. There's no excuse. This is a new low in cultural failure.

Angelinos' Ten Commandments

...And Charlton Heston descended from the Hollywood Hills with the following commandments sent directly to his iPhone Twitter app:



•I am the Jerry your Bruckheimer, who brought you out of the land of reading, into the house of reality television and explosions; you shall have no other producers before me.

•You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; unless it’s an Oscar, a Golden Globe, or, to a lesser extent, an Emmy.

•You shall not take the name of the Arnold your Governator in vain.

•Remember the premier night, to keep it wholly a media circus; you shall not be seen at any event, be it a premier or grocery shopping, without full makeup and designer fashion.

•Honor your freeway system with your middle-finger.

•You shall not kill, unless you know Kato; or in an act of gang violence, in which case everyone will dehumanize you anyway, so it won’t matter.

•You shall not be stupid enough to get caught if you commit adultery.

•You shall not steal from anyone living in Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, or Malibu; nor from any stores on Rodeo Drive; nor if your name is Winona Ryder. Everything else is fair game.

•You shall not bear right or left while driving without first refusing to signal the turn to your neighbor.

•You shall not covet your neighbor's industry connection, nor his trophy wife, nor his Ferrari.

Forget Paris!

I wonder if my biggest transformation is not having transformed….

So ModCloth is doing this terrific transformations contest, and I wanted to come up with something witty yet heartwarming, perhaps that would make my reader tip her head slightly, gazing fondly into the distance, a smile just at the corner of her mouth. You know, that “best blog ever, could’ve won me any college scholarship, what I did on my summer vacation” kind of entry. Uh, yeah. Easy.

No. Transformations are not so apparent. It’s not all black and white.

Or is it?



In high school, I went to Paris with some classmates and our French teacher. I’m sure I imagined walking away from the trip unbearably chic: a fantastic haircut, new unique clothing, some je ne sais quoi. Instead, of course, we were shuttled around like a certain twelve little girls in two straight lines. No freedom for high schoolers.

People dream their whole lives about going to Paris. Why did it seem like I was getting a dull version? Oh yeah, because everyone in Paris, it seemed, dressed in black and white. No subtle shades of color, no subtle shades of grey, even. Heaven forbid mad couture dresses flouncing down the Champs Élysées. The hub of fashion, right? Maybe they’re saving their fancy outfits for clubbing. Maybe they’re going for a minimalist look.

Maybe ::gasp!:: they don’t really care what other people think of their clothing.

Not just clothing. Slowly, of course, the trend caught. I don’t mean the black and white, I mean the devil may care attitude. Because seriously, why should they wear rainbows just because a schoolgirl tourist expects it? And why should I want to transform myself into a grande dame when I’m not?

So yeah. My transformation was not to transform: no pretending, no phonies, no Parisian savoir faire for someone who’s not from Paris. But strangely, after this trip, I did live differently. I laughed more, I danced more, I found it easier to socialize, and I finally (uh, eventually) figured out how to be myself.

Maybe you’d wear bright green in a crowd of black and white to be noticed, but maybe you won’t be. Maybe if you dress similarly to everyone else, you’ll feel like you belong. Maybe if you’re cynical, you won’t care what other people think of you because usually they don’t think of you. Or maybe you’ll find something subtly unique about each person, in the cut of the fabric or the breadth of the stride.

Fashion Foe Pas

My favorite online clothing source, ModCloth, has invited its street team members (of which I am one) to join fashion-sharing website lookbook.nu. Yes, I posted a couple of looks and tagged them to hype the ModCloth brands. Yes, I've hyped other MC users' looks so they get more publicity. Yes, I'm doing similar now.

CMDP's New Addiction: lookbook.nu

I love the clothing. Since moving to L.A., I've found myself more and more frequently considering styles, textures, colors, and movements of various fabrics. Not that my Midwest days were spent in a vomitous haze of mismatched color, but there's just so much more here to choose from.

Loving the clothing aside, then, I've got some huge problems with the site. Pralines, a fellow lookbook user, posted a look recently entitled I'm Tired of lookbook. Whether or not she's serious (after all, she is still a user), I can see several reasons to share a disgruntled attitude.

(1) Some of the most-hyped looks are not cute: they look like a wardrobe ate too much neon and jewelry that didn't sit well and it puked something out on the wearer (or alternately, it looks like Edith Head puked, and that puke designed these).

(2) Some of the most-hyped looks are not cute: they are on suggestively posed models. Sex sells, I guess.

(3) But keeping that last thing in mind, you get a whole lot of this:


The outfit is unquestionably stylish, but the stats say it was posted by a fifteen-year-old girl*. Fashion Industry, I've long had a problem with your demand for underage workers, whether in your factories or on your runways. I've heard the argument that "clothing hangs better on thin bodies." No, Fashion Industry; clothing hangs on hangers. More likely than the practicality of displaying the clothing on human-hangers, I'm convinced that models are thin and young because of a fashion, and overall social taboo regarding pædophilia. No, I don't want to believe it either, but think about this: isn't that also why women in certain cultures are encouraged to shave their legs, armpits, and pubis? You start growing leg/arm/pubic hair at puberty; shaving suggests that you have not yet reached puberty. If depilatory practices are said to be "proper" because they "make you more attractive," this must mean that "more attractive" is equated with "prepubescent." Not okay.

For this, Fashion Industry, I challenge you. For this, lookbook.nu, I refuse to hype outfits of underage women girls.

*I understand that people lie about their ages on the internet, but to lie that you're fifteen instead of, oh, twenty-eight, suggests that you know something about the pædophilic tendencies pervading fashion, and you're trying to capitalize on it.